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James29’s Spanish Log | ||
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 153 of 668 16 July 2012 at 3:01am | IP Logged |
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Well, I am still working through Atlas Shrugged. I think I will be saying that for a while. This is a very long book. I am more than a third of the way through now. I think it does help my listening/understanding.
I did a bit of talking on skype and most of it was in Spanish. One of my partners told me I would really have no problem functioning anywhere Spanish is spoken (speaking only Spanish). I am pretty confident with my abilities now. I feel like I can say almost anything I want to. I do occasionally get stumped and frustrated, but not too often anymore. It is far more common, however, that I have to say things in a very round about way because I don't know certain words. I also have problems (sometimes far too often) with understanding people. I am still reading The Queen of the South. It is a fairly good story, but I am really not a fiction reader. I would likely not finish it if I were not reading it for Spanish. I am excited to start the telenovela, but I am wondering if it is too soon to tackle something so hard. I am listening to Assimil dialogues on the way to work. I am listening to the ones on the first disc. They are very simple, but, at the same time, they are well worth he review. There is some good vocabulary in these lessons. I will work through the rest of them over the next couple months. I have been thinking about my goals lately. It is not really realistic for me to expect to advance too much further with my speaking ability without a lot of trouble and inconvenience. It is very hard to find native speakers around here and I only have "real" conversations for 1-2 hours per week. This has gotten me thinking about really just working on my listening/understanding when I "study" and just let my speaking progress at a slower rate. I'd love to be almost native in listening/understanding and B-2/C-1 in speaking. I think that is do-able also. It seems to me that it should be quite possible to get very advanced understanding ability without interacting too often in the language. Right now I am thinking I will just continue doing a lot of LR and TV type things and then slowly work through the Assimils in a very active way and then eventually Using Spanish. After a lot of time with working on my listening I'd really like to go through FSI again. I am going to start trying to enjoy this even more. I think we can now get Spanish channels on TV if we change our package. Hopefully that will work out... if so, there should be plenty to watch. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 154 of 668 24 July 2012 at 3:16am | IP Logged |
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I am about half way done now with La Rebelion de Atlas. My listening continues to improve. It is much "easier" than studying with a course.
I did a few good skype talks. Casual conversation is getting easier and easier. My opinion of skype language exchanges is improving. It is really helping me feel more comfortable. I am listening to Assimil lessons on the way to work. I don't really know if this helps because I have heard them so many millions of times. I still like listening to the dialogues, however. Also, I usually pick up something new each time I listen to them. I did a meetup. It was about 2.5 hours of non-stop Spanish. I listen to Spanish radio during the day. I don't really pay attention to it, but I have noticed that I am understanding more and more of the lyrics. I have quit Anki. It is just not my way of doing things. I am still working on The Queen of the South. I am looking forward to watching the Telenovela. I am thinking more and more about a trip. Not sure where yet, but I am looking. The trip is what is keeping me motivated now. Edited by James29 on 24 July 2012 at 3:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 155 of 668 30 July 2012 at 2:31am | IP Logged |
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This was a good week. I finished the second part of La Rebelion de Atlas. 20 chapters down and 10 to go.
I had a long drive and listened to all of the Using Spanish dialogues. For the most part I could understand the general gist of what was going on. I certainly did not understand everything. I checked out Living Language's Ultimate Advanced Spanish from the library and put all the dialogues on one disc. There is 78 minutes of solid advanced dialogues. I will use these dialogues for listening in the car. I listened to a few of the dialogues and could fairly easily understand them. They are noticeably easier than Using Spanish. I went to a meetup and had some good conversations with native speakers. I am realizing that I do not grasp exactly how and when to use tu/usted. Many natives use usted with me. Eventually I hope to get a better feel for this. I did a couple skype talks. These are getting better and better because my Spanish is improving so much. I really just need practicing speaking in regular conversations like on skype. I am still reading The Queen of the South in English. I have a friend who might be able to get me a copy of the audio book. That would be amazingly great! I would love to LR the book with Spanish audio. The big thing I did this week was buy tickets to Ecuador. I finally just did it. I was sick of putting it off and stressing out about where to go. My tickets are to Quito, but I think I will spend most of my time in Cuenca. This will definitely motivate me. I will be going in November. I watched a number of documentary type videos on youtube about Ecuador and did not have any problems understanding the Spanish. Now I am trying to figure out what I will do to prepare my Spanish for the trip. I definitely want to finish Atlas Shrugged before then. I estimate I have about another 25 hours L2/L1 and 60 hours L2/L2. With that much time still to go on that, I will not be able to do too much more before the trip. I think I will also try to work through Living Language Ultimate Advanced Spanish. I will listen to the audio whenever I have free time and then I will work through the book. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 156 of 668 07 August 2012 at 3:23am | IP Logged |
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Wow, it felt like forever that the forum was down, but it was only one week. Anyway, I am still working my way through Atlas Shrugged. I really feel that LR is not a very efficient way of learning a language. It is good for listening and it is also good that I can easily spend 2-3 hours doing Spanish without getting tired, but for the amount of total time I put into LR I don't feel like it could possibly be as efficient/effective as spending that time with a course like FSI or Assimil. I have probably spent 45ish hours on this book so far. That would be enough to do an Assimil book. I hope this current feeling about LR is going to change when I start using the Spanish text.
