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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3728 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 196 12 March 2014 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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6/25/15 Update: I gleaned the gems from the first 23 pages of this log,
and I posted them on this page. Hello, Just a little bit about myself. I am 40 years old! ha! So I am starting a little late in life and wonder if I am kidding myself about learning languages.... but I'm going to give it a go, anyway! I took French in High school and a little in college but promptly forgot most of what I learned. I dabbled a little in Mandarin about 8 years ago but had no motivation, and with the busyness of life, gave it up. So two years ago, I found a need for Spanish. It has been a learning experience balancing life with learning language, but I am feeling my motivation now! So I hope to speed up in Spanish and break into level B1 in a few months. I have become friends with a girl who is American but learned French while their family was living abroad in her later elementary school and Middle School years. She also learned Spanish very well with a high level of conversational Spanish. She is 23, so her brain is like a sponge! I told her that if she wanted to learn another language, I would learn with her. I was thinking about Chinese, but she chose Arabic, which was never on my radar! So she and I are now working through a course book together, remotely. My language aspirations have grown in the past few months, and I keep thinking of languages I'd love to try. First after Spanish and Arabic will be French. Then maybe I will try (in no particular order) Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Italian, Persian. Beginning Arabic has opened up my mind to a part of the world I never had thought about, it's kind of exciting. SPANISH Assimil with Ease:Passive wave -- Lesson 20 FSI Spanish Basic -- 4.2 Pimsleur LA Spanish III -- Lesson 2 Coffee Break Spanish-- Lesson 33 ARABIC YouTube:Learn Arabic with Maha -- I have watched many of her videos. Mastering Arabic -- 4.1 FSI MWA -- 2.1 My goals right now are to finish the courses I currently have. I will try reading some Spanish once I finish my current sources. Does anyone have suggestions about books to read in Spanish? I read some of Julio Cortazar's short stories when I was in college (translated to English), and I enjoyed them. Thanks for reading! :-) Edited by nancydowns on 25 June 2015 at 6:33am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3728 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 196 13 March 2014 at 6:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I have decided to add Destinos to my Spanish studying for some listening work. I never
watch TV or movies, so this is not up my alley, but know that I need to work on listening to natives, so this is what I will do for now until I get to a level where I can listen to something more my style. BTW, if anyone who reads this log has any suggestions for me, please let me know! I am feeling really motivated where the learning is its own reward, but I know myself and sometimes when things get crazy, or I get tired, I tend to let things drop. So I am using this as a personal accountability log. I am setting a goal for myself to update my log each Monday. I travel all the time, so might not have WIFI available some Mondays, if not, I'll post as soon as possible. The best to all out there! :-) Edited to add that I am currently on Destinos Episodio 4 Edited by nancydowns on 13 March 2014 at 6:06am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5671 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 3 of 196 13 March 2014 at 6:56am | IP Logged | ||
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It looks like you've already got a lot on your plate. I'd say you'd be fine just finishing what you've got now, FSI and Assimil will both give you a pretty solid base (Assimil's base will be more passive), so i'd suggest trying to focus more on one of those two unless you just enjoy the other courses more.
I don't know anything really about Arabic and never really had an interest it until i was in Spain and heard it spoken all over. I'll be interested to see what resources you use :) Parece que vas por buen camino. Sigue así y ¡ánimo! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3728 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 196 13 March 2014 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Muchas gracias, Crush. I have been glad for Pimsleur because it got the sound of the
language in my head. I was trying to say everything with what I remembered of French, so that has been good. I probably wouldn't continue that or Coffee Break Spanish, except that I can put them on my MP3 player and listen to them while exercising or driving. Destinos is going to take a backseat to the Assimil and FSI, but when I have opportunity, I'll watch it. For Arabic, I would definitely recommend anyone watching Maha's videos on YouTube, especially her "Beginner" lessons and also her six lessons on the alphabet. She breaks Arabic down into digestible chunks. I wasn't going to learn to read until I watched her videos and realized it really wasn't that difficult! Of course, you have to move on from that. After awhile, I felt like I was getting lost with vocab but no understanding of how to make a sentence, so I am glad now to have a formal book to study. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3950 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 196 13 March 2014 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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It sounds like you're well on your way! In my experience, both Destinos and the podcast Notes in Spanish are more useful than Coffeebreak Spanish. CBS just moves along too slowly. But I did genuinely like Mark and Kara!
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3728 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 196 13 March 2014 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Stelle, thank you for your suggestion! I hadn't ever seen Notes in Spanish. I like
things that are audio only so that I can use them when I go for a run or when I have to be in the car. Pimsleur and CBS have been what I listened to, but I am definitely open to suggestions! I started Destinos, and it will have to be when I am at the computer, but I will download N in S and add that to my listening time. Thanks very much! When I get a chance, I want to look more at your log for some ideas. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5671 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 7 of 196 14 March 2014 at 4:09am | IP Logged | ||
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By the way, are you studying a specific dialect or going for MSA? I'm not sure if the FSI course focuses on MSA or not. I assume that Modern Written Arabic is essentially the same thing, but i'm not sure.
I tried working my way through Maha's Youtube videos but couldn't make head or tail of it, it all seemed jumbled together and i wasn't really sure where to start. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| PointsDotsLines Diglot Groupie United States Joined 3812 days ago 76 posts - 110 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 196 14 March 2014 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
You can try some reading materials on Cervantes’ website >> Lecturas paso a paso. They are for Spanish language learners and are organized in three levels – inicial, intermedio, avanzado. There are before and post reading exercises too. The books in “inicial” are relatively easy. (I guess they are so-called “graded readers”.) I started reading them last year. A few unknown words didn’t prevent me from understanding the entire story. I really enjoyed reading them:) Hope this helps, -Charles Edited by PointsDotsLines on 14 March 2014 at 4:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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