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42 Day Spanish Challenge | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Bastet Diglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 5913 days ago 28 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 19 18 January 2010 at 11:17pm | IP Logged |
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Today's Work
08:15 to 08:45 - Watched EuroNews 11:00 to 12:10 - Watched episode of La Señora 12:30 to 13:30 - LingQ - vocabulary drills, practiced reading articles aloud 16:00 to 17:15 - Watched episode of La Señora 17:30 to 18:30 - More LingQ vocabulary drills Comments I don't know if it is because it is new to me, but I'm really enjoying the LingQ site. It is a fun way to learn vocabulary. I like that it uses the new words in a sentence or phrase to give you hints during your drills. I am definitely coming around to the idea of studying sentences. I think the new vocabulary is much easier to incorporate into your speech when you have also learned context. With a bilingual dictionary it is not always easy to determine HOW to use a word, even when you have a definition. I'm feeling tired, brain tired. I felt this way when I spent a few weeks in Spain studying Spanish. Listening to Spanish all day, even when it is passive (background music or TV) plus the active participation and study - it really makes me tired. (I'm also studying for my other classes) It hasn't even been a week since I started this new study campaign, and already I am feeling restless with my studies. I am not a patient person. This is the part I have to work through, somehow. After hours of watching TV in Spanish, I start to feel like I'll never get any better. I suppose I am also not a confident person. Two things it seems you need, confidence and patience, and I have neither. However, I am stubborn and I have a dream (to speak multiple languages), so for now, that will have to be enough. Ha ha, tired, impatient, lacking confidence, not an auspicious log entry, but it is also finals week in my program. I probably just need some fresh air and time away from the computer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bastet Diglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 5913 days ago 28 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 19 19 January 2010 at 10:53pm | IP Logged |
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Today's Work
09:00 to 12:45 - Watched 3 episodes of La Señora 14:00 to 15:00 - Read articles on Spanish History in Spanish on-line 15:00 to 15:30 - LingQ vocab review Comments The Spanish seems to be getting slower and clearer when I'm watching the shows. Of course, it is only a week. When I'm reading, I try to re-read the article/passage/etc. out loud. I think that is my favorite part. I find speaking a lot of fun. A few months ago, the person I spoke Spanish with every week moved to Spain. I haven't had anyone to speak Spanish with since. So, I think I need to find someone new to speak with. After all, that is the whole point for me, to communicate in Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bastet Diglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 5913 days ago 28 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 19 20 January 2010 at 7:32pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I've completed one week of my mini-challenge. Here are my stats for the week:
17:45 - hours spent actively listening (excludes background music, etc.) 04:00 - hours spent reading 01:30 - hours spent studying grammar After a week, I think that my listening skills are improving. Speech seems slower and I am catching more of the details of conversations. I would like to be reading more, but with a paper due and a final exam to study for (in English) I haven't had quite as much time as I had hoped. After this week, I should have more time to study grammar and read. ETA: Today's work 12:00 to 15:45 - watched 3 episodes of La Señora 15:45 to 16:15 - Anki reviewed grammar I have my final exam in data communications tomorrow, so don't know how much Spanish I will get in. I'll be so glad to be done with this class. Edited by Bastet on 20 January 2010 at 10:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bastet Diglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 5913 days ago 28 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 19 22 January 2010 at 9:47am | IP Logged |
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Yesterday's work
19:30 to 21:30 - Read from a Spanish language romance novel With a 3 hour exam in data communication, I didn't have the time or energy to fit in much Spanish. Still, I listened to my CDs driving to and from school and during my run. I also read quite a bit from my novel. Taking the time to do some reading did make me realize how important it is to read books(I know that should be obvious). I read Spanish news articles with very little effort, but reading a novel (even a romance novel) is very different than reading a news article. News articles are fairly easy to read - no flowery language, no big words. Even in a silly romance novel, there is a lot of vocabulary. Plus, it is a lot more fun, IMHO. Today's work 3 hours - watched La Señora I also listened to my Spanish Language CDs in the car, running errands. I'm planning to get in a little more grammar and vocabulary study this weekend, now that my data communications class is done. Edited by Bastet on 22 January 2010 at 11:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bastet Diglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 5913 days ago 28 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 19 24 January 2010 at 6:51pm | IP Logged |
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Yesterday's Work
30 minutes - Anki - Grammar file 90 minutes - Pimsleur - 3 lessons 40 minutes - Learn in the Car, expressions I also listened to the usual music while on the treadmill and working around the house. Today's Work 2.5 hours - watched La Señora, 2 episodes 30 minutes - Anki grammar file 1 hour - read from novel The weekend isn't turning out to be very productive for me - it is the only time I get to spend with my husband, really. While watching La Señora today, I tried to concentrate on hearing every word. Most of the time I can hear every word, even if I don't understand the phrase. However, there are times when the speech still sounds very fast and I miss a phrase. I have a little trouble following arguments, when speech gets very fast. During those conversations, the words can run together. As for the reading, some of the sentence structure in this book is giving me headaches. I don't know why. It is a translated work, so perhaps it is just the way the English was translated into Spanish? Does that even make sense? I didn't have any trouble reading Harry Potter in Spanish. I also have a book that was originally written in Spanish and I don't remember that one being as difficult to read (and surely the style and theme was more sophisticated than this romance novel). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5990 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 14 of 19 26 January 2010 at 11:28am | IP Logged |
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I've found the same thing in other languages. Some books just have a much different "feel" to them, and can be significantly more difficult. There might be a bunch of different word choices, and some of it is just arranged differently. It'll start to get easier as you go.
