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James29’s Spanish Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Tilia Diglot Groupie Denmark Joined 4477 days ago 48 posts - 68 votes  Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 217 of 668 13 March 2013 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi James. It seems like you are doing great. I checked out the link for buscamundos and watched an episode about Guatemala. It is a nice show. I did not understand everything, but enough for it to be interesting. If I watch many more of those I should probably watch out for the travel bug. :-)
Uhh! I have been on the opposite side of a similar situation, embarrassing! One time when I was in university I was speaking with some other biology students and they talked about traveling in South America and speaking Spanish and I said that I knew a little Spanish. I was not lying, I had learned Spanish in school, but it was a couple of years since I had used it at all. Then one of them asked me a simple question in Spanish and I could not answer it! :-( I was surprised how much I had actually forgotten. I think it was experiences like this that made me wow, when I came back from Ecuador, not to lose the Spanish I had learned again. Another aspect to this is of course that suddenly being thrown out in speaking a language that you have had nothing to do with in a long time can be really hard, as opposed to having had time to prepare yourself a little for it. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 218 of 668 15 March 2013 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the comments Hermon and Tilia. I do wonder sometimes about how fast I would lose my Spanish skills if I stopped using it regularly. That is one reason I am trying to slowly start doing my hobbies in Spanish and simply make it more of a way of life rather than "studying."
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 219 of 668 18 March 2013 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
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OK, I am seeing the end of Using Spanish... I finished lesson 56 today. I will do another run through it when I get to the end. I am not going to do an "active wave" per se. I will go through it passively again, but will add the exercises (which I skipped this round) and will also try to shadow the audio without the book.
I am spending no more than 30 minutes on each lesson. I am not doing them as thoroughly as I could, but I am getting a lot out of the lessons and I am really enjoying it. There are a lot of vocab and idiomatic expressions... just what I need. I have been watching El Capo. What a great show. I am loving it... more than La Reina del Sur. I will watch another episode tonight. I listened to about an hour of my audio bible this week and I am actually seeing the end in sight. Sometimes I forget to comment on my bible reading in this log. I do not do it very often so it is not something I mention. I should be able to finish the New Testament this year. Meetups are good. Lots of people are starting to show up. That always makes it interesting. Had a couple long text chat on skype. One was mostly in Spanish and my partner apparently forgot for a while that I was not a native because I was writing so well. I got a good compliment on my accent from a skype partner. I always wonder how good/bad my accent is. It drives me crazy when I hear an American speaking Spanish with a horrible accent. I don't want to be that person. I have been searching for plane tickets again! I saw that there are cheaper tickets to Madrid! Oh no! I don't know if I can resist! I have been starting to think about French again. I don't want to dilute my Spanish time until I get through FSI again. I really want to get myself up to the next level before I start something else. In all reality, however, I think it is probably doubtful that I would ever really embark on French... but it does not hurt to dream. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 220 of 668 24 March 2013 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am going to go to Spain in November! That is the plan. My wife and I talked through our family plans and November works good for us. It is also a good time for me to take time off from work. I just need to buy the tickets. For now I will just buy the tickets and I will plan my trip later. I will probably go for about two weeks. I will likely spend a couple days in Madrid at the beginning and end and spend the rest of the time in other places. I think I would still like to do a course for at least a week simply because I like the structure and the support a school can offer.
As far as Spanish this week, I have started my more active pass through Using Spanish. I did lesson 2 today. I am reading the lesson without and with the audio and then do the exercises. Then I shadow the lesson once with the book and twice without the book. I am amazed how much I remember from the first pass through that was more than two months ago. I often forget to mention that I am reading through Assimil Spanish Without Toil as I exercise. I only exercise three times a week so this is not much. I probably do three lessons a week. I basically just read through each lesson twice checking any words I don't know and reading the notes. I think I am on lesson fifty something. Skype is great. One of my partners showed me a lot of things during the last few days of Las Fallas... I "walked the streets of Valencia" on skype during Las Fallas... Amazing! I loved it! I am watching El Capo. Great show. Very exciting and suspenseful. I can easily follow the plot, but, I must admit, I don't understand a lot of what is said. I still go to the weekly meetup. It is usually all Spanish learners like me. The level of Spanish is pretty good so it is worthwhile. There are always one or two who can speak much better than me which is nice for learning. I sometimes have to be "the enforcer" and tell people not to speak in English. I received Angeles y Demonios... the Spanish translation of Angels and Demons (the book before the da Vinci Code). This has really made me re-think my plans. I don't have the audio, but I can get it through my library. Several times I listened to the five minute sample on audible. Man, I really want to read that book with the audio. The narration (by Raul Amundaray) is absolutely incredible! As much as I want to read that book I will wait until I finish Using Spanish... I have not read the book in English and I want to be able to understand it well in Spanish when I read it for the first time. I also ordered the second book of Harry Potter in Spanish. I think I will go through that series. I will also get the other two Narnia books with Spanish audio. This trip to Spain is really getting me motivated. Part of me wants to dive back into FSI and go through it really thoroughly before my trip. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 221 of 668 01 April 2013 at 2:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, I cannot believe it is Sunday night already. What a week. Busy at work, but I managed to stay on pace with Spanish. Today I finished Using Spanish lesson 8 on the second wave. I like the course. I like shadowing it without the text. I am able to slip things from Using Spanish into my Spanish conversations... mostly gramatical constructions and idioms.
