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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Matty Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5285 days ago 31 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 18 31 December 2010 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have decided that my new year's resolution is to learn to speak Spanish at least decently well. I would like to go to a Spanish-speaking country (probably Spain) in the Summer, and would like to be able to hold basic conversations with people in Spanish. At least for the moment, this goal is humble. I just want to be able to speak well enough that I can be understood, and to understand basic things that other people say in basic everyday conversation.
My previous exposure to Spanish is, umm, limited. I unwillingly took Spanish in Fourth Grade, and I got a D (my worst grade, I remember!). At the time, I remember thinking that it was silly for me to learn Spanish. I remember thinking that I should have been learning German instead - my mother was fluent in German, I had German relatives, had been to Germany several times, but nonetheless could not speak German. Subsequently in High School and in College, I took German, for 6 years in total. I learned the basics, but still could not really understand or speak German. I eventually quit my "advanced" level college course out of frustration. There were so many words that I did not know, my grammar was poor, and I could not speak with confidence. This after 6 years of classroom work. It was hopeless. I would never be able to speak German, I thought. I also felt as though I was entitled to speak fluent German. My mother spoke fluent German. Why hadn't she taught me as a child, I wondered? Then, about 9 months ago, I decided that I was going to learn German. I needed to learn German, and I would do it. I simply decided this one day. I do not know how or why I did this, but I did. I decided that I would focus on vocabulary, and started using www.german-flashcards.com. I rote memorized about 3,000 words (many of which I was already familiar with, but there were some gaping holes). Then I started reading German news articles from der Spiegel, and adding all the new words that I did not know to. I would keep re-reading the articles and re-studying the vocabulary every day until I understood what the articles were saying. I started using FSI (though I didn't finish it). I listened to FSI German while driving in the car, going for runs, etc. I began insisting on only speaking German with my mother. Then, about 6 months ago, through reading posts on this forum, I discovered Anki, and switched from www.german-flashcards.com to Anki. I also started using Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten from Deutsche Welle. I started by picking out one day's news and repeatedly listening to it every day. For each sentence, I entered all the words I didn't really know into Anki. I had German, English, and also the entire sentence for context. I tried to have about 7 words per Anki flashcard. As soon as I had mastered one day's news, I would add another day's. The pace quickened and quickened as I learned more. One day I was able to understand most of what was said in a brand new day's slowly spoken news. Soon later, I was able to understand much of what was said even while skipping the slowly spoken version and heading straight into the normal speed regular news. I began using different sources of material. I read Kafka's Die Verwandlung (the Transformation), adding all words I didn't know into Anki. I listened to the audiobook version. I began listening to German of one sort or another for at least one hour or a day every day. I began watching German movies. I would watch the movies, then find German subtitles and enter the words I didn't know into Anki (always with sentences/paragraphs as context, and as often as possible with multiple words on the same flashcard). And so on. What a difference motivation makes! Through all of this, I am pretty sure that I learned more in 9 months of self-study than I had in 6 years of classroom study. Now I can watch German TV or listen to German radio on Deutsche Welle and understand more or less everything. I can read news articles and books in German, and can express complex thoughts in speech and writing. At this point I am closing in on 3000 German flashcards in Anki, most of which have more than one word. As a rough estimate, I probably have something like 4 words on average per flash card. I know some obscure German words like der Doppelbesteurungsabkommen (the Double Taxation Treaty) which I have only heard a few times in English. My grammar still needs some work, and there is definitely still plenty of room to improve my German - I would like to get as close as possible to being a native speaker. But here's the kicker - I found something unexpected - that I was actually *enjoying* learning German. In any case, back to Spanish. A few months into my German revival, I began to entertain the idea of learning other languages as well. Spanish seemed to make tons of sense, and I began to dream of one day speaking Chinese - the ultimate challenge. Still, I held off and focused 100% on German. But I can't hold back any longer. I am starting Spanish. I can count, almost, to 10 in Spanish. I can say Hola. I can say "como estas," but at this instant I am not sure what it means. And that's about it! But that's irrelevant. Today is the day. I have decided that I will learn to become at minimum basically conversant in Spanish, and I will! Yesterday I watched part of a Spanish Muzzy tape that my parents got for me when I was in 4th Grade. I also started Pimsleur last night, and completed the first 30 minute section. After completing the first 30 minutes of Pimsleur and watching Muzzy, I was simultaneously happy about how much I could already say and understand, but also very much aware of how much I do not now. For now, Pimsleur will be my primary (only) learning method. It seems like a good way to make sure that I get the basics of pronunciation right. I have never used Pimsleur before, so we will see how it goes! At the same time that I am learning Spanish, I do not want to slack off on my German. So I will continue to do at least something in German every day - I will keep up with my German Anki, and will read a news article, read part of a book, watch a movie, listen to the radio --- something --- in German every day. I am excited but also uncertain! This will be an interesting challenge. Can I do it? Is this language thing really for me? Will I ever be able to learn Chinese? Adios! Edited by Matty on 31 December 2010 at 8:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Matty Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5285 days ago 31 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 2 of 18 02 January 2011 at 6:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Day 1:
