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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4954 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 329 of 344 14 May 2015 at 8:54am | IP Logged |
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Of the dubbed series, I can really recommend Erase una vez (Once upon a Time). The
dubbing is of good quality, the language is natural, modern. Strangely, now that I think of it, most series I've watched in Spanish are of the historial (or false history- fantasy) kind. But there are exceptions. Right now, I am watching Angel o Demonio, which is an original Spanish series set in modern times, but not an extreme in difficulty as well. Should you find something good, I'll welcome any recommendations as well Thanks for your excitement, it is contagious :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4603 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 330 of 344 20 May 2015 at 6:00pm | IP Logged |
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My subtitle project is still going strong! The things I have listened to once, twice or three times before are improved no doubt but it may be just from repetition vs better listening skills. But I am having fun.
I started Victor Ros, another period piece, but I like it very much. I am putting Aguila Rojo on hold as I felt I missed too much due to the lack of subtitles for the first 4 seasons. Also, I have found a few (very few) movies on Netflix that have Spanish audio and subtitles. I am watching The Croods right now. It is a story of a caveman family and their adventure. It is animated and the subtitles don't really match up correctly but it is fun and I understand a large portion of it without the subtitles. A few of my families' DVDs also offer Spanish audio and subtitles...But not as many as I expected. I have a short term goal of watching 60 hours of films/TV series in Spanish over the next 30 days. I know it is just a short period of time but I hope it will kickstart my listening. I have been doing an average of two hours per day for the last week so I know it can be done with my crazy schedule. I have been getting up early and doing an hour before work and an hour during lunch. It really is fun. I hope I learn something because... it does not feel like studying. :) All the Best, BOLIO 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4603 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 331 of 344 29 May 2015 at 4:52pm | IP Logged |
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Hello HTLAL,
I finished the first season of Victor Ros. I am looking forward to the next season. The subtitle project is going very well. I am enjoying the process and I think that I am at a stage in my learning where I can really benefit from this method. There are pieces of dialogue that stick with me and I try to use them through the course of the day...even if it just to myself. Since my last post, I have watched 25 hours of television/movies with Spanish audio and sub titles. I still get lost without the sub titles due to the speed of the speach and the "ceceo" the spaniards speak with. But I do feel like I am making progress. I am forcing myself to think and talk to myself in Spanish throughout the day. I still translate a great deal but some things are becoming a little more automatic. It is a fun but sometimes frustrating exercise. I also continue to read. I read an easy Spanish reader that was really enjoyable. I highly recommend it for beginners. Easy Spanish Reader The book is divided into thirds. The first part is a story of school friends and their Spanish club. The next section is about the History of Mexico (I learned quite a bit here). The third is Lazarillo de Tormes. It was very entertaining to me. He was Oliver Twist before Oliver Twist. I started reading another graded reader that is a bit more difficult due to the increased vocabulary, but nothing too advanced. Read and Think Spanish It has stories from all over the Spanish Speaking world. It is geared towards cultural and historical items which is right up my alley. Other than a few speaking attempts with friends and family, this is the bulk of my study right now and it is very fun. All the best, BOLIO 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3467 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 332 of 344 31 May 2015 at 5:38am | IP Logged |
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Hi Bolio! Thanks for your link to Amazon. A used copy of your Easy Spanish Reader is only 24 cents! Love me a bargain!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4603 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 333 of 344 09 June 2015 at 6:05pm | IP Logged |
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Clarity, I am glad you liked it. I love buying things at a discount.
For those of you with NETFLIX, I have discovered something. When you do a search for "Spanish" on NETFLIX it gives you VERY few choices to pick from. However, after watching one or two shows in Spanish, there is now more choices being oferred to me. There will be an entire row of options that are titled, "since you watched Instructiones not Included"(for example), you may also like this... and it shows a listing of movies that were otherwise unknown to me through a search. So, I have been watching several documentaries from Mexico concerning the Revolution. Seeing the stories about Pancho Villa and Zapata and others is very interesting to me. I just wanted to pass that along. I am well ahead on my movie watching and I will finish the 30 day goal of 60 hrs unless something unforeseen happens. I think it is still very early in the process and I don't know how much my listening has improved. However, I have picked up quite a bit of vocabulary...which is nice. I have never spent so much time per day on Spanish as I am now. I am watching at least two hours and Listening to the audio while reading my Easy Readers and sometimes El Sombra del Viento. Which brings me to a thought I have come to believe as true (for me). If I were creating a perfect language system from A-Z it would be built like this: A) The first step would be a copycat of Pimsleur. It would be all audio. It would concentrate on the sound and structure of very basic sentences. This portion of the course would cover a very basic 500 words or so. B) The second step would be the Berlitz Self Teacher method. It would start out very simple giving the old "This is a pencil" etc and grow into a interlinear easy reader. However, the difference would be that the ENTIRE course would have corresponding audio with it(100% Target language only). Part of the intsructions would be to shadow or echo every section. C) The third step would advance the vocabulary and increase the students listening/ speaking and vocabulary. It would be a more detailed version of step B with native subjects (Stories/ history of the regions that speak the language). As vocabulary is added, the words are highlighted and the L1 equivalent is provided in the margins.And of course the audio for every story would be read by native speakers from various regions. The section would be quite large as the stories, while being short in length, would be MANY. The goal is to progress from beginner to Intermediate. Again, shadow/echo every story. Also, there would be a review after every 5-10 stories. The new and/or important structures from the stories would be listed and then it would have replacement and variation drills. In addition every review section would have explanations about grammar and how it relates and contrasts to the person's L1. The goal would be to have the student to become proficient in various structures, idioms and develop a vocabulary of around 6,000 words. The student could suplement the course with native TV/Movies and find someone to talk with. They ought to be able to sell it for what Rosetta Stone costs and still make a profit. Anyway, I am having fun and I hope you are too, BOLIO 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4603 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 334 of 344 16 June 2015 at 11:51pm | IP Logged |
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Hola a todos.
