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Gatsby’s Spanish Log [The Romantics] | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4442 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 22 20 March 2012 at 4:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey all.
My name's Gatsby, I'm a college student wrapping up my second semester of Spanish. The class leaves something to be desired through what's asked of us on a speaking level, whereas I feel like my writing and grammar are improving with each week. Right now, I haven't even reached A1 yet. By the end of the semester, I will have, though it's my goal to use this site and my own self study to start speeding the process along. At my current speed, it'd take me until next year to progress to B1. My goal is to reach B1 by the end of this year. To sum it up, my goal is Sub A1 to solid B1 by the end of 2012. I plan on participating in TAC and would like to join Team Romantics. Looking forward to keeping up with this. Learning Spanish has been one of the only joys afforded to me this last year, and I can't wait to start getting competent with it! Edited by Gatsby42 on 22 March 2012 at 3:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4442 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 22 22 March 2012 at 3:56am | IP Logged | ||
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3-21-12
We just wrapped up chapter 7, which covered verbs like gustar, the preterite or ser and ir, reflexive verbs and and indefinite and negative words. Last chapter was a woozy as there were a lot of verbs to swallow(some of which were of the blasted stem changing variety ><), but I'm happy to report that I got a whopping 95% on the test I took for the unit! That was last unit though and today we started a new one. Vocab wise, we're learning about food. The verbs we're learning are the preterite of stem changing verbs along with others. One thing I've neglected to mention is that I have a friend fluent in Spanish who I get to practice with often. During my first semester or so I wasn't really capable of speaking with him, but now we have entire texting conversations in Spanish and I'm able to constantly invent new sentences. That doesn't sound very impressive as I type it, but it feels pretty good to finally be saying certain sentences in Spanish without having to pause for each word. In the meantime, I've been trying to learn about some of the more popular methods here of learning languages. I just downloaded Anki and am gonna start getting it up after class tomorrow. I'm also planning on hitting my local library up to rent out Pimsluer's Spanish. One of my very time intensive classes ends this Tuesday, and it'll allow me to dedicate all the time I really want to give into this amazing language. In the meantime, gonna get started with Anki tonight and will continue fighting the good fight tomorrow. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5196 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 22 22 March 2012 at 4:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the team, Gatsby! Good luck with your studies this year!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5010 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 22 22 March 2012 at 5:26am | IP Logged | ||
Welcome to The Romantics, Gatsby42. In reply to your query (on the Team thread): updating's done on your own log. But, if you wish, you can follow other members' logs and posts too. (I think Mani has a full list of Romantics members in the first page of "The Romantics" Team thread.) Click on whichever log you're interested in, and click on the link at the bottom that says "watch this topic for replies". You can do the same with any other thread too, of course. - I often find useful tips and interesting information on logs which have nothing to do with my target language/s. There's also a "Search" button (in the black banner at the top of the screen) which allows you to do Google searches, and "tag" searches. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4442 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 22 22 March 2012 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the welcome guys. I wish both of you luck in your studies as well!
Songlines: Awesome, I appreciate all the info. I'll be sure to follow both yours and Kerrie's thread. It's looking like there's a shortage of people specifically focusing on Spanish who are keeping their logs updated, so I imagine that I'll have to learn from everyone. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4442 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 22 23 March 2012 at 12:20am | IP Logged | ||
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3-22-12
Today was pretty light as far as Spanish goes. I pulled an all nighter, in which one of the things I watched was the second episode of Destinos. This ended up coming in handy for what came after. I work in the medical field and for the last week or so I've been doing clinicals for a new certification I want to obtain. The class has been an enormous time sink and today was the second to last day. Come Tuesday, I'll have way more time to study Spanish. I mention this, because today, I had a patient who only spoke Spanish. As a result, I was put into a situation where I needed to speak Spanish just to do my job. Now, this patient was an elderly woman with dementia, so she was very combative, distant and at times, nonsensical. There were answers she'd give me at times that I'm pretty sure wouldn't even make sense to a native speaker. Still, I was able to speak to her about as much as I would an English patient with dementia. Just basic stuff, asking her what things she wanted to eat or drink; asking her to give me things or if she could do certain things for me. When I first started trying to ask her things, I was really nervous that my pronunciation would render me incomprehensible, but my Spanish was sound. I did run into some brick walls. I haven't run into the word for things like "blood sugar check", "vital signs" or "stop hitting me you crazy bitch", but the entire experience was a huge confidence booster that had me giddy. After that, I continued to make flash cards for our new class unit. We're learning how to combine indirect object pronouns with direct object pronouns, on top of learning how to compare things with one another. I only made the flash cards and called it quits once I was able to go through all the vocab without missing a beat. Then I continued with today's Anki session and called it a day. I don't think I've ever felt so rewarded as a result of my studies as I have today. It's a further reinforcement that I want to continue learning this language. Edited by Gatsby42 on 23 March 2012 at 12:21am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4442 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 22 26 March 2012 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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3/26/2012
After a couple days of irresponsible fun, I went back on the studying boat. The studying was still pretty light. I'm not sure if there's more to using Anki than just taking advantage of the large pre-made card sets, but I've been enjoying it and spent about an hour learning new phrases after I hit my limit for the day. Then I finally got my hands on Pimsleur's Spanish one and got through the first two lessons. On one hand, I don't like the idea of flat out learning fixed sentences. I feel like I should be aiming for the kind of understanding that allows me to randomly invite sentences, but within the first two lessons, I already knew all the words so it was actually very refreshing to see the pages. My desire to learn Spanish is becoming a near obsession. I just can't wait until after this Tuesday when my main class ends. I'm thinking once that happens, I'll also begin the L-R method with none other than the first Harry Potter book. Hasta luego mis amigos. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gatsby42 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4442 days ago 55 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 22 28 March 2012 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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3/28/2012
Not much new to report. Been keeping up with Pimsleur, in which I just reached unit 6. Pimsleur is a load of fun, if only for the good pronunciation it's encouraging. It's kinda annoying to have it trap me within single conjugations, like having you say "De donde es usted?" versus "De donde eres?" or "Entiende ingles?" versus "entiendes ingles?", but it's just fun to be speaking Spanish and while actually focusing on the music of it. It's easy to see why this can be such a great supplement. Meanwhile, been keeping up with my course work. Today we're supposed to write out a dialogue a couple minutes in length and present it in front of the class. Most people in my class are cripplingly afraid of actually using their Spanish, but I'm excited that he's finally pushing us out of our comfort zone. If I had my way, my professor would be speaking Spanish and requiring Spanish back all the time. What's the point of having a fluent instructor otherwise? So I'm gonna work on that in the meantime. Once I'm home from class, I'm gonna work on developing my own Anki deck(made out of the giant unorganized and forgotten pile of flashcards I've accumulated over the last year) and finally I'm planning on finally beginning L-R with Harry Potter. I managed to get the audiobook and Spanish PDF, but will have to use my old hardcover copy as my L1 text. While I don't always post here daily, I have been practicing every day. Hell, this Friday I'm having a tutoring session with a Mexican native, so I'm excited for that too. Until next time! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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