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| Sprachjunge Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 7169 days ago 368 posts - 548 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 15 of 19 27 January 2010 at 4:22pm | IP Logged |
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You ready? :)
Thank you for your message! First, may I just emphasize that I would feel much more confident about my methods if I had something concrete to show for it. As it stands though, I do feel good about my progress so far—all one month’s worth of it. ;) That said, I have a schedule where I take a morning block to get through the “daily things” that I like to do for my languages—review Anki cards, listen to my one Spanish clip (and lately, German clip), and read my daily articles in Spanish (and again, lately in German). After that, I attempt to stay in one language per day. I simply find it confusing and lose focus if I jump around—I always feel like the water is bubbling, but never boiling, if that makes sense. For instance, today is a German day (kind of a switch from my original schedule, but I’ll explain it in another post—again, how timely that you wrote!). So, throughout the day I’ll listen to the German audio article over and over, recognizing more of the new vocabulary each time. When I’m on the computer, I play German sitcoms/TV in the background. I try to listen to two German songs for every English song or German newsclips that I’ve put on my iPod when I go to and from class. (It’s easier to listen to all Spanish or all Russian music all day because I just happen to find more S/R music that I personally like.) That constitutes my “All --, All Day” ambience. What’s a little frightening is how much I can listen to my foreign language throughout the day if I have my iPod with me and just pay attention. I mean, unless I’m in class, having lunch with friends, doing an extracurricular, interacting with the public (e.g. in a store), or hanging out with friends, I’m pretty much by myself, free to listen to what I please without offending anyone. When I study, the language is playing in the background. Finally, when I sleep, I put on the language in question: for German, I play German TV from my laptop, for Spanish, it’s “Atlas Shrugged,” and for Russian, it’s either Russian TV from my laptop or Russian conversations from my iPod. I sleep like a log, so who knows if it’s doing any good, but it makes me feel better psychologically! After class, I’ll carve out 90 minutes or so to get some serious grammar/vocabulary study in. For German today, that will mean reading more from the one German book a month that I plan to peruse, creating a writing sample that I’ll post to Lang-8 for corrections (I’ll also do this for Spanish because I want to write something in German and Spanish each day), and hopefully do some exercises out of “Das Oberstufenbuch,” a German textbook. Tomorrow might also be a German day (again, for reasons I’ll explain), but on Friday, the ambience will switch to Spanish (I’ll probably have “Atlas Shrugged” playing in the background), and the study will be vocabulary out of “Must-Know Spanish.” To sum it up, if you really look at my entries, I don’t think that I do too much each day: it’s probably 2 hours at most (and one of those hours is “free,” since I do my “daily things” right when I get up, before my day starts). In real terms of daily production: I read 2-3 articles in German and Spanish, listen to 2 audio clips in German and Spanish, write perhaps a paragraph in both languages, do grammar exercises for one of the three languages, and review Anki cards (but not always all of the cards, as you see). On top of that, I try to surround myself with the language in question. But (I hope!) that after a year, I will have come further than I imagined possible. Go TAC! However, make no mistake: I definitely feel that I would make much, much faster progress if I were concentrating on one language. Sometimes, after a particularly productive Spanish day, I’m tempted to just do all Spanish for the entire week, so that I could burn through the material. But patience, Sprachjunge! It’s probably a personal idiosyncrasy, as I (in general) prefer to do fewer things as opposed to exploring a lot. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bastet Diglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 5913 days ago 28 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 19 28 January 2010 at 4:36pm | IP Logged |
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To Date Summary:
