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Spanish: cutting my teeth on languages! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| epictetus Groupie Canada Joined 3672 days ago 54 posts - 87 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 25 20 October 2014 at 5:47am | IP Logged |
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I'll start with a background story as I've liked reading those of others.
First Exposure I have done two semesters of university-level Spanish. The results were poor. I enjoyed it but like many before me I found the pressure to speak to be unbearable and the awkwardness of the group tutorials were a pain to get through. In addition, the vocabulary was irrelevant and the grammar was over emphasised. I assumed I'd need to immerse myself in another country to learn Spanish. I had a brief opportunity to use my Spanish while in Mexico for a wedding. Among the typical day-to-day tasks, I was rather inebriated one evening and I distinctly remember thinking in Spanish after a slow but steady conversation with the DJ. This is the point at which I realised that it was possible to truly internalise another language. I watched Spanish-language films, listened to Spanish music (I love Afro-Cuban Jazz! And Salsa of all national flavours), and even managed to date a Chilean girl a little bit. I set my sights on an ambitious motorcycle trip through Mexico culminating in a multi-month immersion experience in Oaxaca. A Naive Language Learner walks into un bar... A couple years later I began to rekindle what knowledge I had by using Anki flashcards from a 5000 word deck. In my eagerness and enthusiasm, I took on far too many cards per day than were good for me (100+) and did nothing else. I failed, por supuesto, after a month or two. After coming across YouTube videos of polyglots (Richard Simcott, Prof Arguelles, and Benny Lewis), I became inspired to tackle more than one language (though I now had the sense to temper my efforts!). Spanish was, and is, my first foreign language. I studied French until secondary school but I think it would equal about a weekend or two as an adult learner. I was studying in the UK at the time and was going to spend 1 month in Eastern Europe before returning home. My first attempt at going through a language instruction book was a modern Teach Yourself Serbian pdf. I drilled the Serbian Cyrillic and Latin alphabets into my head with Anki in only a couple days and was quite proud that I could read/pronounce words. I tried to do a lesson every day but couldn't keep up after about 8-10 lessons. I managed to use the language whilst travelling and had fun bartering in markets with my pocketful of phrases and reasonably solid knowledge of all the numbers. These experiences would later help me attack my Spanish studying in a more productive way ¡Vamos empezar! I reset my Anki deck and translated Spanish to English only. 20 new cards per day. I did little else because I was in my 4th year of university. I kept my interest and motivation up by reading language learning blogs, watching videos, and lurking through this forum. I researched extensively different methods, philosophies, and motivations for learning. I took notes on Prof. Arguelles' videos and cross-referenced peer- reviewed research with the experiences of people like Khatzumoto. I vacillated on which YouTube polyglots were the real deal and who were fakers. I was a language learning geek. This summer I finally started after I graduated with my BA. I started with Assimil. I spent 1-2 hours on it every day. I also started Hugo's Spanish in 3 Months at the same time and they were very similar in introducing content. I was doing 200-400 flashcards a day. I played Spanish-language podcasts and radio shows, films and the beloved Destinos telenovela. I managed to have a 20 minute conversation with a Mexican girl near the end of the summer and I was amazed at how words that I struggled with in Anki seemed to just arrive in the nick of time. She complimented my Spanish and my accent. I'm doing it. I'm getting somewhere! Am I intermediate? Still a Beginner? Which resources? Part of me wants to remain modest and assume I'm an upper-level Beginner. A2 in EU parlance. But in other ways I'm a near-B1. I can't read most native texts without constantly looking up words. Extensive reading is not an option, though I know that would be ideal. I'm enamoured with the idea of Listening-Reading but the paucity of unabridged audiolibros and the associated parallel texts left me frustrated. I am now working my way through Linguaphone and a Living Language Beyond the Basics book. In two weeks, the last words of my 5000-word deck will be introduced. In 2-3 months, I will be leaving for Guatemala for my immersion trip I will stay at least 8 weeks there, more if I can. I want to be able to just read only in Spanish and watch and listen to only Spanish but it's not as comprehensible as it should be. Perhaps the language learning materials are too comfortable? Endnotes This was mostly written for myself, but maybe others can relate to my experiences and suggest ways in which I could improve my efforts. I will probably aim for a weekly or bi-weekly journal update with more concrete ideas. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5165 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 25 20 October 2014 at 1:21pm | IP Logged |
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Great post. It makes me wish I was young again! You are going to have a blast with your Spanish journey (it sounds like you have already enjoyed yourself). How are you finding Beyond the Basics? That is a great course. I differ from many people on this site because I think sticking with courses is a good way to progress fast... but it is important to move on to intermediate and advanced courses and NOT keep doing beginner courses. There are a ton of great intermediate and advanced courses out there.
