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Stelle Speaks Spanish and Tagalog

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Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3904 days ago

949 posts - 1686 votes 
Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 153 of 384
05 January 2014 at 10:09pm | IP Logged 
I struggled a lot with my Spanish Skype session today. I know that it's natural, but I find it very frustrating that
one day I feel fluent and confident, and another day I seem to stumble over every second word. Today I kept
getting stuck and trying to translate from English. I know that to improve, I need to think in Spanish. And most of
the time I manage - just not today.

Luckily, I have another 30-minute session tomorrow, and I fully expect to redeem myself!

I haven't touched my anki decks in three days. It just seems like…work. I know that work is a good thing, and
that I need to keep building my vocabulary, but a break of a few days won't kill me. I'll tackle my anki decks
tomorrow and get caught up.

I still have four chapters left in the Spanish verb workbook that I'd planned on finishing by the end of December -
and which I could easily have done in just 20 minutes a day. But I'm much more interested in extensive activities
right now: reading, watching, chatting on Skype.

I'm not terribly worried about this. I know that I'll naturally be drawn back to formal study when I need it. I've
gone through at least two long blocks of time where I set grammar aside, coming back to the book only when my
frustration level increased to the point where I needed it - first to learn past tense, and later to learn present
subjunctive. I can feel myself needing some more complicated verbal structures now - which was part of my
frustration during today's Skype session - so I expect that I'll crack open the book again any day now.

I find it interesting that I have these peaks and valleys, where I start out feeling very confident until my
frustration peaks, I learn whatever grammar point I currently need, and then I feel confident again. I know that
this cycle of confidence and frustration is very common. I've seen it in my students for over a decade. But it's
really interesting to experience it myself!

2014 Spanish challenge, week one:

100 45-minute TV shows: 4/100

1 episode of Buffy (3.7)
1 episode of Nuestros caminos a Santiago (1.1)
3 episodes of The Simpsons (1.7, 1.8, 1.9)
1 episode of Isabel (2.12)

100 Skype conversations: 3/100
2.5 hours with Skype Spanish tutors

100 short texts: 2/100
post on italki
email to a language partner

14 novels: 0/14
52 pages of Harry Potter y la camera secret

edited to add a missing word

Edited by Stelle on 05 January 2014 at 10:14pm

6 persons have voted this message useful



PointsDotsLines
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 3766 days ago

76 posts - 110 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, English
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 154 of 384
05 January 2014 at 11:16pm | IP Logged 
¡Qué bien tenías una semana productivo!
1 person has voted this message useful



Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3904 days ago

949 posts - 1686 votes 
Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 155 of 384
12 January 2014 at 10:37pm | IP Logged 
I'm absolutely thrilled to have finished the second Harry Potter book this week. Today, I experienced a first in
Spanish: I lost track of time while reading. Generally I enjoy reading in Spanish, but it isn't the same as in English.
It feels like work - fun work, but work. Today, though, I found myself turning page after page, unable to put
down my book. I read 45 pages this afternoon, which is more than I've ever read in Spanish in one sitting. I feel
like this is a major breakthrough for me.

I plan on reading all of the Harry Potter books this year, and I already own book 3, but for now I'm going to move
on to another series. I'm going to start reading the Percy Jackson series tomorrow. I have the first three books on
my bookshelf. I had a quick look at the reading levels for Percy Jackson and Harry Potter, and it appears that the
Percy Jackson books are a bit easier, especially when compared with the later Harry Potter books. It makes more
sense to start with easier books and read the harder ones a bit later.

My goal for reading right now is really extensive reading: reading for fun, at a relatively quick pace, using novels
that I can understand without having to look up too many words.

I taught elementary school for 8 years, and I know that children develop most quickly as readers when they read
"just right" books - books that are easy by anyone's standards, but not so easy that they don't hold the reader's
attention. As their skills progress, so too does the difficulty of the text that they're reading - but they will always
seem "easy" to the reader. An appropriate independent reading level is 95%+, and that's what I've been aiming for
in Spanish. Much as my students improved almost without noticing it, I've been improving steadily and quietly.
While Roald Dahl was my "just right" level a few months ago, now his books are too easy for me. In October,
Harry Potter seemed impossible and I put it away for a few months. Today, I found myself completely enthralled
with the second book - a very good sign that it's the perfect book for my current reading level.