I am still doing the subtitle/listening experiment and I really enjoy it. However, I am also a glutton for punishment. I recently received the first book of the Alex Rider series mentioned by James in his thread. So after reading a thread by Iversen, from years ago, I decided to give this book a REAL workout. What I am doing is reading several chapters at a time. While reading, I place a little mark with a highlighter on every word I do not know the meaning. I do not stop reading. It is just a quick dash on the word and I continue on. I know it is not TRULY extensive reading but I waste no time with my check marks on the unknown words. I read the first 47 pages just like this. I had 173 different unknown words in those 47 pages. I then went back and made several Iversen lists from these words. Each list represents one chapter of the book. What I am doing differently with these lists vs the lists I have done before is I am using the associated phrases in the book when looking up the unknown words in order to give me better context. I think it helps vs just looking up individual words. Next step; I write the center column (L1) of the Iversen list...again, while reading the entire phrase or sentence from where the unknown word was located. Then I write the third column of the word list (L2). Finally, I went back and read chapter by chapter. MOst of the words I could remember when I saw them in the book. But if I could not, I would just glance at my wordlist. This has NOT etched in stone for me that intensive > extensive. But in 47 pages I was able to figure out two words that appeared multiple times and I guessed correctly their definitions. I looked up 171 more. I know extensive readers read 4700 pages and not only 47 but until I burn out, this method seems very efficient. It takes a lot of focus...but efficient. I do not know how I am going to do the follow up reviews of the lists. I am thinking of maybe reviewing the lists of 2 or 3 chapters per day (Maybe 4 times in a 30 day period?). I am not really a spaced repetition guy as far as the science behind it. What I mean to say is 'how often I review and how long a period of time between reviews and how long I should continue to review' are unknown to me. The only thing this wordlist method is missing is audio. If I had the audiobook in Spanish so I could listen along while reading, it would be wonderful. I am trying to find it. This method and the subtitles/ movies = more exposure per day than I have ever done before. Which is a good thing for my studies. All the best, BOLIO 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5810 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 335 of 344 17 June 2015 at 6:19am | IP Logged |
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That's actually really similar to what i did when i finished Platiquemos and felt my vocab was still short. I read probably 10 books that way, at first pausing to write down each unknown word as i came across it and then as it became easier to read i just underlined them in pencil and looked them up after finishing the book. I also made Iversen-style wordlists (L2-L1-L2), though i don't think i reviewed them. The first book (some 200 pages) had close to 900 new words for me and from there the number steadily decreased. It didn't always seem like i was seeing those words again in that book, though as you say usually there were maybe 4-5 new words that were being used a lot. However, i started seeing these words elsewhere, in other books, in movies, with my penpals, and that brute force attack is what really opened Spanish literature up for me. I dunno if i could do the same thing now, i don't think i have the motivation i had then, but i think it'll help you out tremendously if you stick it through. Also, i've found that the more i see a word the easier it is to remember when i finally look it up. It's like "ahh, so THAT'S what it means!"
Great work as always, BOLIO! Edited by Crush on 17 June 2015 at 6:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3867 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 336 of 344 19 June 2015 at 4:16am | IP Logged |
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Hey Bolio! Great to see you progressing and trying new things as you go along. I have also been doing that type of reading. I am on "Un árbol crece en Brooklyn"
right now. I am reading kind of slow because I want to identify every verb tense and mood and look up unknown words. My book happens to be a library book, so I can't mark in it, so I am having to write things down as soon as I see them, then I can look them up later. I am definitely gaining vocab. Keep up the great work! Edited by nancydowns on 19 June 2015 at 4:16am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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