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James29’s Spanish Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5185 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 633 of 668 11 May 2015 at 1:22am | IP Logged |
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That's a great way of doing things. I'll do that in the future for other books. I bought the Connelly book as a package of six books and, unfortunately, the kindle looks at all six books as one book. So, I'm somewhere around 18% but I'm actually almost done with the first book.
I must say, I really love the kindle. It is so easy to use and the pop-up feature is just incredible. I'm also amazed how darn easy it is to buy a book. Literally all you do is press one button and you have bought the book and it is on your kindle. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3332 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 634 of 668 12 May 2015 at 2:11am | IP Logged |
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Almost a little TOO easy sometimes. I'm a little too quick to push that "one click purchase" button. :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5017 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 635 of 668 12 May 2015 at 1:37pm | IP Logged |
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Indeed, Amazon are smart and they've made it so quick and easy that it just doesn't feel like spending money. Which can be dangerous :). Not to mention it's a lot simpler than either buying elsewhere or obtaining illegally then transferring from your computer to the device - they've understood that many customers like me will take the easy option. Now if only French publishers would realise that too and make their ebooks available outside of France like the Italian ones do!
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5185 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 636 of 668 17 May 2015 at 2:46pm | IP Logged |
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Well, it has been a good week. I'm back in the groove with Spanish. I finished the Michael Connelly book this week, but I'm not going to update my 2015 goals until next week because I don't have the word count of the book.
I liked the book and would certainly read another of his books. There weren't any parts of the books that dragged too much. It kept my interest and the plot was simple enough to follow. It did feel like it took me a long time to read. I'm interested to see what the word count is because it felt like it was much longer than the Grisham book I recently finished. It is tough to say how well you understand something when you don't know what you are missing (because you are missing it). I happened to listen to a few minutes of the audio book in English and I was struck at how detailed and colorful it was. It really gave me visuals of certain parts of the book that I did not get when I was reading... certain nuances that were either not in the translation or that were glossed over by my reading. Anyway, I'm solidly at the point where I can read a popular novel translated into Spanish. I'd say it is actually pretty easy at this point for me to do this. I'm going to take a break with reading for a while in order to get some personal projects and some work projects progressing. I've been working on the grammar book and finished lesson 113 of 116 today. I'll easily finish it this upcoming week. That will be a great project done. I'm really glad I did it. When I started it I told myself that I'd go through it twice, but now, after having completed almost all of it, it is clear that I won't want to do it twice. It was borderline review material for the first 3/4 of the book so I don't want to go through all of that stuff again. I noted the 15 or so lessons I had difficulty with so I might go back and re-do those ones sometime. I'm also chugging along with reading the Spanish parts of the French Assimil book. I don't see why this book gets such raging reviews. I don't find the dialogues that fascinating at all. It is certainly a lot more substantive than the Spanish book and it seems like it teaches more material than the Spanish book. Eventually I'll do this book for real and actually use it to learn some French. On the French front, I listened to the first five hours of the Paul Noble course. I loved it. I had a super long drive (8.5 hours over two days) and I listened to two hours of it each day. Then I used my morning commute to cover the additional hour. I only have the first six hours right now and I'll do that additional hour sometime soon. I did the MT course about a year or so ago. I'd say MT covers more ground, but the PN course really seemed to "work" better. I think he put a ton of effort into organizing it and making sure it went at a good pace. I'm still not watching too much TV in Spanish. I'll have to get back into that eventually as I think I need it in order to help my comprehension. I'm also not doing many skype talks at all nowadays. I'm realizing that I am not the greatest partner... I try to set things up and I am reliable if we schedule something, but my schedule simply makes things impossible to actually find a time when both my partner and I can be available. I did do a meetup this week. I do better in smaller groups rather than a big mob of people who are all talking among themselves at the same time. If I can develop a conversation that lasts for a while I really get into a groove and do wonderful with my Spanish. There is something about the cadence of a conversation that makes me speak much better. Well, I feel like there is something I've missed this week. I'm still liking the Spanish journey. Nowadays it is more about the positive feeling and feeding the habit/addiction than it is about actually studying or advancing my Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5185 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 637 of 668 17 May 2015 at 8:01pm | IP Logged |
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This morning when I updated my log I did not update my goals for the year because I did not have the word count of the Connelly book. I'm going to update them now. It's been a long time since I've updated them.