I read another 30+ minutes from my DHH Biblia. I went to a meetup. Some good speakers, but few natives. I am still working through Spanish Without Toil. It is getting more challenging now. I also looked through With Ease just for fun and had forgotten that the last half of the book is some pretty good/advanced Spanish. I think I may do an active wave of that when I am exercising... after I finish Without Toil. I have been researching Spain and am getting excited to travel there. I cannot wait. I hope it works out between work and family. I need to just go ahead and buy the tickets so the dates are set in stone. I had a couple good skype talks. With my primary skype partner I asked seriously for feedback on my Spanish. Here are some things I learned: my pronunciation and accent are good, but I have problems with the r. For example, apparently when I say "todo" and "toro" it sounds exactly the same. I need to work on that. I don't always use the subjunctive in the right situation. Sometimes I use it when I shouldn't and vice verse. I know this and I am working on it. My writing is not great. I never use the accent marks because I don't know how to do it with my computer and I have never really made any effort to even think about where the marks go. My rhythm is a bit off. I am not sure what to make of this. It was explained to me, but I don't really get it. The example was the difference between "hablo" (I talk) and "hablo" (he talked)... apparently sometimes in the past I put too much emphasis on the last syllable in the past... I guess somehow I screw up the rhythm of the sentence. Complicated sentences are hard for me. For example, I tried to say "I took a nap because I was thinking that I would get along better with my mother in law if I was asleep" and I screwed it up. The two past forms, conditional and subjunctive was just too much. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 222 of 668 08 April 2013 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Worked on lesson 14 of Using Spanish today. I take two days to get through the review lessons. I am still loving the course and picking up lots of good vocab, grammar and idioms.
I keep forgetting to mention that I am still watching El Capo. Great show. I watched episode 25 tonight. It definitely keeps your interest. I am on about lesson 60 of Assimil Without Toil... just for fun while I workout... way too easy, but I am learning some things. I listened/read some of my DHH biblia. Easy to understand and the audio is top quality and spoken fairly slowly. Great to read/listen. Had a couple nice skype talks. I think I finally found someone who might be able to talk when it is most convenient for me (early in the morning here in the US). I had one good partner a long time ago that could often talk in the morning and it was great... hopefully this works out as I would like to do more skype talking and less courses. I still go to meetups. I am definitely a regular there. I am again listening to a Latino radio station at work. I like the music and I am understanding much more now. I got a good compliment from my cleaning lady at the office. I rarely see her and we speak Spanish whenever we see each other. She always lets me know I am improving. It is kind of nice to hear. We always have great chats. She speaks very nice and clear Spanish. I played a game with my son. He would pick words in English and I would say the Spanish word. Initially I thought we would have roughly the same vocabulary (him in English and me in Spanish), but I was way wrong. He blew me away. It made me think I really need to keep working on my Spanish. I am starting to plan for my trip to Spain. Man, I don't know why I did not go sooner. I cannot wait. Spain is incredible. This will make all the hours of Assimil even more worth it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 223 of 668 15 April 2013 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Worked on lesson 21 today in Using Spanish. Still getting a lot out of it. I am picking up some new things this second run throuh it. Lots of idioms and neat ways to say things.
I am still watching El Capo, but have not had a chance to watch an episode for a while. I have watched through episode 27, I think. Had a nice mini-milestone at a meetup. A new member from Puerto Rico asked me if I was from Spain when we first met. We had only spoken for 30 seconds or so so I am not sure how much of a compliment that was. Anyway, I played along. I read a bit out of my DHH Biblia. I have now finished the book of James so the end is in sight. I keep thinking about going to Spain. I cannot wait. I need to iron out the dates and start doing some more concrete planning. I still do some skype talks... both audio and text. It is helpful. This week was kind of slow in terms of Spanish because I was busy with other things... I am happy, however, that I am still able to do something in Spanish for at least 30 minutes a day. Edit: I always forget that I am still working through Assimil's Spanish Without Toil as I exercise. I am getting into the harder lessons and it is now somewhat helpful and not a waste of time. I think when I finish it I will do something more active. Edited by James29 on 15 April 2013 at 7:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 224 of 668 22 April 2013 at 12:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, another week gone. Time flies. This week's update is going to be very similar to last week's.
Still chugging along in Using Spanish. I had a family issue that made me miss one day of Spanish. Watched one or two episodes of El Capo. Went to a meetup. Had a great time. Spoke with a Spanish speaking customer at work for about 30 minutes on the phone with no problems at all. That was rewarding. Ultimately I'd like to be able to do my work in Spanish on a regular basis. Listened to all of the dialogues of Living Language's Beyond the Basics. I had not heard them for a long time. They sounded quite easy. I did not have a problem understanding even one word. That is a good course. Had some nice skype talks. I have had more free time lately. Spoke with someone from Colombia. Everytime I speak to a Colombian I think it is the easiest accent to understand. I understood every word of a 20 minute Spanish conversation. Listened to about 20 minutes of my DHH Biblia. I am feeling like I am progressing. I am more motivated than ever. Thinking of going to Spain gets me very excited. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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