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James29’s Spanish Log | ||
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 273 of 668 11 August 2013 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am still chugging along with FSI. I did it every day but one since my last post. I'll be finishing lesson 26 today. It is definitely getting more worthwhile now. I am usually able to do the lessons without any mistakes, but recently I have had to think much more and things are not as automatic.
Reading other posts has helped me understand my philosophy a bit better. I really have a long term view of Spanish. My goal is not necessarily to be as far as I can be in 6 months or a year. I am really focusing on eventually speaking/comprehending Spanish extremely well... no matter how far down the road that is. I think this is why I am really focusing a lot on things like FSI that really grind the basics and grammar into me. Getting a very solid framework seems more important to me right now... I think it will be better that way and I can add the vocab and comprehension onto the solid framework a bit later. I also watched an episode or two of El Capo and also a few of Caso Cerrado. I must say that I feel like a bit of an idiot when I watch Caso Cerrado because I still don't know if it is real or fake. I often feel the cases could be real (and the people certainly seem real), but then, after hearing some insane allegation or fact pattern the person miraculously has a video of everything. It just seems a bit too crazy for me. My hunch is that it is real and they simply only pick the best cases to televise. I also must say that the show is absolutely perfect for developing my Spanish right now. I am thinking of doing a 100 show push where I try to watch 100 shows. I do not like the set up of the website. I often watch the first segment of a show and then cannot find the second segment because the videos are out of order. Oh well, that is not too much of a problem. I am so glad I found that show. This week I also did a meetup. My Spanish is never at its best at meetups. In the evening after work with a lot of background noise is about the worst combination for me. I do like going to meetups as it is useful to be "immersed" in the language for a couple hours. There was an older professional man this week at the meetup and I used usted with him. I really do not feel comfortable with all the dynamics of the tu/usted choice. I'd like to read a real in depth article or lesson on when to use tu/usted and when not. It felt strange to me to use usted with him and tu with everyone else at the meetup... but it would also feel very strange to use tu with him. Well, once again, I promptly quit French. I did lesson 1 of Pimsleur and then did it again and then quit. I really don't mind this. I do not want French to negatively impact my Spanish. My current plan is to do Assimil El Frances when I finish FSI. I really like the idea of using Spanish to learn other things. I figure with six months of Assimil I can get French to a basic enough level that I can take a trip to Montreal or Quebec and use it to some degree. That is all I really want out of French... touristy A2 type level. B1 in French would be great, but I do not want to put in the effort to get any higher than B1. Edited by James29 on 11 August 2013 at 2:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 274 of 668 11 August 2013 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good post, James29, you have come a long way and it's been wonderful to see you mature as a language learner. I enjoy reading your log, though, as a Keynesian, well, you know, ha!. You are at the stage where the FSI course will be most valuable to you because you are using it to solve your problems instead of using it to teach you from scratch or as your primary contact with the language. You are engaging the language and FSI is there to reinforce that and help you to see why it is the way it is. That's when an in-depth course is most helpful. You have found a really good way to move forward.
Spanish is becoming more and more a part of your life. When you start watching Caso Cerrado, and enjoy it that's when you know. Hey, I watch it after dinner on TV down here and I'm not too ashamed to admit it. It serves a good puprose for language learning and, after watching a few cases, you realize that your own life isn't really all that bad. If you chose to learn French to some level, you absolutely don't have to learn it to as a high a level as you have done with Spanish. Just beware, you may not be able to stop yourself, :)! Keep up the good work! 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 275 of 668 13 August 2013 at 2:39am | IP Logged | ||
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So, is Caso Cerrado real? The world may never know. I love the show and, yes, I really enjoy it.
