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Stelle Speaks Spanish and Tagalog | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3938 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 361 of 384 01 October 2014 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your kind words! Things are getting back to normal over here - if, by normal, you mean moving
halfway across the country in less than three weeks. ;) September Spanish Update My goals for September were: - finish The Hunger Games - DONE! - watch eight TV show episodes - almost (I only watched seven) - complete a coursera course - nope. Abandoned after week two. I didn't fail as epically in Spanish as I did in Tagalog this month. But there was just too much going on, and languages took a backseat. Luckily, I've hit a milestone in Spanish: I can use Spanish novels as escapism. I finished the Hunger Games, and am now halfway through the second book in the series (thanks Kerrie!). I plan on just reading through until I finish the whole trilogy. This is the first time that I read a Spanish book on an ereader (my kobo, which uses .epub). I'm a convert! I take back all of my snobby comments about preferring paper over gadgets! While I still prefer reading paper books in English, the embedded dictionary and highlight feature on my kobo rock my world in Spanish. I generally read extensively and don't bother stopping to look up new words. Well, the pop-up dictionary is so fast and easy that I can look a word up without breaking my flow at all. I'm currently almost 200 pages into En Llamas ("real" pages, not ebook pages), and I've highlighted 133 words. When I finish the book, I can go back through them, see how many I know now, and decide whether or not to SRS the others. (Errr...speaking of SRS...I haven't opened my Spanish anki decks in over two weeks. Oops.) I also managed three hours of Skype conversations this month, which is probably the least I've done since I started learning Spanish over a year ago. I'm not too worried about it right now. Language learning is like anything in life - it ebbs and flows. I listened to Buenos Días América at least three times a week, and also managed to listen to a few episodes of Nómadas and Futuro Abierto. I also started listening to the short documentary-style stories on Radio Ambulante whenever they put up a new one. They're very interesting, and I enjoy listening to other accents. Most of the stories on Radio Ambulante are very sad - a man who was tortured in Chile, another who was deported from the States and fought for custody of his sons, a woman who was born and grew up in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents and now has no passport or citizenship anywhere, a village where a startlingly high percentage of residents are blind. It's a good thing they don't post new stories every day, or I'd probably get emotionally burnt out! But they're very well-done and engaging, and I think they're important stories to tell. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I gave up on my coursera course two weeks in. While I was able to understand the lectures, they were only marginally interesting. I decided that the podcasts I listen to are both more engaging and more challenging, so it just didn't make sense to keep slogging through the coursera course. (Lesson learned from Percy Jackson!) In September, I watched two episodes of El Tiempo Entre Costuras and five episodes of Aqui No Hay Quien Viva. I love the costumes and setting of El Tiempo Entre Costuras - it's a visually beautiful show. I'm watching it a bit too slowly, though. I think I'll enjoy it more if I binge-watch it. We'll see if/when I have time for that! As for Aqui No Hay Quien Viva, I absolutely love that show. It's light, funny, ridiculous and easy to watch. I'm getting used to the actors' voices and accents, and each episode is easier to understand than the last. In the first three weeks of October, we have to finish some repairs to our current house, clean / purge / organize / pack, and move halfway across the country. So I don't plan on being ambitious with my goals at all this month. Goals for October: - read at least five times a week (ideally every day) - watch at least six TV show episodes And that's it! I'll probably end up doing more, but I'm aiming low for my must-dos. Edited by Stelle on 01 October 2014 at 3:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3938 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 362 of 384 13 October 2014 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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SPANISH
Ah, I love to read! Books, beautiful books! I finished the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy, and loved every page. I didn't like the story quite as much as the first book, but it was definitely a page-turner. I tracked new words using my kobo, and am now slowly going back through the highlighted words and creating an anki deck, adding a few entries every day. Here's one of my cards from today: FRONT: La ropa de Cinna mantiene bien el calor y llego empapada de sudor bajo el traje, aunque tengo la cara entumecida por el frío. BACK: empapada - soaked entumecida - numb These cards are very low-stress and fun to run through. I'm only doing five new cards per day. I'm using this deck to build my receptive vocabulary. A few of the words that I highlighted in the book (flint, grapevine, etc) are also finding their way into my deck for productive vocabulary, which goes from L1 -> L2. My current read - Harry Potter three - is in paper form. I like the tactile act of reading a paper book, but I definitely see the benefit of ebooks when learning another language. I'm not highlighting any new vocabulary at all in Harry Potter. I find that looking up words while reading a paper book really breaks my flow, unlike highlighting words while reading an e-book. I'll go back to the third Hunger Games book after finishing with HP3. Not a lot of TV-watching this month. I've watched one episode of Aqui no hay quien viva and one episode of The Simpsons. I'm definitely going to need to make more time for watching/listening this month. TAGALOG For ease of log-keeping, I've decided to merge my Spanish and Tagalog logs. While it made sense to keep separate logs at first, I'm currently working on simplifying everything in my life - including language-learning! So all updates will be made here from now on. For those of you who've never read my Taga-log (such a shame that I'm losing a log title that makes me giggle at my own not-so-epic cleverness!), I've been working (very slowly) on learning Tagalog since May 2014. I'm currently focusing on anki, a textbook-and-workbook course (Elementary Tagalog), and conversations on Skype. After six months, I can almost speak like a toddler. Almost. If you're interested, here's my my original Tagalog log. I've slowed my Tagalog-learning waaaaaay down, after focusing on it quite intensively during the last six-week challenge. I had big plans for the month of September, but then my motivation plummeted. I guess I just