Also, there are good resources out there for you to read and listen to. I am sure if you post a bit of information about the types of things you like you will get plenty of suggestions. There really are a lot more Spanish "native" resources out there that you can access than you may realize. I agree, however, that the lack of bilingual texts is a big problem. That being said, there are definitely a number out there that you can get your hands on that also have unabridged audio books. Can you tell us more about your Guatemala immersion trip? Will you be going to a school? working? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4448 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 25 21 October 2014 at 1:57am | IP Logged |
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Welcome! I like your blog already and like James said, please tell us more about your planned trips!
Can't wait to hear more about your progress. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| epictetus Groupie Canada Joined 3672 days ago 54 posts - 87 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 25 21 October 2014 at 5:26am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the kind words. I will be sure to make my next post based around my trip and
the goals I have, language and otherwise. The big goal will be centred around developing conversational abilities to as high a level as I can manage. Listening and reading comprehension will develop as a corollary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4799 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 5 of 25 22 October 2014 at 5:31pm | IP Logged |
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Great post, thanks for sharing!
A few ideas you might like to try: Work on your listening comprehension before your trip. Get a tv series in Spanish and dive into it. Don't let initial panic "oh no, I don't understand enough" scare you away and your brain will get used to the language soon. Really,having watched tv series was the most paying off investement during my one month long stay in Spain. If you wish to try extensive reading and just don't dare, try easier books than before. There are comic books in Spanish, there are translations of popular books you probably know, such as Harry Potter. You don't have to start with classics or nobelists. Don't forget to work on grammar. It is often underestimated these days and it is understandable the ways your classes taught it have made you disgusted. But it is a necessary base for all your skills. and the most important: have fun! you have surely got a significant workload that should help you jump to the next level fast but try to protect yourself from burn out, it happens sometimes. Edited by Cavesa on 22 October 2014 at 5:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 4979 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 6 of 25 22 October 2014 at 6:20pm | IP Logged |
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Felicidades, you're the first person I've heard of to use Serbian as a springboard to Spanish!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4041 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 25 22 October 2014 at 9:23pm | IP Logged |
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Hola! Sounds like you have a really good start.
I agree with James and Cavesa. There are quite a lot of resources out there for reading and the like. I have a pretty big "to do" reading list. All of them are books that I have read in English. Right now, I'm reading the Divergente series, because I like the books in English. I have another Spanish book waiting for when I finish those, and then I plan on reading the Los Juegos del Hambre series. After reading all of those, I still haven't even touched a book that I haven't read in English. Reading books that I am already familiar with in English makes it a lot easier, because I don't really get lost, even if I don't understand everything in every sentence. Sometimes, when I start reading after setting the book down for a bit, it takes me about a page to figure out where I am though. I've been turning more to grammar as I progress. It can be kinda boring on its own, but when it reinforces the books/movies/conversations that you have outside of grammar study, then it seems like there's actually a purpose behind it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5655 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 8 of 25 24 October 2014 at 2:42pm | IP Logged |
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If you really want to work on conversational fluency, you should jump into FSI or Platiquemos, there really aren't any other courses out there that get speaking and thinking in Spanish to come so naturally. You can probably run through the first 20 or so lessons pretty quickly, but i'd still at least go through them once to see if there are any areas that give you trouble.
I also agree that working on your listening by watching some TV shows or listening to some interesting podcasts can work wonders. I've found that cartoons like The Simpsons, Avatar, Futurama, etc. are really good to start with because the words are spoken clearly, the language is pretty simple, and there's not as much background noise. Later finding a Spanish show you like will help even more since they tend to speak much more quickly and use more colloquial speech, but to start with animated shows are a real confidence booster. There are also plenty of parallel texts for English-Spanish, when i first started i made a parallel text for the first two or three books for Harry Potter, if you're interested i can pass them on to you. Unfortunately a few of the parallel texts i put together have been lost, though i've still got a couple other Spanish-English parallel texts that others sent me, if you're interested. Si tienes cualquier duda estaría encantadx de ayudar, así que no dudes en preguntar. Si tienes un vocabulario de al menos 5 mil palabras, creo que ahora se trata más de activar tu castellano que de construirlo. Ya tienes una base muy sólida, ¡es hora de desarrollar/activar tu fluidez! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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