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James29’s Spanish Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4052 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 585 of 668 02 February 2015 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi James, Great log as usual! I always love reading!
So I have an older kindle that was given to me and I hadn't really used it for Spanish language books. But it sounds like it might be just what I was looking for! Does the dictionary translation pop up automatically or was that something that you had to load in the kindle? Thanks! Amy 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 586 of 668 02 February 2015 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Kindle is really cool for Spanish. I'm a computer nincumpoop and I could figure it out! The Kindle has a number of free dictionaries you can download. You have to be sure to download the Spanish -> English dictionary and set it as your default dictionary. That's it. When, when you are reading you just touch the unknown word and the dictionary entry pops up. The free Oxford dictionary has the word in English and then a couple sentences. It will also have idiomatic uses which are nice because that's sometimes the situation the words come up in.
Then... this is cool... it has this feature where it saves all the words you look up in the "vocabulary builder" function. You get a place where there is a list of all the words and you can go through them like they are flash cards. I'd say the Kindle is definitely worth it and I might possibly be the cheapest man on Earth. I think the base model I bought cost $51 new. Some books are pretty cheap. I just bought "then there were none" by Agatha Christie in Spanish for $0.99. Some books I want to read, however, are cheaper to buy used paperbacks (like Grisham books are a bit pricy on Kindle). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4052 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 587 of 668 03 February 2015 at 4:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, James! I'm going to see if I can get it to work! So glad you wrote about this! I knew that the kindle was great for reading, but I didn't really understand the features until you wrote about it. Thanks for highlighting it. I always learn something from your 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 588 of 668 07 February 2015 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welll, I'm continuing with my plan. I've been doing a lesson in the grammar book every weekday and reading on my kindle too. I'm reading Agatha Christie's "And then there were none." At first it was a little slow, but I'm half way through it now and it is getting quite fascinating. I'm doing what people call "intense reading" meaning I'm looking up every single word I don't know. It amazes me that there are really a ton of words that I don't know. When I read in the past I must have simply been skipping over words that don't impact the actual storyline. I'm looking up a ton of adjectives and adverbs. Many of them seem "obvious" after I look them up so hopefully they'll stick and I'll remember them.
the only thing I don't like about the kindle so far is I don't know how to skip forward to see how many pages there are in a chapter. I find I do that all the time when I read just to get an idea of how long I've got to read. I don't like to stop in the middle of a chapter so I always like to see how long a chapter is before I start reading it. this is, of course, not a problem, but rather just an annoyance. I'm doing the news every morning in the car. It's a good habit and I hesitate to change it because I don't want to get out of the habit of using that 20-25 minutes a day for something productive. I would, however, like to listen to something a bit more conversational during that period of time. I'm not having too much of a problem understanding the news. I'd really like to work on my conversational Spanish listening. I've watched a few more episodes of La Corte del Pueblo. It is interesting... the cases will either be extremely easy for me to follow everything or, every now and then, I'll be completely lost with what is going on. I think i'll grow tired of the judge pretty quick. He has such a bad attitude and is just blatantly rude to everyone. I had an awesome meetup this week. It is funny how some of them are great and sometimes they are just "blah." It really makes a difference if there are native speakers present. This week I sat between two native speakers and we just had a wonderful conversation for a good hour or so. It is really helpful. I've been reading a lesson of the Spanish based French Assimil course every now and then. That's fun. It is cool to really be able to use Spanish to learn something else. REading it takes my mind off the fact that I'm reading in a foreign language and it really seems like the Spanish is second nature. I'm going to stick with the grammar book for now, but I am really wondering if it is a bit of a waste of time. So many of the lessons are borderline "too easy" for me. They do give me practice and force me to think about things I know intuitively, but I'm just not sure it is worth it. That being said, I love the setup so much that I'm really looking forward to doing the C1 book at some point in the future. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4666 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 589 of 668 08 February 2015 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, it's the same for me as well. What also makes a big difference in my experience is how much of a tendency people show to switch into English. Today I went to a Spanish meetup that had all non-natives except for one "rusty" native speaker -- Mexican parents, spoke it every day in early childhood, then spoke mostly English inside and outside the house once she started going to school. It was fun talking to her. 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 590 of 668 14 February 2015 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm lucky that my meetup pretty rigidly sticks to the informal "Spanish only" rule... even the folks that don't know much Spanish. That definitely makes a difference.