Thanks for your encouragement on FSI. That is exactly why I am doing it now. I am really excited to get into the things that still screw me up... negative commands, complex subjunctives, etc. I hope that Keynesianism is working better for you than the rest of the world :) 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 276 of 668 19 August 2013 at 1:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I did some research. Apparently Caso Cerrado is a mixture of real and dramatization. She contracts with the folks as a binding arbitrator so she actually does decide the cases. The directors will dramatize them with evidence that makes the shows more colorful and interesting and often there are actors that "play" the real people. This takes some of the excitement out of the show... but I still will watch it :)
Ok, this week my best Skype partner had vacation so we talked most every morning. That was great. I did one more lesson of FSI... 27 I think. It was on commands. I have always had a problem with familiar commands... the difference between the negative familiar and regular familiar just does not stick in my head. I can do the lessons when I am thinking about it and get the pattern in my head. I don't think I made any mistakes on the lesson. But, when I talk, I am sure I will screw it up. I watched a few episodes of Caso Cerrado. Interesting stuff. I also watched an episode of La Corte del Pueblo. I found that more interesting because it is obviously real. The judge was an ass kicker. I did a meetup. The older guy was there this week again. I noticed some of the more experienced speakers were using usted with him. My dilemma is that, in a way, it almost seems disrespectful to be using usted with only one person in the group. It just does not seem right. I am thinking of getting a tablet. I want to use it for Spanish learning. I'd like to be able to have something that I can use to read Spanish books because I am sick of buying so many books. I'd rather have them on something that does not take ups o much space. Also, it would be cool to be able to watch telenovelas and Caso Cerrado whenever and wherever I want. We don't get any Spanish TV stations so being online is important for my Spanish fix. I bumped into a bunch of French speakers this week. I'd really like to know French. I would have loved to use French with them. I can motivate myself to learn French through Spanish so I think that is the way I will do 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 277 of 668 25 August 2013 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good Spanish week. I finished FSI lesson 29 today. I spent three days on it. I have difficulty with familiar commands. I don't know why as the concept is quite simple. It just never sticks. I have always ignored the problem, but now, over the past week or so doing FSI, I think I am really getting it down.
I watched a couple episodes of El Capo. I like the show. I understand less in the show than I do in Caso Cerrado. I can follow everything that is happening, but often times I think to myself that I don't know what they are saying... luckily it seems to mostly be small talk and slang things that don't seem to make too much of a difference. I have a very hard time understanding the black bodyguard. I watched a couple episodes of Caso Cerrado. It really is a perfect length and I love how she summarizes the episode half way through after they break for a commercial. I also always forget to mention that I am still working my way through Assimil's Spanish Without Toil while I exercise. It is only three times a week for twenty minutes so it goes slow. I read each lesson twice and check any words I don't know. I am on lesson 106 or thereabouts. I am not getting too much out of it, but it is better than nothing while I workout. I had a great meetup. There was a University Spanish professor there who I know quite well, but have not seen for about a year. She was extremely impressed how much my Spanish had improved. We had a great long chat. I did a couple skype talks. I am probably going to lose my best skype partner. I hope not, but it looks that way. I have spoken to a few new people, but I must be picky because I rarely find someone who seems to work well. I downloaded a bunch of audio books in Spanish. I went to the bookstore and sat down with some books to see how I could do. I tried LR with a Ken Follett book (The Fall of the Giants), but Spanish/Spanish was a bit too tough to be enjoyable. I need more vocabulary. I also tried a book by George Martin (the Game of Thrones... or something like that) and did better with it. I would like to do a lot of reading Spanish novels with audio when I am done with FSI. I have the audio for Justa Causa by John Grisham. I have never read it in English or Spanish. I requested the Spanish book from the library and when it comes in I will give it a try. I like many of his books and hopefully this will be a good one and easy enough to understand. I seem to be able to understand the audio fairly well even without the book so I think I will be able to do it. Well, that is it for now. 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 278 of 668 01 September 2013 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Finished FSI lesson 32 today. This time through it is obviously a lot easier. I find that I don't mind doing FSI six days a week. Last time I could only handle four days a week.
