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Spanish in 3 months | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4805 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 9 of 12 12 May 2015 at 2:35pm | IP Logged |
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Well, as you say you are willing to spend some time on grammar, even with a textbook,
if it saves you lots of time afterwards, I recommend you do to go for it. With thinking ;-) The best grammar resources I have found is Gramatica de Uso del Espanol. There are three tomes, leading from 0 to C levels. It is a series I really like (I am using the first volume) and James29 is speaking higly of the second volume he is currently finishing on his log. Unlike normal textbooks, it doesn't tie you to a set pace and structure. You can complete the lessons in whichever order you want. It can clear up lots of things you encounter in your other resources and let you know when there is a significant gap in those. There are exemples, good explanations, exercises with key. I understand your dislike for sitting with textbooks too much but I think this resource is exactly the case of time investment that pays off. From my experience, most paths trying to avoid explicit grammar learning just create more chaos and troubles than necessary. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| clemK23 Diglot Newbie France Joined 3303 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 12 16 May 2015 at 12:15am | IP Logged |
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@clarity : no problem !
I'm pretty sure the whole South America will be great; so far a lot of people have told me they really enjoyed Peru It's the 15th of may so that the end of the first month of Spanish. I reached - Mi vida loca is completed - El principito 24/27 - Complete Spanish 27/30 - Extr@ Spanish 5/13 (not initially planned) That's not exactly a success but not very far. Besides the mathematical detail, the amount of Spanish I can understand is surprisingly good, I did not expect to understand that much. Of course my vocabulary is bad and a lot of words are transparent, but with basic notions on a lot of things it's possible to understand much more than I thought. Not sure of what's next. I should set a new goal for june 15th, but I did not decide yet... the goal is to find a good balance between new vocabulary, listening and reading at a slightly harder level than where I'm at today. Extr@ Spanish is a perfect fit for now, and probably Destinos afterwards, many speak highly of it. I like Complete Spanish but I'm having a hard time remaining focused on an audio-only resource : quickly my mind starts to wander and I stop listening. I have the same problem with radio and podcast as well, even in french... That's really too bad because the way they build the language up is very interesting. I should make a few more efforts at least. I've taken note on your remarks Cavesa (thanks !), I'll try to get a copy of the beginner book of Gramatica de Uso del Espanol. After reading James29 log, it seems to be a great asset. I've tried to watch an episode of Avatar (the last air bender) but that's a bit too hard for now. I relied a lot of the images and not enough on the sounds and words to understand. In a few weeks maybe, with a bit more basic vocabulary (words and verbs)... no need to rush and waste the show. So no clear conclusion yet on my new projects for the second month, I'll think about it 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 11 of 12 25 May 2015 at 12:06am | IP Logged |
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Not much Spanish this week, but I did one episode of Extr@ Spanish everyday (reached episode 11/13)
After lesson 8 I've felt a gap in difficulty, it's harder than before and I don't get all the sentences. It's mostly OK though, but I sometimes don't have some verbs or words for a few sentences in a row. Read a few articles from BBC mundo. Great resource ! It's both very readable (despite some topic-specific vocabulary) and interesting, because the news there are very different than the one I usually read in french. I did a few lessons of Gramatico de Uso del espanol (thanks Cavesa !). Definitely great material, and probably more suitable to me than an audio-only solution, even if by using it I'm not improving my listening skills. Too bad for me I'm not a good listener :/ Also still some Anki. I have absolutely no problem with cards from Spanish to french, but those from french to Spanish are terribly difficult. So I'm still improving, but with no regularity and no set goal. I think I should set some goals again, so here is what I plan for everyday next week (then, I'll see) : - read one article from BBC mundo - do one lesson of gramatica de uso del espanol - watch an episode of Extr@ Spanish (then of nuevos destinos) 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 12 of 12 01 July 2015 at 12:06am | IP Logged |
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Well, no update in a month. That's not very serious, but anyway, in the meantime I've been
working a bit. Anyway, here is what happened in between : - A while ago, I made "Wordreference it !" (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wordreference- it/leifjfjbghljjakocojefcbakikfnfeb?hl=fr), a chrome extension that allows me to right clic a word and search for its translation on Wordreference; I know such browser extensions already exist, but this has proven to be very useful for my needs. - I use ankiweb + a chrome extension (AnkiAdder). Thanks to it, I can select a sentence then perform alt+F1, and it opens a popups that allows me to fill the translation and save it to my deck of card. Those two extensions together made my productivity increase a lot, since I've reduced a lot the time required for searching for translations and making cards while I'm reading. - I finished Extr@ Spanish. Definitely worth it, they speak not to slow and not to fast and the vocabulary is OK. The show is quite cheesy but I did not quite care. I then did not dare to go through Nuevos Destinos... a bit bored of going through 50 episodes of interactive shows again. - I've been reading articles daily on bbc.com/mundo for a few weeks. It's nice since it shows the world from an hispanic/south american a point of view, which is very interesting. Some articles are quite long and can require 20mn to be read. I try to go for the articles that take roughly 10 minutes to read. The bad thing is that they do not have audio reading of the articles (of course, it's not a language lesson, it's a newspaper). - I've been reading a lot of tales from Grimm, Andersen and Perrault : Blancanieves, Hansel y Gretel, La vendedora de fósforos, el gato con botas... that's really nice, and I win twice by doing this, since I was also willing to read these tales for a while. Thanks to albalearning.com, I can have a reading of the text while I read (for free !). On some there also are side by side french/spanish texts. It's great for L+R but my method of choice is to simply have the Spanish text, start the audio and read at the same time. I try to find my way through the vocabulary by myself with the help of wordreference. When I do no understand something, I reread a couple times, sometimes I have to pause the reading in order for a deeper search, and often I skip stuff that I do not understand and that do not seem necessary to understand the whole story. All of the texts are not on albalearning, so sometimes I go to other websites. I cannot always find an audio reading, but when there is one it's better. Sometimes, when I have time, when I have read the text once with the audio, I hide the text and listen to it again with the audio only. I don't get everything, but more and more I hear the separation between words, and I hear words that I did not recognnize before. - I also read articles on VeinteMundos. Last month, it was too difficult, but now it's the right moment to study them. http://www.veintemundos.com/fr/bibliotheque/ Articles last less than 10 minutes, and they are read faster than on albalearning. Thanks to vocabulary tips, I can follow whole articles without searching for vocabulary. Like on albalearning, I start the audio and read the text at the same time. Right now those articles are too hard to be understood with audio only, this is too fast for me at the moment. Hopefully, it won't be a problem in a few weeks or months ! :) I have not been working at all on Gramatico de Uso del Espanol, but I'd love to find the motivation to do that. I'll soon have an empirical understanding but absolutely no solid foundations on grammar, and I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a problem. I also read a lot but do not write or produce sentences, which is gonna be a source of troubles as well soon. I'd like to start reading complete books, not just 10mn-long articles and tales. However, reading on the e-reader is a bit tedious since I cannot easily search for words... and sometimes I have to search for a lot of words, so I need to get better first before reading Charlie y la fabrica de chocolate or Memorias del Aguila y el jaguar. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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