I finished Agatha Christie's "And then there were none" today. Good book. I didn't like it as much as Murder on the Orient Express, but it was definitely worth the read and I'll certainly read more of her books. So I'm going to update my goals for 2015. 1. Finish Gramatica de Uso del Espanol B1/B2. -> Finished Lesson 51-ish. 2. Read novels totaling 1,000,000 words. -> Finished three novels totaling 237,000 words (En Llamas with 105,000, El Fiscal en el Candelero with 66,000 and Diez Negritos with roughly 66,000). 3. Listen to Spanish every morning on the way to work. -> So far, so good. 4. Watch any 100 30 minute TV episodes. -> So far have watched equivalent of roughly 14 episodes. 5. Write 12 letters or memos for correction. -> No progress. 6. Read the Spanish side of Assimil's New French With Ease (Spanish Base). -> 44 lessons done/read. I don't know how to count words on the Kindle. I will be able to figure something out to keep track of my goal. This book is listed as roughly the same pages and reading time as the other one I read so I'm going to estimate the two as having the same amount of words. I'm definitely going to meet my goal so I'm not going to worry about it. Edited by James29 on 14 February 2015 at 6:12pm 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 591 of 668 22 February 2015 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm still just chugging along. I've been thinking how Spanish has been so steady for me during the past five years. Many crazy things have been swirling along in my life over the past few years, but Spanish has remained a nice constant way to start the day.
Anyway, I'm roughly half way done with the grammar book. A couple of the recent lessons were simply too easy and I essentially skipped them. There was one that was basically how to conjugate the future tense. Then, however, there were a few good lessons that make some important distinctions on some grammar points. I'll keep going with it, but I might take a break for a bit. I've got some other non-language related projects that may occupy a large part of my time over the next few months and I'd rather give up the grammar book than the reading. I started reading The Litigators by John Grisham and I am absolutely loving it. Kindle lets you read the first few chapters of any book and I tested it out just to see if I could read it. Much to my surprise it was MUCH easier than I thought it would be. It was the cheapest Grisham book on Kindle so I bought it. I am finding it easier to read than Agatha Christie. I'm reading it faster and I'm looking up fewer words. It also seems like much more current reading. For some reason I've always liked Grisham books. I also like characters who are disasters... kind of like the opposite of heroes. I like to read and watch about people like Homer Simpson and the guys in this book. They are complete total losers who have lives that are complete disasters. I must say that reading this book is quite rewarding. I have often thought how one major goal for Spanish studies was to be able to read a regular John Grisham book and enjoy it. I am definitely doing that without a problem. Mission accomplished! One thing I forgot to mention before was the vocabulary list in Kindle that I generated from the Agatha Christie book. When reading that book I looked up every unknown word. It felt like a decent amount, but it turned out that I only looked up 0.7% of the words. I find that shockingly amazing. People often reference the 98% level for reading, but I'm not sure I would have enjoyed reading the book if I had to look up three times as many words. I'm sure it would have been less enjoyable and I would not have learned as much. Anyway, Kindle allows you to create flashcards with the vocabulary you look up. It is a wonderful feature if you like flashcards. It shows you the word with the exact quote from the book where you looked it up and then if you click the button it will flip to the Spanish->English dictionary translation with definition. I had about 370 words and I did about 200 flashcards over the past week... then I quit and started reading The Litigators. I am just not a flashcard/anki kind of guy. I just don't like it. If you like that sort of thing Kindle is an amazing tool. One thing I'm noticing is that if I see an unknown word in two totally different contexts it will really stick. There have been a few words from the Agatha Christie book that have also been in this Grisham book and when I see them my brain does a cartwheel and it is in there forever. I had a call at work from a Spanish speaker. I really did not have much of a problem talking with her for 90% of the conversation and I was expressing myself in Spanish with complete ease and confidence. I definitely