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Andrew’s Spanish Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| AndrewW Newbie United States Joined 4998 days ago 29 posts - 60 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 7 20 August 2011 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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My Spanish has hit a bit of a frustrating point. I've always shied away from using CEFR labels, but I've been
studying Spanish for about a year, six months of which was fairly intense. Prior to that I had some exposure to the language, but not much. Recently I had the chance to spend a fair amount of time in Spanish speaking countries. It wasn't a pure Spanish immersion trip, and I knew going into it that it wouldn't be, so I kept my expectations in check. I really am happy with the progress I've made in what is relatively a short period of time. But I also started to experience the frustration of always talking like an overly intelligent 8-year-old, as was really pushed in while I was sitting on a flight next to a nice little Argentinian boy and realized I was having the most fun with a conversation I'd had in Spanish in awhile... Anyway, motivation isn't a problem, thankfully. It's a language I have a lot of affection for and plenty of reasons to continue with. But I seem to have landed back home firmly on a plateau. So after a couple of glasses of wine, I decided the time had come to break with the cycle of repeating "beginner" programs and really throw myself into native content. And after a few more glasses of wine, I deleted my old SRS deck that had become a bit unwieldy and full of way too much English to really be of use anymore. So I wish I could follow that by saying I have much of a plan, but I don't. I guess I'm a bit of oddity here among Spanish learners in that my focus and experience mainly comes with Rioplatense Spanish. Argentina is the country I have the most connections with, and thankfully it provides a lot of rich content to work with. Excellent cinema and plenty of politics to keep me busy reading and listening to. So the general plan I think is to start my day by picking out the most interesting articles I can find, and reading mostly for what I can understand, only looking up what I find essential or really interesting (one of the sentences I wrote down today - "¡Ey baboso!, yo elijo a quien me cojo!" excellent - I'd never heard 'baboso' before.) And then in the afternoon/night, watching news clips, and especially TV series and movies, always with a notepad to jot notes of interest, but mainly for enjoyment. I say mostly native materials, but I do think I still need some formal study. So I have two PMP workbooks, and I plan on doing a review of FSI Programmatic. Based on my rough, wine induced scribblings, I think this will keep me busy until the end of September when I can reassess how things are going. Obviously focusing on input here and not production, but I think that's the right decision for where I am right now. So I know that was kind of rambling, but I wrote this more for me than you guys - so get over it! I'll try to keeps this fairly regularly updated with my progress, inevitable adjustments, and, well, more ramblings. :) Tomorrow will be the real start of "the plan", but last night I did manage to watch "Música en espera", and today read a bit about the Argentinian economy and a women's protest against sexual harassment, where the above quote comes from. :) Any advice is, of course, welcome :) I'll try to provide a few reviews of Argentina cinema too maybe, for those other Spanish learners who maybe aren't so familiar with it and might be looking for some good resources. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5366 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 7 21 August 2011 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck. I will follow your log.
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| ymapazagain Senior Member Australia myspace.com/amywiles Joined 6950 days ago 504 posts - 538 votes Speaks: English* Studies: SpanishB2 | Message 3 of 7 21 August 2011 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Andrew,
Have you considered using Assimil for a more formal addition to your studies? I reached B1 level (DELE inicial) in 2008 and then slowly began to neglect my Spanish to the point where I hardly touched it for well over a year. A few months ago I came back to it and used Michel Thomas Advanced to solidify grammar concepts (this was incredibly helpful) and now I am working through Assimil. The thing I like about Assimil is that if you're at a more advanced level then you can move through it rather quickly (at least at first) but still benefit from picking up a lot of new idioms, as it uses a much more colloquial style of language than other programs I've encountered. Best of luck with it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AndrewW Newbie United States Joined 4998 days ago 29 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 7 22 August 2011 at 5:12am | IP Logged | ||
I have Assimil and I considered jumping back into it. I've used it before, and had a bit of a love hate relationship with it. I just got incredibly bored with the discussions. "Now it's spring...time for harvest" type stuff...just f**king kill me. But I do admit that it's good for learning vocabulary. The vocab I learned through Assimil I remember far quicker and better than other systems. I guess what I'm trying to avoid is saying I'm going to throw myself into native materials...and then just focus on FSI and Assimil. So right now, I think I'm happy with the system I've created. Clarín, La Nación, and La Voz in the morning, a lesson of FSI during the day, and then a TV show or movie at night depending on time. But this is a really a month and a half review and trial and error period. I plan on really sitting down in October and rethinking where I want to move from here. And Assimil could be a part of that. It's been a crazy weekend back home, but I read my news as normal and convinced some friends to watch Nueve Reinas. I promise I'll make this more interesting come next week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AndrewW Newbie United States Joined 4998 days ago 29 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 7 25 August 2011 at 5:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Well it's been a busy few days. I haven't forgotten Spanish - I've still been doing my daily reading and as much
