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Spanish Log (TAC 2014 Team Lobo) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5373 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 81 of 271 31 October 2011 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey Dbag... I am inclined to agree with you about reading text that is too hard. I have done it a few times and I can say that I get much much more out of reading texts I can generally understand. There is a point of "critical mass" where it just sounds like noise if you don't know enough of the words to get the general point. The flip side of that is that if you know enough of the text to be past the point of "critical mass" it is quite exciting and makes it easier to figure out words from context. I have found it far better to either read texts I know fairly well or read the English translation first. It seems like I learn more Spanish that way.
One other thing I have found somewhat helpful is to find spoken audio (or preferably video w/ audio) that has transcripts. I watch a series of economics courses in Spanish and follow along with the Spanish transcript. When people are speaking (rather than writing a book) they usually use a smaller universe of words and they use word constructions differently. I like it and I think it is better for my primary goal which is speaking and understanding (I am not as interested in reading right now). I think of many of the things you do (like wanting to do LR). I usually end up thinking about what is the most productive use of my next hour of Spanish... at this point I fail to see how spending an hour listening to an audio book is going to be more productive than spending an hour on an FSI lesson. I still do audio books and reading, but I wonder what is really most productive. When I see how much time people spend doing LR I wonder if it is worth it. I simply do not have the time, but, even if I did, I fail to see how (at my intermediate level) spending 50+ hours doing LR would be more productive than doing 50+ hours with FSI or Assimil's Using Spanish. Anyway, you are keeping me motivated. I need to update my log. I did FSI lesson 27 today and yesterday and it was a monster. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5020 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 82 of 271 07 November 2011 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the comments James.
Talking of texts with audio, have you ever seen "Spanishpodcast.org". Its a pretty good podcast site, fairly slowly spoken Peninsular Spanish, interesting topics (LOADS of them) with transcripts. The best thing is its all free, and theres only about 2 sentences of English on them. I cant believe I was half considering spending 50 quid for a few Notes in Spanish transcripts that have loads of English on them. Ive found lots of good links as well that I will put up soon. Well done on getting to Lesson 27 so quickly. Im finding commands quite fun, but ive decided to park things there for a bit, and do some review. I understand that there's lots more vocabulary, longer readings etc introuduced in level 5, and Im a bit paranoid that Ive passed through things a bit too quickly. The plan is, to quickly pass through units 3 to 27 really quickly, hopefully doing 2 or 3 review units a day, fitting in unit 28 and 29 as and when. I will write down areas of difficulty, and come back to them next week, as I then have several days off work. Touch wood, this will make unit 30, the review unit, quite easy. Hopefully by next week I can get skype sorted as well, although this will mean setting up a different computer elsewhere, so we will see. I think I will end up doing the Conversation Stimulus, and replacemant and variation drills for every Unit in the entire course several times over. They are just so effective. I have realised that even if I "finish" the course (i.e get to Unit 55) quite soon, I still probably wont really be done with the course for a long time after. There is just so much material I think one could still benefit from reviewing the occasional drill after say, a year. Edited by dbag on 08 November 2011 at 9:36am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5020 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 83 of 271 08 November 2011 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I have been thinking about my goals for Spanish. I had a conversation a few weeks back with my Spanish tutour about the CEFR levels. He has achieved a C1 certificate, and is working towards a C2.
His English is very good, after all he can teach me Spanish with it, but it is far from perfect. Very far really. I think really I want to reach a c2 level, even if that means having to study Spanish for the next few years. I would be very unsatisfied with less really. I have several friends from abroad, who have a very good level of English, but there are only 1 or 2 who you could really know. I want to be able to do just about everything I can do in English, in Spanish. Is there any point in putting so much effort into this otherwise? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5189 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 84 of 271 09 November 2011 at 3:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey dbag, congrats on all the progress you're making. My sentiments mirror yours in that I don't wish to dabble or function at a low level in Spanish. We're in it for the long haul. From your logs here I would guess that C1 is in pretty close reach for you -- maybe a few weeks/months out and almost surely less than a year away.
Also, don't let your tutor speak English to you. That's a waste of money. :) Maybe give yourself 3-5 English word "lifelines" per session, as in "Como se dice ``cat'' en español", etc... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5271 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 85 of 271 10 November 2011 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||
We have the same ambition! I think it's definitely possible if you put the work in, but every now and then I get worried about how much I still don't know. I don't really write much in Spanish (something I should do something about), but my listening is probably about C2 already, and reading around C1 (speaking - no idea). If I could go back and do it all again, I'd try to balance out my skills a bit. Good for you, to be so determined. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5020 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 86 of 271 25 November 2011 at 9:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the kind comments guys. Although I think at the moment, for me to get to C1 within a year, would involve a tremendous amount of work. I fully expect to reach a solid B1 by then though!