have a problem, however, making the switch to using usted. I only use usted when talking with customers and that is so rare that I just am not used to it and I often slip into using tu. Also, unfortunately, there was one very important part of the conversation that I did not totally understand. I asked the lady to repeat herself a few times and I just did not get it. I must say that despite being able to follow everything else very well this part of the conversation just was not working and really ruined the entire Spanish experience for me... I still need to improve if I am going to really use my Spanish for my business. I've also come to the realization that pushing the Spanish angle at work is probably not the greatest business decision right now. One thing I won't do is let my hobby get in the way of building a good business. If it works out and things start going in that direction that would be great, but I'm not going to actively put resources toward building the Spanish speaking clientele. That's sad, but I think it is the right decision for now. Having a successful business and making money is more important and right now there are just so many more business angles I need to be focusing my effort on. I have pretty much let skype talks disappear. They have been the first thing to go away as I've gotten more busy. I don't think they were too helpful at this level anyway. I'm not shy about speaking Spanish anymore and with language exchanges I spend half the time in English so it's not too efficient. Meetups are going well. There are more native speakers. The conversations are now being dominated by the native speakers and they are somewhat "slangy" which is good for us who are learning the language. It's definitely a great experience for my listening, etc. I'm listening to the VOA Noticias news every morning and that's going great. It definitely helps my listening... that's something I really need. I'd love to transition into some sort of daily conversational podcast, but I'm not going to worry about it right now... I'm listening to Spanish every day on my commute and that is something I've never been able to do. I really don't want to screw up the good habit I've gotten going. I'm suffering from a bit of a travel depression... I don't see myself traveling anywhere interesting for a very long time. It's always motivating to have a nice trip to look forward to. Mexico was great and I'd love to start planning for something else, but that's not going to happen for a very long time. Oh well. I also have been making a conscious effort to limit my screen time when I am away from work. I'm in front of my computer all day at work and I really feel better if I just leave it there and don't watch TV or look at a computer when I'm not there. Even though this could be bad for my Spanish (less Spanish TV, etc) I'm going to stick with it because I think it is a good thing for me and my family. Reading my kindle is much better. As a result, I haven't been watching too much Spanish TV this year. Well, that's it for now. Edited by James29 on 22 February 2015 at 1:36pm 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 592 of 668 08 March 2015 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Another good week down. I don't think I've missed a day of Spanish for years now.
The grammar book suddenly got more challenging this week. It was like "wham!" all of a sudden the lessons hit on challenging subjects for me. In actuality I still got most of the questions correct, but they are now a challenge. I think I'm somewhere near lesson 65 now, but cannot exactly remember. I'm still reading Los Litigantes by Grisham and loving it. I'm about 75% done with it now. It is fairly easy for me to read and is really giving me encouragement about my Spanish. I'll finally just be able to read good adult books. I have a small stack of books for teens that may never get read... lesson learned... don't buy things until you intend to use them. Still listening to the VOA news every work morning on my commute. Had a good meetup. Spoke with a Peruvian man for a while and he was very complimentary about my Spanish. I also sat in between two natives who were chatting away at record pace. It was tough to follow everything they were talking about, but I could follow a lot of it. I am doing a lot of other things in my life and business so I have not had as much time to spend on Spanish as I used to. I don't mind that though as long as I am doing something in Spanish every day. It is obvious that watching TV and doing skype talks are what has disappeared from my Spanish work. Things will probably stay like this for a while. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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