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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 225 of 668 29 April 2013 at 3:28am | IP Logged |
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I am still just chugging along. I worked on lesson 31 today in Using Spanish. I like the course and am still picking up good knowledge.
Still working through Spanish Without Toil as I exercise. I am on about lesson 71. Watched a couple episodes of El Capo. I am getting more used to the accent. Went to the regular meetup. It was a lot of fun. I also found myself out of town one day this week and went to a different meetup. Very different, but a good and fun experience. Did some skype chatting. I have my tickets to Spain. Yippee! I still need to come up with a plan. It is much mroe expensive than Ecuador so I need to come up with a way to do it more on the cheap. By the looks of things this could get expensive. I will likely just hire a tutor instead of go to a school. Somehow I need to find a cheap place to stay. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4832 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 226 of 668 30 April 2013 at 11:45pm | IP Logged |
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That's awesome news! Where in Spain will you be going? Accommodation can be quite reasonable if you don't mind sharing a dorm room, and some of them are actually quite nice. You are looking at maybe £15 a night maximum, and that's for a small dorm in a top rated hostel. I don't know how that converts to dollars.
I would imagine though that hiring a private tutor for any reasonable length of time will cost silly money though. At least £10 an hour and probably a lot more. If I was in your situation I would just spend the time exploring as there's loads to see and do, much more than can fit in one, or even several trips, although of course its up to you. Let me know if I can help out with any information on specific places etc. 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 227 of 668 06 May 2013 at 2:20am | IP Logged |
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Well, I will be going to Madrid and Valencia... possibly some other places too. I really need to spend some time planning because right now I don't have a clue what to do. I think it was you, dbag, that suggested hostelworld.com it is a great site to find cheap hotel rooms. I think I will go with a bed and breakfast. I am not much for the shared dorm approach, but I am really cheap... with a bed and breakfast I should be able to cook some meals to save come cash and they aren't much more than shared dorms.
In terms of Spanish I am still chugging along. I skipped Using Spanish one day this week and opted for a nice long skype talk instead. I managed to get through another 5 lessons in Using Spanish so I finished lesson 35 today on the second wave through it. I am going to need to skip meetups for a while due to some work committments. I watched an episode or two of El Capo. I am not sure what the problem is, but the video is about a full second behind the audio and it is very annoying. I need to see if I can get that fixed because I don't like watching it like this. I had a great experience. I saw someone who looked Mexican and I just launched into Spanish to introduce myself and we had a nice chat. I am getting much more confident with my Spanish. Well, that's it for now. In terms of what will be coming next, I am going to finish up Using Spanish and then just do some odds and ends before I go to Spain. I will bring the Davinci Code with me on the trip. Then when I get back from Spain I will re-think everything. I am thinking of doing FSI again. We will see. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5593 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 228 of 668 06 May 2013 at 1:14pm | IP Logged |
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Out of sync audio is very annoying. There are ways to actually fix it, but probably the easiest way to just deal with the problem so you can watch your program is this.
I have tried this myself and it works. Edited by Random review on 06 May 2013 at 1:19pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5185 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 229 of 668 13 May 2013 at 2:42am | IP Logged |
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Cool. I never would have known there was a way to fix it. Thanks. I didn't get a chance to watch an episode so I don't yet know if it works.
I finished lesson 42 today in Using Spanish. I will be glad to finish it. I tested a few FSI lessons and even many of the harder lessons seemed "easy." I am beginning to think I may not want to just do the whole course again and, perhaps, instead just focus in on certain drills. I still have time to figure that out. I had a long drive and listened to the last thirty dialogues of Using Spanish. I had a few good text chats, but didn't do any voice chats. For work I had to spend a half day with a Spanish speaking customer. We spoke Spanish the entire time. It was somewhat intense stuff and my Spanish held up the whole time. I could definitely do my job in Spanish now... although it would be very difficult and I would need someone to read/edit my written Spanish. I am also going to be doing up a webpage for my work's website in Spanish. It is kind of cool that Spanish things are slowly seeping into my real life. I feel my written Spanish is, by far, my weakest link. I have totally ignored it. Hopefully this website project will help. I will have to write quite a bit of text. I have had to skip my meetups lately. My spontaneity in purchasing my tickets to Spain has caused a problem. I am planning my trip and am realizing that it is going to really break the bank. I guess in my mind I was thinking it would be a lot cheaper to live over there. Oh well, this is going to be a great trip... even if I have to just bring a tent and eat out of cans. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5185 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 230 of 668 18 May 2013 at 1:49am | IP Logged |
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I don't usually update my log until Sunday night, but I am just so excited about Spanish right now.
