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Stelle’s Log (TAC15 Spanish and Rare) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 57 of 87 02 April 2015 at 3:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I totally agree you sometimes just don't feel ready no matter the reality (I never
feel ready for any exam. Every time I pass something, it is an unexpected surprise. Well, sometimes I am obviously not ready, just lucky, though.). The good thing is that a dele exam can be retaken. Sure, it costs money and confidence but it is not a one time opportunity and even a failure is a good lead to further studies (even though a bitter one). So, I believe you might be nicely surprised, should you decide to go for it ;-) School-like exercises are not bad. I think covering the gaps from previous learning stages is extremely important when one gets advanced and it is so tempting to just leave all those grammar books and such things behind. So, find your favourite tedious work and keep to it :-D The stem cells appear to be a popular topic in language coursebooks lately. My trouble when writing such a summary was being too technical for my tutor, due to having learnt about it before and to more detail. Just an exemple of how much it matters whether you get a good topic or one you are not familiar with at all. At the real exam, I found it very useful to remember lots of "knowledge experiences", from my geography classes at the high school to the conspiration theories I've read. Anything can come handy. Is it just my impression or are all the Spanish tv series of the long-episode kind? Both in English and French, I can find something in each category ranging from 5 min episodes, through 20 or 50 minutes, up to 80 minutes per episode. But all the tv series I checked on rtve are above an hour, ranging between 70 and 90 minutes. It is sometimes not practical. Have you encountred something shorter, please? 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 58 of 87 06 April 2015 at 2:03am | IP Logged | ||
@Cavesa, thanks for the encouragement!
Many of the shows that I've watched have been pretty long! Two shows that I really enjoy run about 60 minutes: Aquì no hay quien viva and Frágiles. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4620 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 59 of 87 06 April 2015 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Are there practice C1 tests available for you to try out using the same time constraints? That helped me when I was getting ready for the German C2 Exam to understand how the exam works and to get a feel for how long each section would be.
I've been taking a break from language study and this forum for a while and enjoying some English language materials. Haven't done that for ages! But, it's always nice to dip back in here and see some familiar folks who are keeping at it. Great! Wishing you all good things! 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 60 of 87 06 April 2015 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||
Hello BAnna! Nice to see you here! I'm not seriously focusing on the C1 right now. It's something that I'll start working seriously on in the summer. Right now, I'm just happy if I do *something* in Spanish every day! But I'll definitely look for practice tests when the time comes. How are you enjoying your English media? I've also decided to make more time to read in English this year. I used to feel well-read, but for the past few years I've mostly read children's novels in Spanish. ;) 1 person has 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 61 of 87 06 April 2015 at 4:46am | IP Logged | ||
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It was another quiet week for language learning! I do something every day, but I feel that my energy levels are really waning - not for language learning, but for everything. Work is taking a lot out of me! I love my job, but it definitely requires a lot of creativity and mental energy. By the time I get home in the evening, I'm pretty much done. So I'm cutting myself some slack, just doing what I feel like, when I feel like it. Luckily, Spanish has become such a habit that my day feels unfinished if I go to bed without doing anything at all. Spanish This week I listened to an episode of Futuro Abierto about the many empty houses in Spain. It was interesting, because we saw a lot of that when we were walking the Camino de Santiago. We walked through one town in particular, a golf resort, that was an absolute ghost town. There wasn't a soul there - just rows and rows of empty condos. It was really eerie. It felt like we were walking through a post-apocalyptic movie. I also listened to two episodes of Catastrofe ultravioleta. What a fun podcast! It's interesting and accessible, and will definitely be added to my podcast rotation. I watched another episode of El internado. What a great show! I had one Skype session with an informal italki tutor. I've spoken to her a few times before, and I really enjoyed our conversations. But this one was really difficult to get through. She kept forcing a conversation that wasn't at all natural and didn't interest me. She wanted to know my thoughts on cigarettes (I honestly don't think much about them), what I felt about the legalization of marijuana in the States (not my country; I have no opinion on their laws), advice I would give a friend who wanted to quit smoking, and so on. It's like she picked "smoking" from a list of conversational topics, and despite me trying to change the subject, kept bringing us back to smoking. I have another session with her in a few weeks. I'm hoping that she'll let the conversation flow naturally, but if she doesn't, then I'll have to tell her that I'm not interested in her choosing topics in advance. I'm generally overly polite and hate hurting anyone's feelings, but I figure it's better to be clear and give her another chance than to simply stop booking sessions with her. I read almost nothing in Spanish this week. I did read a few articles from BBC Mundo, but that was pretty low effort. After a few weeks without a Spanish novel in hand, I spent some time today previewing some books and figuring out which one I want to read next. I read a few pages each of El Asesino de la vía láctica, Como agua para chocolate and El Tiempo entre costuras. I liked all of them, and will definitely read them all at some point, but I've decided upon El Asesino de la vía láctica for now. At this time last year, I was walking the Camino de Santiago, so I like the idea of reliving it through a murder mystery! Tagalog Still chipping away at Rosetta Stone! I'm now nearing the end of unit 10 (out of a total of 12 units). This week, I only worked on RS four times. I may finish the program by the end of the month, but only if I work at it almost every day. We'll see. Books - 2015 I finished reading The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared, translated from the original Swedish. It was charming and quirky, pleasant to read, but definitely not a page-turner! I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. Spanish Sinsajo (young adult novel) Días pasados - Walking Dead tomo 1 (comic/graphic novel) Guía para un perro feliz (non-fiction book) El Sótano (novel) English Walking Dead Volume 20 (comic/graphic novel) Walking Dead Volume 21 (comic/graphic novel) The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (novel) French Chambre 426 (novel) Le Quartier des oubliés (novel) 1 person has 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 62 of 87 11 April 2015 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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This week I felt much more energetic and relaxed than last week! It didn't necessarily translate to more language
