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Spanish - All Day, Every Day... | ||
Tags: Living abroad | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5264 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 1 of 6 01 July 2011 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I emigrated to Spain in September 2009, I knew exactly four words of Spanish. As
you can imagine, that didn’t get me very far! Combining a new job (sadly, I spend all my working time in English) and a new life with a new language has been far from straightforward, but I’ve been lucky to meet some very understanding people, and I’ve had a lot of fun learning. These days, I can understand anything anyone says to me – as long as they speak clearly and don’t slur their words too much. I can read and understand most books and newspaper articles – though I miss a lot of more literary words. I can watch a movie or TV show and follow it easily. But that’s not nearly enough! So for the next two months, July and August, I’ll be trying to consolidate and perfect all those little rough points that I still find troublesome. I’ll try and resolve all my problems with especially confusing vocabulary and my worst grammatical blunders. I also need to do a whole lot of work on my pronunciation. In July I’m taking classes in the mornings and evenings (yes I know, but I need someone telling me what I’m getting wrong, not just friends being sweet and telling me I’m doing fine). I’m going to be spending the rest of my time this month in a self-made immersion environment or out on the town with Spanish people. August will be more complicated. I’m spending most of the month in the UK, and then going to Barcelona for a few days, so at some point I’ll also be doing a little teeny bit of Assimil ‘El catalan sin esfuserzo’, just for fun – I know I won’t need it at all, but it’s interesting to know a bit more about the languages of the places you visit. I’ve never even looked at Catalan, though I’ve heard tourists speaking it a couple of times. So that might be interesting. But I’ll need to keep up my language immersion while surrounded by non-stop English, and I know from experience that this will be a challenge. I’ll try to keep a running count of what I get up to – this log is mostly for motivation and to keep a record of what I manage to achieve. I’ll probably be writing this log in English for the most part, but maybe later I’ll start writing in Spanish here as well as everywhere else! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5264 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 2 of 6 10 July 2011 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had 13 hours of classes this week! It's amazing how normal speaking Spanish all day
is starting to feel - I normally only have the chance every now and then with friends, so it's great to have the chance to practice and be corrected. My classes are three hours B2 revision and vocabulary and ten hours at C1 level, new grammar and even more vocab. It's great to finally start learning new grammar points, as I feel like I was at stuck B1-B2 level forever (ok, ten months). But now things that I always found impossible are clicking into place. I'm trying to build up my vocabulary, so my aim this week is to learn 100 new words, at least for passive recognition. Hopefully, many more than that! I've learned a lot of words this week (it's so amazing when you suddenly realize that a new word is everywhere!) but I haven't kept tabs on how many - so I'll try to be more organized from now on. I'm listening-reading 'Twilight', a book that I don't particularly enjoy reading, but the narrator has a lovely voice, and speaks very clearly (although I have a feeling that her accent is probably Galecian or something, she doesn't really sound Madrileña - whatever, it's nice). I'm noting all of the words I don't instantly recognize and also trying to work on my pronunciation by listening to a few words and repeating them as close as I can to the sound I hear. For pronunciation (my greatest bugbear) I have also got hold of a book and CD set of Spanish 'fonetica' at B1 level which explains the mouth and tongue position reasonably clearly. My greatest problems are with the vowels (especially I, O and U), my S - I can't work out how to get out of the habit of making a sharp English S sound, and there seems to be more than one Spanish S sound in different words - and, of course, rolling my Rs, which I can do, but seemingly only with a lot of effort. By the end of this week, I want to have got my I, O and S sorted out. If the book is helpful, I'll get the B2 level one as a follow-up. This is the hardest thing for me, I have to re-learn to pronounce all kinds of words, as I was so desperate to communicate at first that I got into all sorts of bad habits. I have got to Lliçó 7 in 'El catalán sin esfuerzo', but I've decided that for the moment I'm just going to go for mostly passive understanding, apart from a few polite phrases (which might be useful for my trip) as it could undermine my work on Spanish pronunciation - the Catalan 'que' sound is catchy. I have the Spanish DVD of the TV show 'Heroes', which comes with a Catalan soundtrack, so I'm listening to episodes of it in Spanish, and then Catalan. Lots to do this week, but now that my routine has settled in, hopefully everything will be more straightforward. Edited by July on 10 July 2011 at 6:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5264 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 3 of 6 11 July 2011 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Prepositions! How I hate them. Out of the list that I'm trying to learn, I know nearly