1. Finish Gramatica de Uso del Espanol B1/B2. -> Finished Lesson 113. 2. Read novels totaling 1,000,000 words. -> Finished four novels totaling 516,000 words (En Llamas with 105,000; El Fiscal en el Candelero with 66,000; Diez Negritos with roughly 66,000; Los Litigantes with roughly 127,000; and, The Black Echo with 152,000). 3. Listen to Spanish every morning on the way to work. -> So far, so good (although I'm now allowing French too). 4. Watch any 100 30 minute TV episodes. -> So far have watched equivalent of roughly 14 episodes. No progress lately. 5. Write 12 letters or memos for correction. -> No progress. 6. Read the Spanish side of Assimil's New French With Ease (Spanish Base). -> 108 lessons done/read. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5185 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 638 of 668 23 May 2015 at 2:21pm | IP Logged |
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Ok, I got some stuff accomplished this week so I am going to update my goals for 2015.
1. Finish Gramatica de Uso del Espanol B1/B2. -> DONE!!! 2. Read novels totaling 1,000,000 words. -> Finished four novels totaling 516,000 words (En Llamas with 105,000; El Fiscal en el Candelero with 66,000; Diez Negritos with roughly 66,000; Los Litigantes with roughly 127,000; and, The Black Echo with 152,000). 3. Listen to Spanish every morning on the way to work. -> So far, so good (although I'm now allowing French too). 4. Watch any 100 30 minute TV episodes. -> So far have watched equivalent of roughly 14 episodes. No progress lately. 5. Write 12 letters or memos for correction. -> No progress. 6. Read the Spanish side of Assimil's New French With Ease (Spanish Base). -> DONE!!! Discussion: So I finished the grammar book. I just posted a review on the forum in the section on books and programs that discusses my experience with the program. I will DEFINITELY do the C1/C2 book at some point. This grammar book was just an awesome resource. I also finished reading the Spanish of the Assimil book. Nothing special there. I'm curious why people rave so much about that course. The dialogues are not nearly as interesting as the Spanish book. I can see that the French book is MUCH more comprehensive and obviously teaches a lot more of the language. Each lesson is just jam packed with notes. I think it would be a wonderful program if I ever really get serious about learning French. I got some things accomplished this week, but, in actuality, it was a fairly slow week. I'm still listening to Spanish every morning on my commute and I occasionally have a skype chat. Meetups are good. There are consistently some native speakers which is good. This week I had a wonderful long talk with a nice Colombian man. I'm putting less time into Spanish simply because I need some of my morning time for work. As long as I continue doing something every day I'll be happy. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4819 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 639 of 668 23 May 2015 at 4:38pm | IP Logged |
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Congratulations, that is a lot of progress!
And you inspire me to work on my Spanish grammar more. Could you recommend any Spanish series with 30 minute long episodes, please? Well, I wasn't too impressed with the Spanish Assimil, especially compared to some of the others, even though I only tried it for a few lessons. But I wonder, have you tried the follow up Perfectionnement book? I consider using it and haven't found many reviews so far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5185 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 640 of 668 23 May 2015 at 5:14pm | IP Logged |
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I'd LOVE to find a telenovela or series of some sort with 30 minute episodes. It seems to be tough. I have watched a lot of episodes of the Simpsons and Caso Cerrado which both have 30 minute episodes. There used to be a site with the episodes of El Capo split in half. That show would be pretty easy to watch in 22-30 minute chunks. Also, El Chavo del Ocho is a good option if you like shows like that.
I really loved the Spanish Assimil course when I did it. Now that I have seen some other courses I can see that it really was not the best Assimil course. Using Spanish (English base) gets a lot of criticism and I can see why, but it is pretty good for an advanced course. Because you speak advanced French you should definitely use the French based advanced Assimil. Finding quality advanced Spanish material is tough. One course I never did was the Living Language Ultimate Advanced. That looks like a good Advanced/Intermediate resource that is probably roughly on par with Using Spanish... but uses Latin American Spanish. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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