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Spanish B2 by November 2014 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4057 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 33 of 43 06 May 2014 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
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Hello Sam,
I just read through your log and wow.. even finding the time for 20 hours a week.. What do you do as a job? I myself find it sometimes hard to do one hour of practice, mostly because after university I'm just too tired to really concentrate and then it's not very effective to do language studies, right? I'm looking forward to follow your progress from now on. And aiming for less than 20 hours is defenitly good I think... That much time may result in great steps towards a higher level, but being burned out is not good at all. So, happy that you found your way back and good luck with continuing. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4050 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 34 of 43 09 May 2014 at 11:55am | IP Logged |
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Hi Komma
Well, yeah, 20 hours a week was too much I think. I work full time, but I commute by train so that was 2 hours of dead time I could make use of each day, followed by an hour at home. But even so, it ended up being pretty exhausting. I won't be doing 20 hours on a weekly basis any more, unless I'm doing one of these 6 week challenges or something like that. Thanks for your encouragement, and good luck to you too. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4050 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 35 of 43 24 May 2014 at 3:07pm | IP Logged |
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I've been working for the past couple of weeks on Gabriel Wyner's method - see fluent-forever.com.
This involves making visual flashcards, without English translations, for core of 625 words that are easy to visualise, and then graduating to a mixture of monolingual definitions and context to sort of climb into the target language and pull the ladder up behind you. I've also been making 10,000 sentences style cards to help remember interesting phrases from the "Notes in Spanish" podcasts. All these cards have audio when I can find it (either from accompanying CDs of language textbooks, from forvo.com or from podcasts). I've also been watching Destinos and Extr@ Spanish. Edited by samfrances on 24 May 2014 at 3:08pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4050 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 36 of 43 25 May 2014 at 5:10pm | IP Logged |
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I'm currently battling the temptation to start learning Latin as well as Spanish. It's a language I find very interesting, but its bound to be confusing learning Spanish and Latin at the same time. Just look, for example, at the similarity between the Spanish ser and the latin esse (both meaning "to be"):
ser - esse soy - sum eres - es es - est somos - sumus sois - estis son - sunt Of course, Latin has the whole system of case inflection that Spanish doesn't have, so there isn't much chance of interference there. However, I'll bet there are a lot of words in Spanish, derived from Latin words, but with meanings that have changed over time. Edited by samfrances on 25 May 2014 at 5:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4050 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 37 of 43 04 June 2014 at 5:10pm | IP Logged |
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Aside from my usual practice, I've been taking some time out to watch Gabriel Wyner's recent workshop on Creative Live.
I'm not sure how useful these will be for the seasoned polyglots on this site, who probably have their own catalogue of effective techniques for language learning. However, as a first-time language learner, I've found these talks really interesting. They are especially good for people like me who, when told "You just have to memorise this", tend to respond "But how!?". I often find that certain facts or patterns stay in my memory without any effort at all, and others won't go in no matter how much I review them, so it's really refreshing to have some active techniques for addressing the memorisation process. Edited by samfrances on 04 June 2014 at 5:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4050 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 38 of 43 07 July 2014 at 8:43am | IP Logged |
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I've signed up for my first language exchange "meetup" in a week's time! I've had conversations over Skype before, but never in person (apart from basic "holiday" interactions with staff in hotels and restaurants). It's one of these structured exchanges where you sit at a table, speak for 6 minutes in Spanish and 6 minutes in English so you both get practice in the target language, and then you move on to another table (my girlfriend teases me by calling this "speed dating"). This structure should at least mean that feelings of social anxiety are taken out of play, so that I can focus on speaking and understanding what I'm hearing.
Other than that, here's a summary of what I've been up to since my last update. Evening classes I've finished my A2 level evening classes and will be moving on to the B1 level classes in October. Vocabulary I've been working through the base vocabulary list on fluent-forever.com. I've made flash cards for 350/625 of the words from that list, but they are taking some time as I'm trying to make them using pictures and monolingual definitions rather than translations. Reading I'm nearing the end of Easy Spanish Reader by William T. Tardy. After that I'm going to work on some of the Egmont graded readers. Listening I've been watching the fantastic Extr@ Spanish series on Youtube. If you're learning Spanish at a fairly similar level to me, do check this series out. It's quite silly, but very fun. I gather there are Extr@ series for French and German as well, although I haven't looked at them myself. I'm planning on getting back into the Notes In Spanish intermediate podcasts as well. I'm still not at 100% comprehension with these, but I expect there will be some benefit as long as I can understand the basics of what is being said. Speaking I haven't been doing much speaking recently. However, I have the language exchange session next week to look forward to! Edited by samfrances on 07 July 2014 at 11:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4050 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 39 of 43 15 July 2014 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
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Yesterday I attended my first face-to-face language exchange, via the Span-Glish meetup group. If you're learning Spanish (or are a Spanish speaker learning English), and you live in or near London, then I'd wholeheartedly recommend this group.
The format was as follows: over two hours, you have a series of 12 minute conversations, 6 minutes in English, 6 minutes in Spanish. I was pretty nervous in the run-up to the event, but I'm really glad I plucked up the courage to attend. I made plenty of mistakes, I had to ask people to repeat themselves, and sometimes I only got the gist of what was being said, but none of this really mattered that much. It was an incredibly positive experience, and I'm planning on attending another exchange session as soon as I can. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4050 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 40 of 43 24 July 2014 at 12:52pm | IP Logged |
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I attended another Span-Glish intercambio session this week. Strangely, I found this one a lot more difficult than last week's. The Spanish speakers there were mostly new, so it's not as if I had run out of things to say on the easy topics. It didn't help that the bar in which the event took place insisted on playing very loud music the whole time.
Other than that, I suppose there might be a natural ebb and flow to language learning progress, that doesn't make any obvious logical sense, but might make sense if we knew exactly how the human brain functions. I remember from my early days of learning to play the guitar that on some weeks I would practice all week and make very little progress, and sometimes I would return to the guitar after a week without playing, only to find I had somehow mastered a song or technique that I could barely play the last time I picked up the guitar. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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