learning, but I do feel good about what I did. I had family over for the Easter long weekend, which recharged and reenergized me. We were busy for four days hunting for eggs, eating copious amounts of food, playing at the park, drinking wine, doing crafts, watching movies, walking dogs, playing board games and gorging on chocolate. In other words, not a lot of Spanish or Tagalog, but lots of time for other important stuff. Still, I didn't neglect my languages altogether over the past week! Spanish No Skype sessions, since I was busy on Easter weekend. I didn't listen to any podcasts either, since it rained from Tuesday until Friday, and I only listen to podcasts while walking. I missed both listening and being physically active! Luckily, the sun is meant to shine for the coming week, so I expect that to change. I watched Caso Cerrado a few times this week. I find it easier to fit in a few short episodes of Caso Cerrado, rather than the longer episodes of El Internado. I like that I can watch a 20-minute clip, even if I have a mountain of work to get through in the evening. But I really miss El Internado, and fully intend to make time for at least one or two 80-minute episodes this week! I started reading El asesino de la Vía Láctica. I'm about 40 pages in, and really enjoying it so far. I think it might have been self-published, since I've caught a few typos (el instead of del; el que el que repeated like that in a sentence). But it's a pretty easy read, and I love that it talks about places I've been - so far, St Jean Pied de Port, Roncesvalles and Pamplona. I don't usually read murder or crime books in English, but I think that it's a genre that I'll enjoy in Spanish! Cavesa mentioned a book in her log that intrigues me: El Fin de los Suenos by Gabriella Campbell and Jose Antonio Cotrina. She classified it as sci fi with hints of post-apocalyptic cyberpunk, which is right up my alley. It's not available at my library, but I'm going to see if I can get ahold of it somewhere. I cleared up a bit anki backlog this week, after several weeks of neglect. There were definitely some words that I'd forgotten, so I think that anki still has value for me - although definitely less value than it did when I first started learning. I rarely add new words anymore, although I know that I should. I deleted my grammar deck (created mainly from exercises in Practice Makes Perfect over a year ago), since I dreaded doing it and didn't feel that it was useful anymore. I also deleted my novel deck (I was inputting sentences from The Hunger Games trilogy), since it was time consuming to create and I didn't really feel that I got much out of reviewing the sentences. So now I'm down to one Spanish deck, which usually takes me less than 5 minutes to clear. I may or may not increase my use of anki in the summer, when I'll have more time for study, but for now, I'm quite happy with things the way they are! Super Challenge Update - 37 weeks left Books - 67 completed; 33 to go I have to read about 45 pages per week to finish the challenge. I have no doubt that I will do that and more, even with my current plan of alternating Spanish books with French and English books. Films - 47.7 completed; 52.3 to go I have to watch about 128 minutes per week, which is a little over two hours. During the school year that's tricky, but I'm going to aim for an episode a day during the months of July and August (unless, of course, I'm camping out in the forest), so I'm very confident that I'll be able to finish the Super Challenge! If I were counting podcasts, I would be much closer to the end, but I decided early on to go with Cristina's original concept, and count only movies/TV shows and novels. Tagalog I think that I've found a schedule that works for me. I've been spending exactly 30 minutes per day on Tagalog. This is short enough that I can focus fully, and that I can fit it into my day without it supplanting other things that I want or need to do more (like laundry, school work, Spanish or guitar). But it's long enough that I feel like I'm making steady progress. Slow, but steady. I've been making myself a cup of tea after work, putting on a timer for 30 minutes and focusing completely until the timer goes off. I start by clearing out my anki deck (I've consolidated all of my Tagalog anki decks so that I only have one now - much less daunting). Since I haven't been adding any new words for the past few months, this is relatively quick. Then I spend the rest of the time working on Rosetta Stone. Once a week, I do a live tutoring session, and once a week I focus on reading. I haven't been using any native materials at all (aside from casual conversations), but I feel that the RS tutoring and RS graded readers provide enough variety for now. I know that I could be advancing much more quickly using something other than Rosetta Stone, but I'm not in any rush. I find it easy to fit in this more passive approach to learning into my overly busy days, and I'm satisfied with my progress at this point. My goal is to finish Rosetta Stone completely by the end of April (or mid-May at the latest), and then reevaluate my approach. Edited by Stelle on 11 April 2015 at 5:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3520 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 63 of 87 11 April 2015 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think I learned about Caso Cerrado from a few pages back on your log here. Just watched my first episode and I've already learned some interesting terms for anatomy that were never mentioned in my textbooks. AND I got to see a singing judge!
The way you're chipping away at both Spanish and English is great to see. I like reading about how you carve out time in your schedule for language learning and how you modify your materials based on needs and interest. 1 person has 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 64 of 87 12 April 2015 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | ||
Ha! This made me laugh out loud. Caso Cerrado is definitely a guilty pleasure! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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