34.7 hours watching Spanish TV 8 hours reading Spanish novel and news articles 4.5 hours grammar/vocabulary review Comments: Well, it is very hard to judge at this point (two weeks in) just how well my plan is working. I know that I recognized some vocabulary words in my novel, which was exciting. I like seeing a word I've studied in print and recognizing it. This also reaffirms for me the importance of reading - you can't beat seeing your new words in context for retention and usage. I have a small playlist of Spanish music on my iPod and I have started to memorize the songs now. Plus, I am starting to understand lyrics that I never quite "caught" before. As for watching the Spanish TV shows on rtve - well I definitely think I hear most of the words, about 95% or more (unless they are really shouting at one another or arguing very fast). However, I don't always keep up with the meaning. If I'm really concentrating just to keep up with each word, then I miss the meaning or details. Otherwise, if I am able to "hear" every word easily, then I don't have trouble understanding. I really don't translate into English when I'm listening - I don't think I have for quite some time - so I think that is good. Overall, I think I am making progress, but very slow progress. I find I'm actually thinking in Spanish quite a bit, even forgetting English words at times. Spanish comes out of my mouth when my husband asks me questions. It is getting lodged in my brain a bit more. I do feel like my head is going to explode at times. So, what's next? -I'm going to work a little more on adding vocabulary with Anki and Flashcard Exchange -I've contacted an on-line Spanish tutor through edufire (can't remember which post I read recommending them). I'm thinking 2 - 3 times per week of conversation will help. -I keep my personal language journal en español, but I need to start writing more. Perhaps lang-8's site, as recommended by several on this site? And because I don't have enough to do: I also take a Pre-Intermediate French class and have a French tutor. I'm feeling a little guilty about neglecting French so much these past few weeks. Well, and to be honest, there is something very exciting about this stage of language learning. In French, every thing I learn is a huge leap forward. It seems easier than Spanish. I think I need that feeling of accomplishment to keep going. So, I'm stepping up the French studies, BUT I'm going to try to study French via Spanish. -Today I started revising all of my French card files and putting Spanish translations instead of English. I'm using the the "3rd side" of the cards to put an English hint. -I'm going to start listening to short bouts of spoken French and dig out my French rap songs to load on my iPod. -Getting back to the FSI French phonetics drills to address my terrible accent. -I took down my Spanish labels and added French (well, and Latin and Italian, too, while I was at it) -I'm going to concentrate on vocabulary and verb conjugation, with just a bit of daily listening. I'm kind of excited about the idea of learning French via Spanish. When I finished my flashcards, I was really pumped up to be completely free of English! Of course, this is pretty basic vocabulary, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. It is a little trickier (even with basic vocabulary) than I had anticipated, though. For example, the word "student." How many words are there in English that roughly mean "student" - student, pupil, learner, apprentice, cadet, etc. These aren't very complicated for a native English speaker to distinguish between. However, what happens when I want to give a Spanish definition for "l'étudiant"? Is it "el alumno" or "el estudiante"? Do I go with the one that looks the same (what about false friends?)? So, I ended up looking up the word in Spansh-English AND French-English dictionaries, comparing and picking the words that were the most similar in meaning. Turns out "el alumno" is closer to "l'élève" which is "pupil" in English - at least, according to my dictionaries. I felt very pleased with myself, until I thought some more about "pupil" and "student." Didn't I just say that an English speaker would know the difference? Well, IS there a difference between "pupil" and "student?" I think I actually use them interchangeably. So, I had to go drag out ANOTHER dictionary, this time my Oxford English dictionary. They are both Latin based, but a "pupil" is someone who is taught by someone else and a "student" is a person who studies at a college or university. So, while I would say, "He was a pupil of mine," OR "He was a student of mine," I would NOT say "He was a pupil of the University." I think. Wow, now I'm really scared about my French via Spanish plan. Apparently I still need to learn English. I think I'm going to stop studying for today and start drinking. Cheers! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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