half - and I seem to have developed a tendency to just put 'de' after everything. I wonder if there's a simple way to get them to stick in my mind, or if it's just going to have to be memorization? 'El catalán sin esfuerzo' Lliçó 8. I could almost understand the lesson by reading it, although there were a couple of sentences where I got lost. I might not be visiting Barcelona after all this summer, but I figure that I've started so I'll finish. I'll go there one day, and if it has to be in a year's time, I might actually be at a point where I could use some of the language out loud! (And probably local people will just think I'm crazy, but never mind.) Another chapter of Crepúsculo. I'm up to chapter 12, but I'll have to go back and pick out some words in the earlier chapters. One of the words I didn't know was 'zanjar' which means to settle a problem, resolve a matter or overcome difficulties. I'd just looked it up yesterday afternoon, when I heard it spoken on a TV show that evening. I just love it when that happens. On the subject of TV, I'm nearly finished my first watch through of 'La Repúlica', a soapy drama spin-off about the republic in early 1930s, and I've started to watch 'El Barco' which is (a soapy drama) about a boat of survivors from a black hole which ate up all the land in the entire world, but none of the water. Seriously. Science is not its strong point. However, luckily it is very useful as it's all twenty-somethings speaking colloquial Spanish, which is great for picking up expressions - and its premise and characters are interesting (or daft) enough that I think I can bear to watch the whole season. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5182 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 4 of 6 12 July 2011 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||
I just downloaded the first episode to see what it's about. It is pretty much "El Internado" on a boat. Precocious "Naomi Wildman" little girl. Check. Ridiculous plot premise. Check. Cute 20-something actors and actresses. Check. Sign me up for more! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5264 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 5 of 6 28 July 2011 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I've finished with the classes. I had to change class this week because my
Spanish teacher decided to announce her nutty racist views about some of the other (middle eastern, muslim) students in the middle of class - and quite honestly I do not need people like her in my life - and presumably the students she was picking on don't either. So I missed out on four hours of class this week, but at least I didn't have to spend my time with such a hateful person. Pity she turned out so awful, as she knows a lot about Spanish grammar. Makes you want to teach yourself! But my new teacher who I know already, and my new classmates were lovely and one even taught me how to say 'cerveza' in Japanese (way easier than it sounds for an English speaker)! Anyway - I've actually got to the point where I'm starting to feel like I'm actually forgetting some Spanish. I hope this is just because I've been studying too much - but things are getting difficult. At the same time, it's becoming really automatic to speak Spanish all the time, even if what I'm saying isn't perfect. Next week I go to the UK, so my Spanish total immersion will be over, but I'll keep up the TV, Assimil, Audiobooks and podcasts, so hopefully I won't lose track of what I'm doing. Family and friends will simply have to put up with it. It'll feel weird to be speaking English again with people and I hope I don't make any stupid mistakes - I almost said something to my mother in Spanish on the phone this afternoon, and I know in shops and places like that it'll be weird to change the language chip. I finished Crepúsculo, but I'm still working on the vocabulary. By the end of this summer I want to be able to recognize and be able to use every single word in that book. I'll try to read the sequel as well (I really don't enjoy these books much, but they're so useful!). As far as Catalan is concerned - I decided to do the first twenty Assimil lessons again as they were getting longer and I'd rather get the basics down before I continue. I imagine that if I was a native Spanish speaker I could go much faster. But, I can nearly follow the basics of conversation in a TV show dubbed into Catalan already - all those words that aren't directly Spanish or French are starting to make sense to me. Assimil really does give you those key words up front. I've also kind of started to fall in love with the sound of this language. It's really lovely. All I have to do is work out how many books my aeroplane luggage allowance lets me take! Who needs clothes and shoes when there are language books, right? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5013 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 6 29 July 2011 at 12:51am | IP Logged | ||
Well done for taking some action. Racism should always be challenged. And wellcome back to the UK! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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