I have figured out how to do FSI on my home computer so I can do lessons on the weekends. In the back of my mind I keep telling myself that I'd really like to get FSI finished by the end of the year. That would be great! If I don't, no big deal. I have had a lot of luck with starting fresh for a new year with yearly goals so I will try to do that again for 2014. I bought a tablet. This was basically so I could use it for Spanish things like, most importantly, watching Caso Cerrado at my house. My home computer is often used by my family and also it sucks so bad that video shows like Caso Cerrado do not play well. Anyway, the tablet kind of stinks. It can show videos fine, but for some reason with Caso Cerrado it stops and shuts down the video at exactly five minutes. I downloaded three different video players and reset the settings and did all sorts of trouble shooting and I cannot get it to work on my tablet. It does not do this on my phone so I am not sure how it could be a problem with the website, but I think it must be something to do with the Telemundo site because it does not do it with anything else. Well, the upside is that I learned a lot about tablets and how they work. I am still working through Assimil's Spanish without Toil very slowly at the gym. I am almost done and will likely be finished within a couple workouts. It definitely has much more Spanish in it than the newer Assimil, but I think I definitely prefer the With Ease book. I am trying to finish the appendix of the Cassell's book. That is going very slow, but I spent about an hour on it yesterday. No meetup this week. I could not go due to a family commitment. No major Skype talking. My best partner is totally out of the language exchange thing now so we simply won't be practicing together anymore. That is really sad because it was extremely helpful. We will still keep in touch, but I will need to find someone new to practice languages with. Things are quite stressful at work lately. I have grown to appreciate my Spanish studies as it really gives me an outlet. I have not really used Spanish much for my work, but it has definitely helped me in the sense that it has helped me through some difficult times with the stress and pressure level at work. My Spanish study has now become part of my life and I cannot imagine not spending at least 30 minutes a day doing something in Spanish. Some crazy things at work are happening and they are going to either drastically increase or decrease the amount of free time I have. Even if I get busier I will still stick with the Spanish. I am really looking forward to finishing FSI. In the back of my mind I have always planned my Spanish studies around when I thought this crazy stuff at work would be happening. I would really like to transition into just watching Spanish TV and reading books when this work phase is finally over. I need to just say to myself that "I know Spanish" and just use it without doing any more formal studying. I do "know Spanish" in the sense that I can speak it and understand it and I know basically all the grammar. Some of the more difficult grammar I need to really think about and it is not natural. I do definitely need to increase my vocabulary. I also need to improve my listening/understanding. I figure if I take a good year or so and just read/listen to books and watch TV shows I will be getting just what I need. I don't read much, but I spoke to my dad about books. I am starting to line up a long list of books I can read in Spanish that have Spanish audio. I am not too interested in children's books (like Harry Potter) so I need to be careful not to get into things that are too hard. I don't want to read them in English or do a L2/R1 read... I just want to go straight to L2/R2 without too much confusion or dictionary use... which means I really need to pick my books carefully. My dad suggested the Ken Follett books, but they seem too hard for me right now. I think I will start with John Grisham. I ordered Causa Justa from the library, but still have not received it. I'll give it a try when I get it and see how it goes. I have been thinking more and more about French and am realizing I really need to just focus on my Spanish. I want to get to a much more proficient level in Spanish. It is simply much more important to me. I think of it like this... I would rather have my Spanish at C1 (and no French) than have both Spanish and French at B2. When I actually think about it like this it makes it easy for me to forget about French. Edited by James29 on 01 September 2013 at 2:52pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| HermonMunster Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4634 days ago 119 posts - 211 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 279 of 668 02 September 2013 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
Hey James. I think this is a wise decision. I have a colleauge that speaks native French, ok English, and dabbles in Spanish. His Spanish is pretty bad and his English could use some improvement, especially becuase he has to use it for work. Mastering Spanish first is probably the way to go. I totally agree on language learning just being a part of life that will last forever. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5784 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 280 of 668 03 September 2013 at 5:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Inspired by what you were doing with "Spanish without toil", I sometimes listen to the new Assimil Spanish
course (L'Allemamd 2004) as a maintenance thing for my Spanish. I put all the lessons in one album and then just put my ipod on shuffle every now and then. It's not available in English translation yet; but that isn't a problem. You can easily understand almost all the lessons. It's quite nice, actually, and completely different from the current "with ease" version. The audio is available on the web. I only mention it in case you are looking for something to do whilst excercising once you've finished "Spanish without toil". Edit: I had a look at Caso Cerrado: useful program for learners, good shout. I find it a bit obnoxious, but I forced myself to watch an episode and it's pretty perfect from the point of view of maintaining Spanish whilst studying a different language. La corte del pueblo was a bit less unpleasant; but I think both judge and some participants make some mistakes in their Spanish! Edited by Random review on 03 September 2013 at 5:23am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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