|
 |
How to move on from intermediate Spanish? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 17 03 April 2012 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
OK, I totally remember that feeling. :-) Reading will get much easier after a couple of books and another 1000 or so words of vocabulary. Here are some reading strategies that worked well for me: - I bought a dozen really interesting books in French, and tried reading them. One of the non-fiction books turned out to be relatively easy, and very interesting. I took a mechanical pencil, and underlined words while I was reading. Every day or two, I'd look up the most interesting words and add them to an SRS deck as Engligh->French and French<-English cards. I learned 20 cards a day (10 in each direction) for about 100 days. By the end of the book, I was only missing 1 to 5 words per page. If I had to do it again, I might trying using cloze cards with context (and definitions on the front?) instead of pairs of English<->French cards. - Later on, I read an exciting fiction book on the Kindle using the built-in French dictionary. This was a bit harder, but I muddled through. - I think LingQ is really great, because it has a smart, built-in dictionary and it keeps track of unknown words for me. Plus, I can also do listening exercises with the same text. There's a tradeoff between long and short books: Long books take forever, but they use a more limited vocabulary, so by the time you reach the end, they're usually a lot easier.
In general, movies and television are a lot harder than either conversation or books. I started reading native books somewhere in the A2 range, but I still have enormous problems with French movies and television. I do hear good things about Spanish- language telenovelas, however. Conversation is a lot easier when you still have holes in your vocabulary, because people will slow down and explain things. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5073 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 10 of 17 03 April 2012 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Reading when your vocabulary is limited can be quite frustrating for sure. One way to go about it is to start off at an appropriate level- the Centro Virtual Cervantes has a great site to get you going: CVC Lecturas paso a paso has three levels- beginner, intermediate and advanced. You click on the level you want and then a virtual "book". Within that "book" are various areas. "Ficha didáctica" will give you, for starters, the difficulty of the reading within that level. There's also a "before you read" and "after you've read" section with exercises. The text has certain words linked to a simple monolingual definition, often with images. Perhaps this may help.
I am of the school of thought of, as Mark Burnett says- "Jump in and swim even if you don't know how". When I first started reading in Portuguese, I chose a Mozambican novel. I had the advantage of having Spanish but still there were many words I didn't know. Most of the unknown words I could figure out through context. That's the best way for me to do it. I can use the dictionary for confirmation of the words I figure out through context and for definitions of the words that elude me. I use a kindle dedicated reader for FL reading and I love the integrated dictionaries- just move your cursor over the word and up pops the definition- "yay!, I was right!". The dedicated kindle reader is so much easier for me than a physical book and a physical dictionary- but then again, that might give you more incentive to figure out words through context. It is such a good feeling when you reach the point of only having to consult the dictionary for a word or two every now and then instead of every sentence. It is not easy to read at first because you have to build vocabulary and grammar but it will get easier the more that you do it. Persistence and perseverance are two of the most important qualities that a language learner must have in order to successfully learn a second language, in my opinion. Edited by iguanamon on 03 April 2012 at 3:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| PillowRock Groupie United States Joined 4545 days ago 87 posts - 151 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 17 03 April 2012 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Another possibility for starting to read at an appropriate level of Spanish is the "Leer en Espanol" series published by the Universidad de Salamanca. They come in 6 different levels, and a fair number of them come with a CD with an audio book version. They're pretty short. Some might consider them pricey for how short they are, but I've found some of them to be good practice especially when including listening to the CDs.
You can find them at amazon US. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5962 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 12 of 17 04 April 2012 at 10:27am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Like others have said, you should try to use materials written entirely in Spanish. There is a wealth of material created for the DELF exam. I liked the following, Anaya. Gramática. Nivel medio B1 Anaya. Gramática. Nivel medio B2 Anaya. Vocabulario. Nivel medio B1 Con CD audio Anaya. Escritura. Nivel Medio B1 Difusión. Lecturas Graduados. Also, the audio magazine, PuntoYComa, has keywords translated and articles for all Spanish levels. The audio uses Spanish speakers from Europe and Latin America. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5084 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 13 of 17 10 April 2012 at 5:37am | IP Logged | |||||
I think you just need to read a lot more extensively to mop up vocabulary, and practice conversations either by text chatting or orally. It's good to throw yourself into uncharted waters. I've been chatting the past few days and discussed all sorts of things, from economic theory to the drug wars in Mexico to religion to pulmonary diseases to organic chemistry, etc. Broaden the field of view beyond the usual topics of family, traveling, your job/studies, etc. and really wrestle with all sorts of arcane topics. You'll learn a lot of that rare and esoteric vocabulary that will keep on showing up later on in your life. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| GSUeagle Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4576 days ago 17 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 14 of 17 17 April 2012 at 5:30am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Well, I just took an ACTFL interview with the head of my department and I received Advanced-low to advanced-mid on their scale. I asked him to clarify and this is what he said:
You did a great job. You can sustain narration in the past tense at paragraph level and can resolve a situation with a complication. This is Advanced level speech. What you need to work on now is increasing your lexicon, your fluidity, and your grammatical accuracy. As you do this, your Advanced-level profile will become more robust and you will move solidly into the mid-level range. You can also work more on the Superior-level features, which you can read about at ACTFL.org. Anyone have further advice to build on what has already been said now that I have a more accurate picture of my abilities in an official scale? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 15 of 17 17 April 2012 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I can't find advice for learners on their site. Link?
My advice still stands. I gave you a few links and I also recommend checking out the various techniques here http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Techniques especially shadowing, scriptorium and Listening-Reading. Edited by Serpent on 17 April 2012 at 1:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hypersport Senior Member United States Joined 5692 days ago 216 posts - 307 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 17 18 April 2012 at 5:10am | IP Logged | |||||
|
If you want to move to fluency, you need to change your life. Change your tv package to a Spanish one and stop watching tv in English.
Read books, lots of them and do it out loud. Listen to music in Spanish. Find the station on your new satellite package that plays the Spanish stuff you like and play it in the background all the time. When you hear a song you like, go to youtube and find it. Then find the lyrics and write them out. Sing the song with them and learn it. Listen to Podcasts as much as possible. Keep Spanish in your ear. Frequenciacero is based out of Mexico and they have an unreal amount of diverse content that you can get at their site or at itunes. Massive content that's fresh every day on a lot of different topics. Extremely well done shows. Speak every chance you get. Keep it on your tongue and in your head. Simple things like cracking eggs and separating whites from the yolks...you're doing this at home or something similar...imagine someone there with you that speaks Spanish. Now explain to them what you're doing in Spanish. Teach them what you're doing. You will quickly find your shortcomings with this exercise. Then go get some paper and write out the dialogue that you wanted to say but couldn't. Then study it and practice it. You gotta want it. What are you willing to do it get it? When I speak Spanish with natives, they can't believe I'm self taught and have never been out of the States. The stuff that I listed above is why, I've had Spanish in my life in a major way for the last 6 years and I'm not about to stop. The journey is long and we are always improving. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
