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Clarity’s 2015 Log for Español | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3318 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 32 31 May 2015 at 7:00pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, it's a very strange way to teach Spanish when one thinks about it. I wonder what the logic is for teaching it this way? Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that the subjunctive is often embedded in dependent clauses? In any case, it would be interesting to see a teaching method that incorporates the subjunctive earlier and more naturally. Thanks so much for stopping by 1e4e6!
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| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4086 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 26 of 32 31 May 2015 at 9:19pm | IP Logged |
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Well the subjunctive is often in dependent clauses, but the fact is that in simple
communication, everyone needs dependent clauses to communicate. That is why I meant that even babies use the subjunctive: "Quiero que me compres un helado" or how else can the kid ask one of her parents to buy her an ice cream (or toy or whatever)? Or suppose that something urgent happened and she needs to tell her parents that she wants them to come immediately, "¡Quiero que vengáis ya!". Or she is upset that no one came to her birthday party, "¡No me gusta que no haya venido nadie a mi fiesta de cumple!", where the subjunctive is obligatory in all cases. Also, the present subjunctive and the commands are the same form in some cases. «¡No hables!», «¡No corras!» in the negative or stuff like «Vengan a mi fiesta». So the commands also need the subjunctive conjugations. It is kind of hard to communicate properly without using commands, opinions, and all dependent clauses :) It must be said, that close to 100% of my teachers in Romance languages were not native speakers. That might be a reason. In Anglophone countries the teaching of foreign languages is often poor, and having for example, native Anglophones be teachers does not exactly help.. Gracias igualmente por haber echado una visita a mi log :) Edited by 1e4e6 on 31 May 2015 at 9:21pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3318 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 32 12 June 2015 at 12:24am | IP Logged |
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I had one week with lots of Spanish listening and then this week, where I haven't had much due to illness.
Last week, I got really, really sucked into Soy Betty, La Fea. To be honest, some of the parts were so painful, so UNfunny, and frankly disturbing, I skipped about 60 episodes. I never did warm up to Betty's love interest, Armando. 
See what I mean? For me, he was a spoiled brat to the very end. In fact, I wondered why Betty didn't run off to Cartagena with her French man-friend, Michel. The good news was that I got about 20 hours of Spanish television viewing last week. I didn't count the episodes I watched completely with English subtitles. As I got closer to the finale, I became a little too impatient to see how they were going to tie up all the loose ends and didn't do my usual 1st viewing with no subtitles and 2nd viewing with subtitles in English. I wish I were at a point where I didn't need subtitles at all! I can understand about 60-80% of a conversation, but the parts I miss always seem to be the important ones. What did I learn this week from FSI/Platiquemos? We learned that the weather is changeable there, just like prices in the markets around town. We heard Consul Bert have another slippery conversation with his wife. Lots of "pretextos" coming out the mouth of that man. What is he up to? Since I was house bound for a couple of days, I didn't drive much. And therefore, didn't finish as many units as I would have liked. I am currently on Lesson 23. I canceled my two Spanish lessons this past week because I wasn't feeling well. The result is that I feel like I've lost a little bit of my Spanish mojo. Although I can't say that Duolingo expanded my knowledge of Spanish all that much, I appreciated the daily interaction with the language and accruing those lingots. Duo, the Owl, I miss you so! 
250 goal FSI: 5 hours Italki tutor: 2 hours Spanish TV: 20 (Soy Betty La Fea) Total: 27 131 down, 119 to go Edited by Clarity on 12 June 2015 at 6:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4805 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 28 of 32 12 June 2015 at 4:26pm | IP Logged |
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Both native and non native teachers were "teaching" subjunctive just wrong in my case and shared the same wrong attitude. Some were teaching it better some wrong what I found the worst was making students panic about it. It is just part of the language. It takes time and practice but it can be learnt.
The driving metaphor could be even more precise if the teacher told the student "you'll learn to properly accelerate and brake next year, it is really hard, and you are actually not expected to do well. Noone will mind much if you mess it up all the time.". It looks like the FSI is more of an soap opera than Betty La Fea. :-D While I am not much of a soap opera fan, I trully admire the amout of work and time you've been putting in and I think it's gonna do miracles for your latin american Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3318 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 32 12 June 2015 at 6:59pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Cavesa! Thanks so much for stopping by! I saw your question about the McGraw-Hill grammar books on James29's log. They were in a local book store and they did look exactly like the pdfs I've seen of the book. My guess is that McGraw-Hill bought the European publishing rights for the American market. The printing is fine, nothing special. It sounds like the European books James29 bought were of higher quality.