listening as possible. But I haven't been doing much organized study. Today, I was finally able to get back on track though. I guess I'll take each subject one at a time. With my reading, I've noticed the more technical the article, the less vocab I try to grab from it. For example, today I was reading an article on a kidnapped girl and another one on the basic economic problems. Both had quite a bit of vocab I just ignored and went through. And then I read a pretty light-hearted article on the popular honeymoon places right now, and found myself constantly scribbling notes. I suppose that's good though. No reason to burden myself with overly academic vocab at this point. But it also made me wonder if I shouldn't start reading through a book like Harry Potter a bit every day and use that for vocab and grammar growth. Think I'll definitely follow up on that. Also, started reviewing FSI Programmatic today. Wowww. I had forgotten just how much English was involved. I started reviewing way too far back, at lesson 15, but man. So much English. Even some of the lesson responses were in English! And I had forgotten how much them insisting on avoiding grammatical terms drove me nuts. Instead of talking abouts IOs and DOs, we deal with circles and squares. And man were the dialogues slowwww. But it's also reassuring I guess. Means I've made a ton of progress since first going through them. And that's part of the reason I started back so far - some times you need to pat yourself on the back. I flew through it pretty quickly - can't say I got much out of it, but I know that'll change later on. It did confirm my belief that I made the right decision in moving on to more native materials. I do plan on sticking with the FSI review, because I know it'll get harder. And I'm starting to think more about ymapazagain's suggestion of going back to Assimil as a more advanced learned. But it really was time to start focusing on harder stuff. Today, I also watched the Arsenal - Udinese champions league game in Spanish. In addition to being a great game, I was happy with the amount I understood. I still understand more in set blocks of understanding as opposed to really getting the flow. But I jotted down some good notes for Aniki...which is my goal for tomorrow. Start getting my SRS system back up in running. I have around a page of notes that I need to turn into functioning SRS cards. This time with much less English. Anywayyy, still getting into the hang of this logging about what I'm doing thing. Maybe I can improve this along with my Spanish. ;) But for now, time to settle down and pick out a good Spanish movie to watch. :) Edited by AndrewW on 25 August 2011 at 5:43am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Emerald Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom languagedabbler.blog Joined 6236 days ago 316 posts - 340 votes Speaks: Hindi, Gujarati*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 7 27 August 2011 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Looking forward to reading about your progress. I'm learning Spanish too - though only a
beginner, and enjoying it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AndrewW Newbie United States Joined 4998 days ago 29 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 7 31 August 2011 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well I knew adjustments would have to be made, and FSI seems first. I'm kind of surprised at just how useless I
found it, even after jumping ahead a bit. I guess when I last left FSI my Spanish was at a different level. I might still use it to go back and drill specific areas, but I realize now exactly what I should have realized when I started this thread: what I need now is just a ton of exposure to real Spanish. To that end, my typical study method has become waking up and reading a selection of newspapers for about an hour: normally La Nación and Clarín from Buenos Aires, and El Mundo and El País from Spain. I try to pick a pretty good random mix of articles, from politics to celebrity gossip to sports. Really whatever grabs my attention. Vocab and "grammar points" wise, I don't have much of a system. I write down quite a bit of new words or interesting phrases/wordings, and then look up a selection of those. And of those, a few get thrown into Anki. It's probably not the quickest way to pick up vocab, but I'm not sure throwing anything and everything into Anki is effective either. This seems to be working so far. During the day, it's listening to Spanish as much as I can fit in among other things. This normally adds up to some music and podcasts in the car and especially while running. It's probably the least I understand and get out of any of the studying I do, but I think it's important to stick with listening practice. It's too easy to put it off in favor of other things and it's the area I really want to improve in. Then at night I try to do a bit of formal study. Lately this has been turning my notes into Anki cards (this time with almost no English involved), looking up any troubling bits in my grammar book, reviewing Anki, and then doing a bit of work in my PMP workbooks. And then to wrap up, I try to do some reading and watch at least a movie or a TV episode every night. I bought Harry Potter and El Alquimista, so those are the first two up for reading practice. Really enjoying this part. The movies and TV watching are almost always without subtitles, so it can be a bit hard. But I find I can normally follow the plot enough, sometimes better than others. I've always been rewatching a lot of movies on kind of a rolling basis, so a little more understanding everytime - right? Anyway, that's the "method". Whether it's one that will lead to real improvement, I guess we'll find out. I try to immerse myself as much as one can in a English life with real responsibility and people that ocasionaly like to hang out with me. ;) But i've resigned myself to being on a long plateau, so I'm trying to be patient with myself and make things as fun as possible. So there we go :) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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