I expect that by the end of 2014 (after having read the Percy Jackson series, the Harry Potter series and the
Hunger Games trilogy), I'll be more than ready to move on to books written in Spanish for adults. In the
meantime, I'm quite happy with my steady diet of translated pre-teen and young adult novels. It's a good thing
that I love children's literature in any language!

2014 Spanish challenge, week two:

100 45-minute TV shows: 5 (9/100)
1 episode of Buffy (3.8)
6 episodes of The Simpsons (1.10, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, 2.1, 2.2) - counts as 3 for tracking purposes
1 episode of Isabel (2.13)

100 Skype conversations: 2 (5/100)
30 minutes with my Dad
45 minutes with a Skype tutor

100 short texts: 2 (4/100)
introduction on Lobos thread
text corrected by tutor

14 novels: 1 (1/14)
finished Harry Potter y la camara secret


Edited by Stelle on 12 January 2014 at 10:41pm

4 persons have voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4769 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 156 of 384
13 January 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged 
Congratulations! It's awesome to get lost in a book, the more when it is in another language and for the first time! You've progressed immensely!

Don't worry about the ups and downs much. It just happens and it's normal. More practice and focus on thinking in Spanish, that is all great so don't let it get spoiled by feeling bad about the worse days. :-) You're awesome. Take a huge backpack to Spain so that you can carry home all the compliments you'll receive there ;-)
2 persons have voted this message useful



BAnna
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4382 days ago

409 posts - 616 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish
Studies: Russian, Turkish

 
 Message 157 of 384
13 January 2014 at 2:07am | IP Logged 
Great description of the "just right" approach, and it's made me reconsider my next book to read. I just finished a
bit of a challenge, so maybe I'll drop back down to an more comfortable level for a change. There are still lots of
new words in a simpler text, and it's less of an energy drain. Congratulations on finishing HP2.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3904 days ago

949 posts - 1686 votes 
Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 158 of 384
15 January 2014 at 11:46pm | IP Logged 
@Cavesa, thanks for the kind words and encouragement! You made me laugh out loud with your backpack
comment.

@BAnna, thanks for the comment! I honestly find that if I force myself to read something that's too hard, I just don't
get much out of it. Probably because I'm impulsive - I don't like a slog if I can avoid it. ;)
1 person has voted this message useful



Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3904 days ago

949 posts - 1686 votes 
Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 159 of 384
15 January 2014 at 11:54pm | IP Logged 
I just finished lesson 37 of FSI. I'm glad that I'm working on subjunctive now. I did the subjunctive lessons on
Duolingo - 3 lessons and 14 minutes later, I got a virtual trophy for mastering the subjunctive. Ha!

I use FSI as a purely audio course. When I first started, I would read the text after or before each lesson, but that
grew stale very quickly. Then I started referring to the text only when I didn't understand. Now, I just listen and
respond. If I don't catch a lesson the first time, I listen to it a second time. I find that that takes care of 98% of
any problems that I had the first time around. As for the final 2%…I just don't worry about it.

I'm starting to think about what I'm going to do with my walking time when I finish FSI. I work on FSI every day
while walking the dog. There's no way that I'd sit down and do it at my desk, but I actually find it somewhat
meditative to do response drills while walking. Yes, I realize that makes me sound kind of lame. After finishing
with FSI, I think that I'm going to move on to audiobooks. I'm thinking about listening to the first Harry Potter
book. I read it right before Christmas, so I'm not sure that it would hold my attention, but I do think that there's a
lot to be gained from repeated exposure to material.

As for reading, I started the first Percy Jackson novel. It's taken me most of the first chapter to get into it. It
seems more difficult than I expected, but I suspect that it's just because I have to get used to the novel's voice. I
fully expect the second book in the series to be an easy read after I make my way through the first one.

Edited by Stelle on 15 January 2014 at 11:54pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



garyb
Triglot
Senior Member
ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4967 days ago

1468 posts - 2413 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, French
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 160 of 384
16 January 2014 at 11:11am | IP Logged 
I'm enjoying your log, I think you have good ideas about things like reading and speaking and it looks like they're working! I've been learning Spanish for a few weeks now, and I've tried the early speaking approach and had a few conversations, but they've been pretty difficult. I'm wondering whether it's just because conversing in Spanish is new to me and I'm not used to it, or if it's just that my knowledge isn't very high yet. Probably a bit of both. But like I say it's very early days!


1 person has voted this message useful



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