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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5260 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 257 of 344 01 October 2014 at 6:17pm | IP Logged |
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Bolio, I agree with Stelle. You're doing something and that's important. Woody Allen says- "90% of life is just showing up". Being persistent is so important in language-learning and so underrated. It's as crucial a factor as any course or method.
We had a recent thread about "language learning dropouts". You've been a "drop-in" and "stay-in". We have ups and downs in life as well as language-learning. Being persistent keeps you in the game until you can be consistent as well. Edited by iguanamon on 02 October 2014 at 2:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4656 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 258 of 344 02 October 2014 at 7:36pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you both for the kind words.
I-Mon, sometimes I go through and read the "started but ended quickly" logs. It is strange, but they motivate me. Onward and upward. Thanks again, BOLIO 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4656 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 259 of 344 10 October 2014 at 9:05pm | IP Logged |
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I am making a small change in how I do FSI. I am reading the first half of each unit that contains the dialogue three times while looking up any unknown vocabulary words. I am taking my time with it and trying to understand the structure.
The second half (which is the start of tape two of the unit) or the drills is where I start to listen to the audio. I am working through them four or five times. By breaking it up, I feel like I am getting more out of it. Before it was taking a week for me to complete a unit when not doing FSI on weekends. I would normally read children's books on weekends. Repeating each unit from the start would sometimes be too much as something would interupt me for a while and I would then start all over. I feel like I get more from the drills than the dialogue. I might be making a mistake on this but I tried it this week and like the feel of having two seperate steps within the unit. Also, I have gone back and done a once over on older units. For example I did the drills on Unit 15 during lunch today. It was random as far as the Unit chosen and I have no system of reason for picking one unit over another...real scientific huh? This week I completed the first step on Monday and repeated the drills Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday I started a new Unit and Friday/Saturday or Sunday I finish the second unit. Wash, rinse, repeat. My goal is to be completed with Unit 45 by the end of the year. I think we are going back to Mexico at the end of March or sometime in April of next year. I will be through with FSI by then and look forward to my progress. Listening is still the hardest skill set for me. Even in casual conversation, if a person does not speak slowly with me, I miss too much. If the same conversation was written then it would be no problem. I hope the further along I am in FSI, the more it will help my conversation/listening skills. My wife heard me practicing my FSI drills last night and commented how much better I am getting with pronunciation. That was nice. Any advice that would help my listening skills (other methods) that I could use concurrently with FSI and Democracy Now would be welcomed. All the best, BOLIO Edited by BOLIO on 10 October 2014 at 9:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5260 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 260 of 344 10 October 2014 at 9:36pm | IP Logged |
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Bolio, listening is something that comes with time and exposure. You need more exposure and more time. 15 minutes is not enough to really progress. I'd add in NHK World Spanish because it has a transcript. Even though it's from Japan, the announcers are native Spanish-speakers. You should try to start weaning yourself away from the transcript. Try reading it first and then listen without the transcript. The NHK English story versions are available but a little more difficult to find. The only reason I don't recommend VOA for you is that I think you probably still may need the transcript, at least for a little while.
What helped me most with listening in Portuguese was listening regularly (daily) and for at least 45 minutes a day. On my daily walk. I was forced to listen. Listening with a transcript helped but at some point, it's time to start relying on your ears and not your eyes. Also in Portuguese, I started watching a telenovela and had to explain/relate an episode to my tutor once a week. I had no subtitles at all available. I watched online and would watch once without taking notes, the second time with taking notes. In the beginning stages I had to ask my tutor for help understanding some words or phrases that weren't clear to me, after about 35 episodes, I didn't need to do that but rarely. I don't know if you are ready for a telenovela yet, only you can answer that. If you are, you're lucky. Telemundo's telenovelas are online and have accurate subtitles/captions. The subs can serve as a check on your comprehension, but shouldn;t be relied on from the start. Give an episode or two a go, remembering that you're not going to understand everything and accepting that, eventually you will understand most of it. Try one on their website and see if you think you are ready. You could take notes and time stamps to ask your wife to explain to you at some point if she has a spare 15 minutes or so. You may have to watch/listen to an episode a few times at first, but this will eventually diminish to just once. Telenovelas are good for listening practice because of continuity with the same actors, stories and plot. There are visual clues. The telemundo telenovelas have accurate subtitles which can be used as a check against your listening and episode reviews/synopses can be found online as a further check against your comprehension. If telenovelas are too tough for you right now, try the native-speaker videos on the UT Austin Spanish Proficiency Exercises site. They are short and about daily life topics with speakers from across the Spanish-speaking world. Each one has a Spanish transcript and an English one as well. Lastly, you can't go wrong with Veinte Mundos. Veinte Mundos refers to the 20 Spanish-speaking countries and is in a magazine format exploring the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world. Each free article is about 10 minutes long and has clear, downloadable mp3 audio. The articles also have text with "mouse over" definitions of highlighted vocabulary. If you listened to these regularly, imagine how much better your listening would become. To sum up, more listening and on a regular basis (daily if possible). Start to wean yourself off of transcripts. See if you are ready for a telenovela. Definitely check out Veinte Mundos. I like what expugnator says- "Language-learning is a lifestyle choice". You may not think you have the time to do at least half an hour of listening a day, but you will find the time if you look- or make it- if you want Spanish bad enough. Edited by iguanamon on 11 October 2014 at 2:00am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5863 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 261 of 344 11 October 2014 at 2:10am | IP Logged |
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On the other hand, if you just continue with FSI and vocabulary work, your listening comprehension will get better. Right now there are still a lot of things to process when you hear a Spanish sentence, you've got unknown words and words you've learned but have to think about to remember on top of trying to process the grammar. As you get more familiar with the language, it gets much easier to understand what you're being said. You don't have to focus so much on analyzing the sentence. Once you make the shift from active study to native materials (and just speaking), listening and speaking will get easier, too. You've made some great progress this year (it's hard to believe it hasn't even been a year yet!) and it's been really great to see you come along push forward and improve.