Lately, I've been wondering if I should just "drill and kill" a lot of the subjunctive to overcome my fear of it. Although I think I am learning some from listening to television programs, I can't say that I'm absorbing it in an organized fashion. But maybe that's okay? I should also ask you if you have any recommendations for Spanish shows that aren't very dramatic? Maybe light-hearted and funny? I think my job is interfering with my ability to enjoy them! I stopped watching Angel o Demonio because I began working with a student who has schizophrenia and thinks the devil is talking to him. Ugly Betty became really upsetting to me, in part, because I am working with a student who has disabilities and is seen as an "easy target" sexually because of them. I am going back to Caso Cerrado as my main source of television viewing. I wish Pesadilla en la Cocina had subtitles! I love that chef, but I know I miss a lot of the story. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4805 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 30 of 32 12 June 2015 at 7:19pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the info, Clarity! It is still weird that the market is being so deformed by "rights", and someone just creates haos by replacing the cover of a book and selling it as something original. The globalisation obviously doesn't work the way it should, in my opinion. :-)
I must agree the subjunctive tends to get absorbed from the tv. I've noticed myself using it quite often in my inner dialogues lately, even though I've studied it formally very little. And I believe I use it correctly quite often. I think the input can do huge part of the work for us but I'll certainly go for some drilling and grammar exercises. Angel o Demonio is hard, true. I had trouble finishing it as well. The story is great but some of the motives are complicated. I totally understand your issues with it, I had problem with one or two episodes in particular. I loved the series but they got into some of my weaker spots and it hurt. I suppose that happens to more people. Thanks for letting me know I am not the only "weird" and overly sensitive one :-) Isn't it funny that the show looks like a classical teenage supernatural romance thing at first sight (like the Vampire Diaries, Charmed, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and turns out to be such a drama? I really liked El ministerio del tiempo. If you like Doctor Who, it is a bit similar. There is a lot of history included, good sense of humour and so on. It is not devoid of harder topics as well (centered around the question how much can you dare to change the history fo personal reasons) but the positive note and adventure prevails. And there is going to be another season next year. I really recommend it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4086 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 31 of 32 12 June 2015 at 9:04pm | IP Logged |
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I think that both are required. To get an estimate of how long it took me, who
basically self-learnt the subjunctive because I barely got any in formal classes and whatever was taught was insufficient anyway, few years ago I basically worked all of the Practise Makes Perfect books with topics on verbs, as well as coursebooks with CEFR level from Spain, like Aula Internacional, Nuevo Prisma, etc., and also the Gramática de uso del español both the B1-B2 and C1-C2 books. In my entire lifetime and Spanish learning from 2003 to present I worked over literally 40 grammar books. I also read this book: Nueva gramática de la lengua española So if you want to produce any tense of the subjunctive mood in literally a split second (reflex and without thinking both during conversation or writing), it takes a bit of time to absorb and have the natural feeling. I have more than 10 notebooks of cover-to-cover written exercises from my grammar practise books lying under my bed, so it took a lot of writing :) Also the C1-C2 book that I have is directly from Spain. It has no English at all, not even in the preface. It has a smooth green cover (like green jelly colour). The subjunctive is important at all levels, as this book has more than 20 unidades on the subjunctive. So even C-level students need to practise some more uses! Native materials also helps in recognising new ways of using it and seeing it "in praxis" after working it explicitly in a book. I learnt quite a lot of ways to use the subjunctive that were neither implicitly not explicitly in my grammar books, as well a those that were given explicitly but seemed a bit confusing at first.. There are for example two ways that took me a while to understand when seeing them in praxis: No sabía que me escribiste una carta is gramatically correct in a certain case: it means that it is a fact that I did not know and also a fact that you wrote me a letter, and end of story. No sabía que me escribieses una carta is also correct in the case where it either i) is a fact that you wrote me a letter but I give a feeling that I find it to be either unlikely or that you are lying or I find it surprising, or ii) I am being sarcastic and you in fact did not write me a letter (hence the "doubt" as it never happened), but I make it look like you actually did (thus the sarcasm). Another example that I find only in Argentinian sources is this construction: [adverb en forma -mente] + [subjuntivo]. Example: Dificilmente puedas ir de vacaciones and one might ask why the subjunctive follows an adverb like that. If I said, Puedo ir de vacaciones dificilmente it would be correct. But the adverb "dificilmente" precedes the verb. In this case "dificlmente" is an implicit rehash constuction of "Es difícil que...". Upon recognising this, it is like Es difícil que puedas ir de vacaciones, reverting back to a fairly straightforward formula of the subjunctive. But to produce and recognise this in a conversation or in a newspaper article in less than half of a second requires a lot of work and practise. Edited by 1e4e6 on 12 June 2015 at 9:05pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3318 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 32 of 32 28 June 2015 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone,
Just wanted to update my log since it's been two weeks. What have I learned from FSI/Platiquemos Bert doesn't seem to like to go anywhere with his wife, Jean. But in his defense, I'm not sure anyone would want to get stuck in the women's department with someone shopping for hats. I was a little surprised at his honesty when he told Jean a hat looked horrible on her! Ah, the inner workings of a relationship in a language learning course. 
Right now, I'm on Unit 25. I sure have to stop and think when those indirect and direct object pronouns are used together in a sentence. In those cases, I wish I had more time to respond. My italki tutor and I are still meeting online twice a week. Some mornings I feel like the words flow easily and others the pauses and hesitations even drive me crazy! 250 Hour Goal FSI: 9 hours italki tutor: 4 hours Total: 13 hours 141 down, 109 to go 1 person has voted this message useful |
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