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Spanish in 3 months | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| clemK23 Diglot Newbie France Joined 3303 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 12 30 April 2015 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi !
I'm french and I'm learning Spanish because I'll spend some time in South America during a round the world trip that start in August. Here's my introduction : http://how-to-learn-any- language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=40392&PN=1 I've started working for about a month, in october. I mostly used duolingo. Then I had to stop because of a large period of crunch time at work. Here I am again, and hopefully work won't get in the way. My goal is simple : I want to be able to learn as much Spanish as possible before leaving (in total, that's about 3 months of learning). Then I'll try to keep working on spanish during the first half of my trip (when I won't be in South America), then I'll use the language. So right now I'm learning the basics. Later, I'll focus on understanding efficiently, learning vocabulary and grammar, but at first I'll focus on the (reasonnable) volume of lessons. My goal right now is to work every day on 3 resources. I have set a milestone on may, 15th : it'll be the end of a month of daily work of Spanish.
It takes about 1h-1h30 every day. It required some adjustements in my day to day organisation (sleeping more and earlier for better retention), listening to Language Transfer during breakfast instead of the news on the radio, but I like it so far. Having an achievable target really helps being focused and seeing progress in the various books. I did similar 1-month challenge in other domains, that's really great to build an habit of working everyday. I use anki (I make cards for everything) and some paper notes as well, but it's mostly reading and listening at the moment. Later (and as soon as possible), I'll use italki to find language buddies, write and talk. I guess I'll watch Extr@ Spanish (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pggZV0ETjI&list=PL-wlhjBlJ MB9Hlva6V5Fd_1NWUeJ3IkCX). Despite the style, it blends basic vocabulary with simple sentences. I got the first episode so I guess I could already do it, but I do not have enough time and it'd have impact on my memorization). Maybe some duolingo as well... but my retention of new vocabulary with duolingo is not very good and I find the sentences to be too simple so far. During my trip, I hope to be able to read books and listen to podcasts, but first I need to be able to have enough understanding and vocabulary to understand more and more stuff without dictionnary or looking them up. The great thing is that it though, slightly outside my comfort zone, but achievable and I find it very satisfactoring so far. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| clemK23 Diglot Newbie France Joined 3303 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 12 30 April 2015 at 10:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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The situation today, about halfway through the first month of serious work :
- I did lesson 13 of Complete Spanish this morning (out of 90, but my goal is to reach lesson 30 first) - reached lesson 14 (out of 22) of Mi vida Loca - reached chapter 12 of El principito (out of 27) The goal is to reach all the goals by May 15th. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clemK23 Diglot Newbie France Joined 3303 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 12 03 May 2015 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had some more time during the last few days, so on top of advancing in my daily program, I tried some new
stuff : I watched 2 episodes of Extr@ Spanish and read 2 small novels with audio - Los Tres Cerditos : http://albalearning.com/audiolibros/cuentos/lostrescerditos. html - La lepra http://albalearning.com/audiolibros/apollinaire/lepra-sp-fr. html Los tres cerditos was easy, everybody knows the story (at least here in france). I had to lookup for a few words, but it was nice to see I could get most of the text. La lepra is a harder text, I did not know the story. Thanks to the french translation next to it it was easy to understand the main idea of the text. I'll have to spend a lot of time on verbs and the various tenses. Sometimes tenses got in the way. I also lack a lot of basic vocabulary, but it's going to build itself in the upcoming weeks. If I can find larger texts like this, when I have sufficient basic vocabulary (a few hundreds of common words and verbs) I might work using L+R method more. I really loved the experiment. I also watched episodes 2 and 3 of Extr@ Spanish, with audio, no subtitles and no transcript. It's meant for beginners so it's easy. Again, I have to learn many words, but I could figure them out thanks to the context (and because a lot of them are transparent. I don't think this is a good way to learn stuff, but it's nice for exposure : it's slightly harder than my current level, but it uses a lot of the stuff I already know. So As emk said, I can both cheat and reinforce (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp? TID=39493). That's good for me so far, even if they do not speak at full speed (and I hate the laugh sounds behind). Apart from that, I still have mixed feelings regarding Mi vida loca. It's really well done, they clearly put a lot of efforts into it. However the lessons are very basic. And at the same time I find that some dialogs when you are not involved, at full speed, are too hard to get. Maybe that's not the best tool to use for me, but I'm going to finish it since I learn things at every episode (and I want to know the end of the story !). I'm not monitoring how long I spent working on my Spanish, but for the daily work it's still around 1h/1h30, and I try not to do too much more. 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 4 of 12 03 May 2015 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, nice log and goals! I wish you lots of luck and fun. I've read your introduction