I listened to all the Living Language Ultimate/Advanced dialogues on a long drive. I have also been listening to them on the way to work. This is really high quality audio. I like the Living Language courses. Between Ultimate/Advanced and Beyond the Basics they offer a lot of high quality advanced dialogues and lessons. The two advanced LL courses have more audio dialogue time than Using Spanish. I also had some good skype talks. More and more Spanish is becoming the default language that we go to in order to make sure we are understood... of course, it depends on with whom I am speaking. I think it is because B-1 seems like where everyone stops and I am slowly moving past B-1 toward B-2. I did a meetup. It was somewhat of a flop. There were only Americans and no native speakers. I found it quite surprising and funny that some people near us at the restaurant thought we were immigrants and said some ignorant things in English that they assumed we could not understand. I have been researching quite a bit for my trip to Ecuador. I am getting motivated for that. I want to notch up my speaking ability before I go. I still need to think about how I am going to do that. Edited by James29 on 07 August 2012 at 3:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5594 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 157 of 668 07 August 2012 at 3:40am | IP Logged |
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I'm so jealous of your trip! :-)
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 158 of 668 08 August 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
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Yup, this trip is going to be great.. I really cannot wait! It is amazing how much a trip can motivate someone. I am learning a lot about Ecuador and starting to map out the things I want to do and see.
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 159 of 668 13 August 2012 at 2:49am | IP Logged |
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OK, not much new. This was a bit of a slower week Spanish wise. I am slowly moving through Atlas Shrugged. I had a few days where I only did about 20 minutes.
I did a meetup and a couple skype talks. I was very tired for the meetup and basically just listened and did not say too much. Talking and listening in a foreign language really requires a lot of mental energy. I find it quite interesting how much more valuable I am finding the skype talks now. I am starting to feel like they are really extremely useful to the development of my conversation skills. I have been feeling inadequate in my speaking abilities lately. It is making me want to go through FSI again. That really was a wonderful course and I think I would really benefit from doing it again. I still have my pledge not to buy more Spanish books. I could not resist buying the Spanish based French Assimil, however. It felt very strange to read through some of the lessons with two "foreign" languages. My mind got somewhat confused. The Spanish intuitively made sense to me, but it felt strange to feel like the Spanish was the teaching language. I saw some of my French speaking relatives this week and that really made me want to get into French. I know, however, that, for now at least, I will hold off on French. I have the tools necessary now if I ever want to do it. I like the idea of doing it with a Spanish base at first and then reviewing with an English base later. My plan for now is to keep working on Spanish until the end of 2012 and then re-think everything. Maybe I will keep pushing on with Spanish and do FSI or Using Spanish; or maybe I will take a break and spend a bit of time with French. We will see. Boy, I feel like a slacker. This week was pretty bad in terms of Spanish time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 160 of 668 22 August 2012 at 10:27pm | IP Logged |
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I have been working my way through Atlas Shrugged this week. I was hoping to finish this L2/L1 run through the book this weekend, but I will not get there. I will probably need another week.
I am still reading the Queen of the South in English. I will finish that this week. Hopefully I will then get back in the groove of watching Spanish TV in the evenings. That was really a great routine and I am kicking myself that I fell out of that routine. I keep forgetting to mention that I have quit Anki. I just don't like it. It does not click with me. I did a meetup and it was great, but there were no natives. There was one guy who was extremely confortable talking in Spanish because he has spent so much time in South America. He told me about all his trips to Spanish speaking countries. He has been everywhere. I noticed that my grammar and vocabulary is probably better than his, but he can much more easily carry on a conversation. He just rattles things off very comfortable. He makes mistakes, but it does not slow him down and it seems like he is really thinking in Spanish. He is obviously much more "comfortable" using Spanish than I am. It really made me want to try to get more comfortable using the language. I had to write a letter in Spanish for work. The text was probably about half a page single spaced. It made me realize my spelling and grammar certainly need work. It was the first time I did something really "important" in Spanish. I also realize how bad I am with accent marks. I have ALWAYS ignored where they go and when to use them in writing. I had one of my skype partners proof read my letter before I sent it... that made me see that I am a long ways from using the language properly (or even close to properly), but, for the most part, I think my letter functioned quite well and certainly said everything I needed to say and was clearly written. I bought a book for visiting Ecuador. I have not spent a lot of time with it yet... but I will! I really need to think about how I am going to prepare for this trip. I want to make the most of it. I have not been spending as much time on Spanish these last few weeks as I used to. It is giving me more time for other things. It also makes me realize I really need to spend more time on some other things I am trying to do. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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