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Trying out L-R | ||
Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6573 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 1 of 18 14 June 2011 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't been an avid poster in the logbook section of this site as I've rarely felt a need for it. But now I've been
bitten by the Listen-Read bug and I feel I might need some advice as I go along, and maybe my experiences will be of use for someone else. So I'll post a log. I'm going to give L-R a chance for Spanish. I've had two false starts with the language, once with Yabla/LoMasTV and once with Michel Thomas, without getting very far with either. This is very common for me and I've had false starts with my other languages, too. I get really excited and try out a method and then after a while I get bored and give it up. Months later I repeat the process until at some point I find a method I can stick with for a longer time. Let's see if L-R is such a method! Before I do it with Spanish, however, I'm going to test-drive it with French. This is partially because my French has recieved almost no attention or maintenance during the several years that have passed since I learned it. My passive understanding is still okay and I can talk in simple structures, but when I try it I find myself grasping for words. I think a dose of L-R will do it good, and it will also prepare me for my Spanish endeavour, by refreshing a related language, by getting familiar with the new skill involved (reading English whilst listening to another language) and because I plan to do the same book, to start with, in both languages. This book will be Treasure Island. I haven't actually read it before, but I'm still very familiar with the content, having seen movie adaptations and the excellent TV series "Return to Treasure Island" with Brian Blessed as Long John Silver (highly recommended). I also passionately love pirates, so that criterium is fulfilled. At the moment I'm in a late phase of intensive Cantonese study, but I'm starting to feel like I'm getting tired of it. In two weeks my girlfriend from Hong Kong will come over to visit me for two weeks and I'll be speaking Cantonese that whole time. After she returns, I'll go over to French. For the two weeks following her return I'll do some sporadic L-R work, feeling out the method in French, going through Treasure Island at least once, and maybe I'll get through some other book, too, I don't know. After these two weeks I'll go into a Spanish L-R bootcamp. Ill have a week without distractions and I shall just see how much I can do every day without keeling over. I'll start with Treasure Island, which will be familiar territory by then, and I'll make sure to have prepared other material, too. So at the moment I'm in a pre-prep stage, setting up the material for French and Spanish. I've got a French audiobook and ebook for TI that use the same translation, and an English ebook, too. I've also got the Spanish audiobook and an ebook shouldn't be too hard to get by, though I'm a bit fearful of there being many translations. I think I could get Dracula for both languages, too, which is good, since I love vampires almost as much as I love pirates. The most availible and highest-quality material in Spanish is of course Don Q himself and I'm tempted to take him for a ride. The language will be quite archaic, though (then again, Treasure Island isn't really Modern Standard English, either!) and while I'm quite familiar with the story, I haven't read that book, either. Dunno if I have the time to do it before bootcamp time. Oh yeah, reading the material. I've read a few chapter of Treasure Island in English today and I'm enjoying it immensely. I already look forward to rereading it! Not sure if I'll read it all the way through before I start with French, as I'm doing a lot of Cantonese now. That shouldn't matter too much, though. I'll have the beginning to help me when starting out in French, but my French is still strong enough that I don't think I'll actually need to know the material beforehand. I'm toying with the idea of getting some English audiobooks of Dracula (I think I've already got one that I listened halfway through once) and maybe Don Quijote, to listen to while at work. I won't be able to concentrate on them fully, but maybe the familiarity with the material that this will bring me will still be of aid when going over them again later. That's all for now. Time for a few minutes of Cantonese and then bedtime! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6573 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 18 15 June 2011 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found and listened to the first part of Dracula at work. It's good in that it's written like a diary and in parts as
correspondence. The language is quite simple and straightforward, which should make it a pretty good book to use in the beginning of a language. However, the Count speaks, not very ungrammatical but quite unidiomatical English and, in the reading I listen to, with a distinct accent. This will presumably be similar in foreign language books, too, but his speech is not a large portion of the total amount of text, so I don't think it should pose too much of a problem. Of the books I have found both French and Spanish audiobooks of, Treasure Island and Dracula are the ones I love the most, so I think they ought to be the ones I use for this. I should, however, probably prepare a third one for Spanish. Don't yet know what that will be. Any tips on Spanish audiobook sites beyond Leerescuchando would be welcome. And of course tips of great books, preferably of the adventure genre. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4985 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 18 15 June 2011 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Ari, good luck with your LR! Hope you like it and really get something out of it!.
A question for you about leerescuchando. I registered there because I wanted the audiolibro for el principito. But I couldn't find out where I could download the audio. All I could do was listen to some online material. Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4985 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 18 15 June 2011 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Awesome link Winnie!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5175 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 6 of 18 15 June 2011 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey, good luck with your listen and reading approach. I haven't tried it yet myself but it looks fun. I live in
the states and actually find it hard to get much in the way of Spanish audio books. I've had some luck with audible.com but the selection isn't so good and they don't seem to add new books..... Ever. At least not in the genres that I like ie adventure, thriller, mystery. I took a quick look at the link someone else put up. It looks like a site some recommended to me previously... Not sure if it's entirely legal I think people just post books in the forums. I think it's text to speech books instead of actual readers too. I saw some good popular fiction books listed there if it is legit good stuff! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tbone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4982 days ago 92 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 7 of 18 16 June 2011 at 3:09am | IP Logged | ||
SuperTom, you can get El Principito from albalearning.com. Read by Alba, her stuff is always free. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6573 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 8 of 18 16 June 2011 at 5:53am | IP Logged | ||
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SuperTom, I use DownloadHelper for FireFox to get the files from Leerescuchando. It can find and download the
audio file from the flash player application. It can also be used to download videos from sites like YouTube. Winnie, thanks for the link. Looks like there's some great stuff there! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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