I am still working my way through Using Spanish. I am on track to have it finished by the end of the month. I watched a couple more episodes of El Capo. Unfortunately Randomreview's trick did not help get the audio timing better, but I found a simpler fix. I just switched browsers and it worked fine in Google Chrome. I am actively trying to use accent marks when I write now. I have my work computer toggled so I can switch between Spanish and English keyboards. It is hard because I have NEVER written with accent marks. But, even in just one short week I am getting the feel. I did a couple short skype talks and a couple long text chats. I had a major breakthrough. I watched a few videos and understood 100% of the spoken Spanish. It took me a second to realize that it was basically just as easy as English for me to understand. I watched a 7 minute interview of Marco Rubio and an episode of a Univision news show and understood everything. Even El Capo was pretty easy to understand... there were only a few scenes where I did not pick up what they were saying. I am still working through Assimil's Spanish without Toil. It is kind of a waste of time, but I will finish it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5593 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 231 of 668 18 May 2013 at 2:28am | IP Logged |
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Sorry, mate. Didn't notice you were streaming, I always downloaded the files. Glad you
solved it anyway. Congratulations n finishing Using Spanish! Looks life,e you're going to finish it before me as I'm not studying Spanish at the moment, you b*****d!  lol-risa-007.gif">Edited by Random review on 18 May 2013 at 2:30am 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 232 of 668 27 May 2013 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
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Yup, I will finish Using Spanish very soon. I am on lesson 56 today (on the second wave through it).
I have been consistently working with a course as my base and then doing native materials also. I am now feeling that if I do more course work it really needs to be more active than what I am doing now. I would still like to keep pushing my Spanish to higher levels. I need to suck it up and do some hard work for a while. The good thing is that I have been able to consistently spend time with Spanish almost every single day. It is extremely rare for me to miss a day. The Using Spanish lessons now seem more like just passive reading and picking up a bit of vocabulary. The blind shadowing is good, but probably not really doing too much for me. I am starting to think about what I will do now. I will have a bit over a month between my end of Using Spanish and my trip to Spain. I am tempted to dive back into FSI. I am, however, concerned that I am now falling into this course trap where I am always going to want a course to rely on for the base of my studies. I don't think I would ever do any other course, however, because there is nothing else that I think would really push my level of Spanish. For example, I have Living Language's Ultimate Advanced and I am NOT going to do it. I just think it would be a waste of time. As a matter of perspective, I remember checking out the LL course from the library a few years ago and thinking "holy cow, this is so incredibly advanced I will never be able to do it." Now it is too easy... and I am NOT yet "incredibly advanced." Oh well. I am struggling with the decision of whether or not to pay for formal Spanish instruction in Spain. Part of me really likes it because I would like to have some structure in my day. The other part of me thinks it may be a waste of money and I did not get too much for my money in Ecuador when I had a one on one tutor. I will keep thinking about it. In terms of Spanish for this past week. I also watched a couple episodes of El Capo. I'd like to finish season one before the end of the year. That is now a mini-goal. I listened a bit to my DHH Biblia. I will likely finish the New Testament this year. This was one of my New Year's Resolutions. It is quite easy to understand, but I must confess, that from a strictly Spanish learning perspective I find it somewhat boring. I did a nice, long meetup. That was a lot of fun. I also did some skype talks. I have some very good exchange partners on skype. I am still slowly reading through Without Toil as I exercise. This is really a waste of time because it is too easy. I only have 20+ lessons left, however, so I will just keep going through it. It is also "free" Spanish time as I would not be doing anything else with this time and it does not impact my "serious" Spanish time. I figured out how to use Spanish characters (ñ, é, í, etc) and have tried to do some typing in Spanish. I even now know what "toggle" means :). I REALLY need to work on this because I have NEVER worked on accents or real typing. The few times I needed to write letters in Spanish for work I realized that I am an idiot when it comes to writing in real Spanish. I want to sometime take a few days and just spend my Spanish time typing Spanish. I may whiz through Assimil's Spanish with Ease and just type all the Spanish with proper accents. This is particularly important as I really need to do up a Spanish webpage for my work's website. One minor fun thing that happened this week. I am not a very outgoing person and I always kick myself when I hear someone speaking Spanish (not too often around here) and I don't say anything to them. Earlier this week I saw a young boy (probably 6 years old) talking with his mother in Spanish. He looked directly at me when I was walking by so I spoke to him in Spanish. He seemed confused and surprised. It was pretty funny. I spoke to his mom for a couple minutes. She seemed surprised too. I cannot think of much else I did in Spanish this week. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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