and I am looking forward to reading more from you in the log. Careful about Duolingo. While the idea is good and, for example, their German course is very useful, there are some troubles about the Spanish one. I didn't like the speaker, they overuse personal pronouns (which is something totally unnatural and not entirely correct), they use weird vocabulary I don't meet anywhere else much. You should have no trouble learning Spanish, it is pretty easy after French, even though there are differences one gets used to. ;-) And while it is really easy to learn the basics, getting to high level is another story. You should have no trouble getting to fun resources soon, there is really a lot to choose from. Are you going to use some explicit grammar source as well? I find it very useful for clearing things up and distinguishing the Spanish grammar from the French one. You might be interested in joining the 6WC (6 week challenge). It is basically a friendly "contest" where we just log in the time spent on a main target language. It can be quite motivating :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3318 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 12 03 May 2015 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the logs! I had fun watching Extr@ too and also Nuevos Destinos. A few people have mentioned Language Transfer and "grammar without thinking about it" does sound very appealing. I should check it out. Just out of curiosity, where are you going in South America?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clemK23 Diglot Newbie France Joined 3303 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 12 05 May 2015 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Cavesa and Clarity,
Thanks for the advice ! I'm aware Spanish is really not a hard language to learn since I already speak french and, to a lesser extent, English. With such a language every day of work brings visible progress, that's very motivating, but yeah, I guess learning quickly this language won't be an achievement. I don't care about that, but I'm quite interested about how far I can go in 3 months. That's too bad Duolingo for Spanish is not correctly done and thus, is not a good resource for learning Spanish. I like that they group things by theme and the use of gamification makes the application fun to use. Coupled with anki I thought it could be great :/ I do plan on looking for grammar. I'm not a huge fan of sitting in front of a textbook, but I'm definitely sure spending a reasonnable amount of time on it will make me save a lot of time afterwards. Once I'll be trying to build my own complex sentences, I'll probably need to work into that... not sure of the best methodology yet. At the moment I have not even looked for resources actually (if you have some good links, I'm interested. Clarity, you were talking about "grammar without thinking about it", I googled it and search the forum, but could not find something. Were you thinking about something in particular ?). I'll also look into 6WC but I think that's more or less what I'm doing right now. Reached - Mi vida loca 17/22 - El principito 15/27 - Language Transfer 17/30 ... this weekend I couldn't help but watched Extr@ Spanish 4/13 (I'll have to look at Nuevos Destinos afterwards I guess, I did not know about it, thanks !) Right now I'm a bit late on schedule, this week is the complete opposite of the previous one. I'm going to be quite busy and I'll struggle to spend my free time working on spanish. Almost forgot : I'll be going to Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, and I'll be in the area for 5-6 months. That's very far away though, in almost a year from now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clemK23 Diglot Newbie France Joined 3303 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 12 11 May 2015 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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- Finished Mi vida loca. That's definitely a great course, I encourage beginners like me to
try it out. It covers all the basic things : introduction, colors, direction, clothes, number, time, weather... That's for complete beginners though, and sometimes I found it too slow-paced. - 24/30 in complete Spanish. I like it and yet don't spend enough time on this. - 21/27 in El principito. Some chapters are very easy, some are quite challenging. The 21st is both long and challenging, I had a hard time finishing it. I'm a bit late on schedule for May 15th, but pretty satisfied with the result any. I also still do some Anki. It's quite time consuming actually ! I didn't watch how long it takes until yesterday. Took me twice 20 minutes, yesterday and today, only reviewing flashcards. Thanks to a chrome extension + ankiweb it's really convenient to add cards when browsing, so I make cards any time I think something may be useful. I've also added 2 pre-made decks off basic vocabulary (10 new cards a day), but that's really not something that works for me, I guess I'll stop that. Once Mi vida loca is done, among the suggestions the BBC website lead me to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo which contains articles on various subjects, that's quite nice for improving passive understanding I guess. I managed to understand a few basic articles, at least superficially, it could be a good source of daily reading for the next step of my learning. Ho, and I tried to listen to a random podcast from the Spanish radio : it was like listening to a totally different language. Still a long way to go... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3318 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 12 12 May 2015 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi clemK23! You are so lucky to have so much time in South America! I'm sure your Spanish will improve quite a lot. I haven't been to Bolivia or Chile, but I loved Ecuador and Peru. I hope to go back there some day.
I'm really sorry that I led you to believe there was a different method of learning grammar without thinking. I was actually sort of quoting what you had said before about Language Transfer. But if you do find a grammar learning method that is painless, please post here on the boards! I would be very interested in it!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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