I feel like Ive reached a bit of a plateu at the moment really, I think that when you reach a low intermediate level, you really need to be putting in something like 3 hours of hard work a day if you want to progress quickly. I will post a proper update on what Ive been up to for the last couple of weeks later on today. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5020 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 87 of 271 26 November 2011 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
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The last couple of weeks I have been revising units. Once again I have missed out on doing most of the conversation stimulus sections. I think its mainly because I struggle to do it without a transcript,both due to audio quality and the fact that these are by far the most challenging parts of the course.
I even had a look at units 1 and 2, the pronouciation units which I missed first time round. I was actually quite disapointed in them, they just qive a very general rundown of some of the basics, although they look ridicously thorough when you start out. I have had a glance at the phonology section of the programatic course, and that seems to be more what I am looking for, so I may have to find time in the schedule for that at some point. Units 3 to 9 I ran through very quickly, whith almost no errors, those I did make where in unit 9. I made sporadic errors throughout level 2, although nothing serious. The units in this level are actually quite easy, and most of the content doesnt seem too important. I think most of the errors made here where due to me rushing through first time round, and not overlearning the content, in particular the replacement and variation drills. I have been skimming back and forth between units 17 and 23, which seem most important for me at the moment. In particular 17, which introuduces the preterite, 18 which is the imperfect and 19 which mixes the 2 tenses. I wish I had just skipped straight back to these units really as that is what I have needed to improve. A big lesson I have learnt is not to just blindly folow courses, but to take control of your own learning. So I am not going too worry to much about revising the content in units 3 to 16, but will probably pass several times between 17 and 27 before moving on. I have been thinking about the concept of overlearning. I do think it is very important to overlearn the content of this course, but you have to be careful how you do it. For example, unit 21 gives you about an hour and a half of practice with iregular verbs. I think it is very inefficient to just try and learn it all in one go. A better way with this kind of thing is probably to space it out a bit. Like maybe have 3 passes or so through a unit, then go back and pass through again. I think that way the information is more likely to end up in your long term memory. So I will try this aproach and see how it goes. I am not sure when I will start level 5, but I imagine it will be before christmas. Edited by dbag on 26 November 2011 at 11:43am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5020 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 88 of 271 27 November 2011 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been experimenting with Anki quite a bit this weekend. Id looked at it before and decided it wasnt something I wanted to get into at the time.
Also I made a conscious decision not to explictly study vocab months back, as I was picking enough up just by going through Assimil and fsi, without even really trying to remember anything. I now feel though that I am at a point where massive vocabulary expansion is called for. I have tried a few different things the last couple of days. My first idea was to copy Aris chinesepod method (if you havent read that thread, do so, its awesome!). So I listened and read to a Spanish-podcast.org lesson, and underlined words and phrases I was not sure about. I think there where nearly 50 (Its surprising that even with such a high number of unknown words, I still undstood exactly what was going on n the episode.) The trouble was, it took ages to look up all those words, and many of them where ones with several meanings. I wonder how long those chinesepod lessons are. Spanish podcast ones are nearly half an hour, which is too long to repeatedly listen too. I didnt bother putting most of the words I found in to Anki, thinking instead that I would look for a more efficent way. I copied irationales idea of going down the frequency dictionary. I found that there where few I didnt recognise in the first 2000, and many of theese really need to be seen in context. I entered a few, and mean to return to this at a later date. I harvested several words from my PMP vocabulary book, just skimming through looking for things I feel I should know my now, silly things like tin opener and ladybug! When I got tired of that I decided to put in some of the level 5 and 6 plati vocab. My father has a 2 in 1 English - Spanish Spanish- English dictionary aimed at children. It has a lot of thosse words that a child would know, but a language learner my not have learned yet, words like "paw" (La Zarpa). Fancy learning Spanish all year and not knowing that one! It introuduces a word, then has an example sentence :Una zarpa es un pie de un animal con garras. Los perros y los gatos tienen Zarpas - or: En las fiestas nosotros llenamos un globo con aire. I have decided I am going to put all of these into Anki. Despite being relatively simple, I think it will help build the kind of basic reading comprehension I so desperately crave. Not knowing words like "basket" or "wheat" becomes a real hindrance after a while. I am still not too sure how all this will work, whether or not I should review the deck just once or several times in a day etc. What has become clear is that entering stuff is quite a chore. I want to spend more time learning than just entering data, so I will put a cap on how much time I spend on that. Edited by dbag on 27 November 2011 at 11:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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