got a bit tired. This month, I'm focusing on keeping up with vocabulary study using anki and memrise; near-daily 15-minute review sessions, revisiting audio, text and grammar from previous lessons; and spending time working through a new lesson only when I actually feel like it (which so far has only been 2-3 times per week). One interesting thing that I noticed is that my anki approach for Spanish isn't working quite as well in Tagalog. I started out with L1->L2 cards, and have been doing very well, with strong recall. Except that when I hear or read a word, I can't figure out what it means. I know that I know it, but I just can't seem to process quickly enough. So now I'm experimenting with reverse cards for particularly tricky words: L1->L2 AND L2->L1. I'm not doing this for every word, since the number of cards in my deck would quickly spiral out of control. But I've been selectively creating reverse cards, and I'm already seeing the benefit. Edited by Stelle on 13 October 2014 at 10:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3938 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 363 of 384 18 October 2014 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's been a quiet week! Most days I read in Spanish, maybe listen to a podcast while running errands, and run
through my anki decks. That's about it for now. I'm ok with that, since there's a lot going on in my life right now, and I simply don't have long chunks of time (or mental energy) to devote to language learning. Still, if I counted up all the minutes, I probably spend at least an hour a day on languages - 45ish minutes on Spanish (reading, listening, anki) and 15ish minutes on Tagalog (anki and memrise). I think that's very reasonable to maintenance, and once we get a few details ironed out, I'll be refreshed and ready to jump back in once I move from Nova Scotia to Toronto in a little over a week. I've been enjoying the third Harry Potter book. I think it's actually quite a bit more difficult than The Hunger Games! There are definitely some new words in each chapter, although I'm not keeping track of any of them. Still, the book is a good level for me - easy to follow and interesting enough to suck me in. I was talking to my parents about anki cards (they're both casually learning Spanish), and I was surprised to hear myself describe several different kinds of cards that I use. I'm not very innovative or creative with anki, but I've managed to build a variety of cards in my deck. I put some of the screenshots up on my blog. I figure that for language-learners, looking through someone else's flashcards is kind of like peeking in a bathroom cabinet. Ha! my anki cards Anyway, back to packing, organizing and getting paperwork in order! edited because my fingers sometimes do their own thing instead of listening to my brain Edited by Stelle on 18 October 2014 at 4:57pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4045 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 364 of 384 24 October 2014 at 9:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I liked your post about your Anki deck. I admit, my Anki deck is about as boring as it comes... list a word in Spanish and I have to translate it to English. I might add some more kinds of cards, especially as I run into concepts that I easily forget while going through FSI.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5030 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 365 of 384 24 October 2014 at 11:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Stelle,
I read your ANKI link also. Interesting the different ways which people use it. Have you tried the subss2srs that emk swears by? I have an Italian deck which is a list of the top 20k most used words in Italian which I have just the word and the google translation. This was easy to create, downloaded a csv file of most common words and uploaded it to google translate, created a 2 column spreadsheet and imported into anki (20 minute job). The reason I mention this is I have it setup to show me 50 new cards per day with max reviews of 150 per day. Because I've got a good Italian vocabulary I can whiz through this and get a lot of new words. I suspend (quicker than delete) cards liberally and only keep cards like "hinge" as I run across them. But I find it really boosts the vocabulary, a bit like a word of the day in English, and it repeats the ones I didn't know or encounter while reading. I've also started doing this with the top 5000 French words, and top 6000 non-noun words from EMK's lexical database he shared. Whizzing through this each day also helps the same way. I have found that in Mandarin a language which I've only been doing for a few months, this type of thing is useless because just about every word is a new word so I have a more traditional set of decks like yours. I also wondered if you used the profile system with your ANKI decks? From your screenshots I'm guessing you don't do a profile per language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3938 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 366 of 384 04 November 2014 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
Nope! I'm really not very into all of the techie aspects of anki, and don't fuss with my cards much. I just create new cards when needed, and run through my reps. Confession: I'm a lazy language learner! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3938 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 367 of 384 05 November 2014 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have depressingly little to report.
I'm still living with my in-laws (parents and brother; also sister and 2 children are visiting for the week), so I haven't settled in to a routine yet. The good news is that I'm surrounded by Tagalog all of the time, and if I focus, I can understand the gist of things (sometimes). The bad news is that I absolutely need to do focused study at my current level, and I'm not doing it. I need to start again. I'm motivated, but I don't have much personal space right now, and I feel a bit silly pulling out my Tagalog textbook at the kitchen table. Evenings are full of talk, or card-playing, or long meals, or The Walking Dead (which we watch with English subtitles, and which is punctuated with "Ay naku!" or other Tagalog interjections). I haven't opened a book in a week. Which means that I haven't done any Spanish at all. So all that to say - zero formal study, zero Spanish, but lots of Tagalog immersion and lots of fun family time. Edited by Stelle on 05 November 2014 at 4:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4045 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 368 of 384 06 November 2014 at 1:42am | IP Logged | ||
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You're doing something, even if it isn't Spanish.
We all go through times when we have less time for one thing because it's spent on something else. You'll find more time for Spanish later. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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