Technically this is not really day 1 because I started a small amount of Spanish over the past two days. But this is the first day of the period we arbitrarily label the year, so I will call it day 1! I did about two hours of Pimsleur today, and got as far as unit 5. I think I will need to repeat at least unit 4 and 5, but so far I like it and I feel like I am making progress. I also watched Muzzy in its entirety. I didn't understand most of it, but was able to pick out a few things, and it seemed like I was better able to aurally separate sounds into words than previously! I also did some German. I listened to the radio and did Anki. I will continue to keep up with German, but as a generally rule I think I will not mention it in this log unless there is something particularly noteworthy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Matty Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5285 days ago 31 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 3 of 18 06 January 2011 at 6:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Day 5:
Just finished listening to unit 9 (of Pimsleur Spanish 1). I think I have up to that point more or less down, and I listened on further yesterday. I am going faster than I am supposed to because I am doing more than half an hour per day. I am staggering my sessions, so that e.g. one day I may do unit 5, 6, and 7. Then the next do I'll go back and start at 6, and do 7, 8. Basically when I feel like I am able to go through a unit with saying everything correctly, then I take it out of my cycle and go on. One issue I ran into was rolling the "rr." I had a lot of trouble with this at first, especially with pronouncing "el restaurante." But at this point I think I mostly have it down (hopefully that's right). I think it was relatively easy for me to pick up because I used to be able to roll my rs, but had not done so in a long time. It helped me to at first make a "drrrr" sound and then I was gradually able to transition to "rr" rolled between my the top two front teeth and the gums on my upper jaw. I attempted to listen to a news article here, and understood very little of it. :) http://es.euronews.net/ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5210 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 18 20 January 2011 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Matty,
How are your studies going? Keep us posted... y buena suerte!! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Matty Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5285 days ago 31 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 5 of 18 28 January 2011 at 12:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Day 27:
Buenas Noches, jedimindtrick e todos mi amigos! OK, long time no update. BUT although I have been AWOL on the language log, I have kept working through Pimsleur every day. My pace has slowed to some extent - I am no longer getting through multiple levels every day, like I was when I first started. But at that time, I guess the lessons were simpler. Suitably, on day 27, I have gotten as far as lesson 27. But I have not been doing the "reading" sections as much as the listening sections. Most of the time when I am doing Pimsleur, I am outside walking around, or cooking, or doing something else so that it's inconvenient to use the book. So I need to catch up on the reading I am going to have to step it up to avoid having my day count fall behind my lesson count! Tonight, I am going to finish a first pass through at least lesson 30. There, now that I've written it, I have to do it. Tonight. In addition to Pimsleur, I watched a couple episodes of the Destinos tv series a week or so ago. I feel like my pronunciation and audible exposure to the language is really good for my pronounciation and intuitive grasp of how the language should sound. This is a different way of language learning than I ever really tried with German, but I think it's doing good. Although I can't say much, I can say it confidently and with what is, I think, good pronounciation (including rolling the rrrrrrs). Voy a estudiar Español ahora! Yo estudio mucho en mi Casa y en la Calla. Estudio mucho, y aprende rápido. Esta muy buena. (Writing that brief bit of Spanish was much more difficult than saying it!) Edited by Matty on 28 January 2011 at 1:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Matty Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5285 days ago 31 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 6 of 18 02 February 2011 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Day 32:
I started Pimsleur II! Also, over the past couple of days, I tried a few new things, in addition to pimsleur, like: 1) a basic Spanish soap opera that the BBC has http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/ I liked this BBC series, but it seems like they are speaking Spain-Spanish, rather than Latin American Spanish. I won't used this more at the momemnt for that reason. I don't want to confuse myself any more than necessary at the moment with the slight differences between Latin American and European Spanish. 2) starting learning some basic sentences at http://www.online-spanish-course.com/show-sentences.php? I will probably keep doing a little bit of this every day, as a way to increase my vocabulary. However, I am going to try and steer clear of studying individual words. I would like to keep any vocabulary building to sentence building, to try out the sentence method. 3) I started going through Michel Thomas Spanish. I just went through the first two lessons, but so far it seems very easy. That may be because a lot of it is review for me, covering much of the same material that I have just been through in Pimsleur 1. But in any case, I breezed through it. Right now I have the feeling that Spanish is easy, especially compared to German. I think I am making good progress. Maybe it's because Spanish is in fact easy, in comparison to German, and is very similar to English. Or maybe it's mostly because I already have the experience of learning another language (to a reasonably advanced level). Whatever the case, I am flying high right now. I have certainly made substantial progress from just a month ago, when I genuinely did not know quite what "como estas" meant! And the vast majority of the time I have spent Spanish has been while doing something else that I had to do, such as walking to work or washing the dishes - time that would be "wasted" if I were not simultaneously learning Spanish. Creo que, aprendo Español rápido ahora! Edited by Matty on 02 February 2011 at 5:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5335 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 7 of 18 02 February 2011 at 6:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Have you asked your mother why she didn't teach you German? Sorry if I over read it. Edited by zekecoma on 02 February 2011 at 6:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Matty Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5285 days ago 31 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 8 of 18 02 February 2011 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes. While she is fluent in German, she is not a pure native speaker. She said that she tried to speak German with me sometimes, but her natural tendency was always to revert back to English. Also, she felt like German had a stigma attached to it, stemming from World War II and the Holocaust. This made her feel bad/nervous/etc. any time she spoke German to me in public. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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