When i first started studying Spanish, i spent the first 8 months or so doing Platiquemos and focusing on grammar, after that i found i still had large gaps in my vocabulary so i spent another three or so months doing intensive vocabulary study. After that i went to Spain and haven't ever really actively studied Spanish since, just reading, speaking, and watching movies/TV shows (mostly documentaries). Regarding splitting the dialogs from the rest, that's what i ended up doing in Platiquemos. I found the rest of the exercises were easier when i grasped the new vocabulary better. I also found it more enjoyable, so i don't see anything wrong with splitting them up. It's also nice to have smaller parts to get through, it doesn't feel as daunting. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 262 of 344 11 October 2014 at 4:44pm | IP Logged |
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Have you tried the intermediate podcasts on www.notesinspanish.com? (Although I've read your log, I can't
remember...) I found that NiS podcasts were very helpful when learning to listen. I worked my way through all of the intermediate and advanced podcasts during my not-too-long commute to work. I listened to four episodes per week. Monday-Thursday, I listened over and over to a different one each day (since they were about 10 minutes long, that meant 3-4 times each). Then on Friday, I listened again to all four in a row. At the end of the month, I went back and listened to all of the podcasts once again, before starting up with a new set. It was kind of like a very unscientific spaced repetition for audio: - listen 3-4 times in a row - listen once again 1-4 days later - listen once again 1-4 weeks later Even without the transcripts, I found that my listening comprehension skyrocketed! And the topics are varied enough and the hosts engaging enough that it wasn't boring to listen to the same thing over and over again. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4656 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 263 of 344 17 October 2014 at 7:00pm | IP Logged |
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Stelle, I have known about it but have not spent time with it. I will play around with it and when I do I will use your strategy.
Crush, I can honestly say that I have really enjoyed FSI more by splitting it up. I am spending more time with FSI and I know that I will benefit from it. I have added a notebook to my study process and really like writing down all sentences, words and phrases that seem tricky to me. I then create my own sentences using the basic format of the sentence, phrase or word. I like it. I have a person next door to me at work from Colombia and he is helping with the sentences that give me trouble during my first read through. I-Mon, Thanks for the links. You had told me about NHK and I have listened to it in the past and I liked that it was much slower than Democracy Now. I will spend more time with it. I like the UT site because it has different levels and different accents. Veinte Mundos is new to me and for some reason will not work for me at my office (Company has the site blocked) but I will spend time with it at home. Thank you. I have been listening to my Living Language Beyond the Basics. I really like the audio on this course. It has both Spanish and Latin American accents sometimes in the same dialogue It is very enjoyable to my ears. I should work the whole course properly but do not want to take away from FSI as I feel like I am getting into a groove for the first time and I am truly excited again about my studies! I think I could read the dialogue at night before going to sleep and then listen to the audio the next day. I hope everyone is well, BOLIO Edited by BOLIO on 17 October 2014 at 7:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4656 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 264 of 344 23 October 2014 at 7:17pm | IP Logged |
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I have a new toy. News in Slow Spanish has been mentioned many times before here at HTLAL but I never really looked into it because there are so many free options.
However, I like it. The pop up is nice as there are many words I have never encountered before now. I am working through the articles 3 or 4 times each in the slow form and then twice at normal speeds. I really have nothing bad to say about the program and think it will work well with NHK World News in Spanish. I am giving Democracy Now a break for slower versions of the news. Also, at the suggestion of my Colombian neighbor I record the nightly world news here in my local market. It is interesting. The pretty lady is talking away and the words are flying by and I can "Grab" a few words here and a few there and with the images on the screen, I can figure out what is going on. I never watch the news in English as it is mostly depressing but I will continue with the Spanish version. I am trying to find something a little cleaner than a novela to watch every night with my daughter. Any ideas would be appreciated. I still work on FSI with my notebook by my side. I carry my notebook with me everywhere. I look back at things from previous lessons that gave me troubles. I think it will end up being my most valuable language possession when it is all said and done. Last night I spent an hour on FSI and then listened to an audio book with text for an hour. I have gone through periods of using the audio books and did not feel like I was getting very much from it. There were always too many unknown words. It became an intensive reading exercise with attached audio. It is better now and view it as progress. I am shifting all my focus (other than FSI) to audio related exercises. Hope your studies are going well, BOLIO 1 person has voted this message useful |
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