Hedgehogs: Creatures of the Night (ES)

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coldrainwater
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Otra noche

Postby coldrainwater » Sat Mar 11, 2017 7:00 am

Progress: More of the same tonight. Another 2-3 hours of newsinslowspanish listening.

Cogs: The ferris wheel upstairs was turning rather slowy for the better part of today and in such a state of fog, I wasn´t able to pinpoint the reason. Following protocol, I took a nap, engaged in a 45 minute romp with the treadmill, and much later, supped in my usual style sans cooking. Each step cleared cob webs, but it wasn´t until all were complete that things started coming together.

I am learning quite a few ¨phrasal cognates¨ or near cognates of this type while paying mindful attention to the news transcripts. I am getting a bit of SRS love from the natural repetition of common news themes. I shant dive into grammar studies as I think listening practice is currently far more important for me. However, I do notice my relative weakness in grammar and somewhat stronger ability with vocabulary. The news verbs do change tense quite a bit and this is helping me considerably with some simple interleaving practice. From a stance of deliberate listening, all is going well as I am getting plenty of those useful ah-ha moments where phrases click.

I fiddled around with using my smartphone for newsinslowspanish listening (putting feelers out for what it might be like to use it walking or in various other activities). So far I prefer the Chromebook to the smartphone on account of speed and wealth of productive (versus consumptive) capacities. Alternating between the two is in the cards (¨un as en la manga¨ if you will =D ) as I am keenly aware that our choice of technology has bias. Variety in the use of technology me thinketh shows prudence.

I had a short but interesting conversation with my future intercambio partner today where he said that he is using immersion in EE UU culture to practice deliberate listening as much as possible. He loves the English language so much that he listens at every opportunity. Once he gets enough free time to practice, I believe I can help him with native pronunciation.
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Nuevos recursos

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Mar 12, 2017 5:42 am

Newsinslowspanish: 2-3 hours of on/off listening practice. Time travelling backwards, I reach the early portion of September 2016.

Veintemundos: Aproveché dos de los videos hoy. Thanks to Tomás and iguanamon for notching this site higher on my level listening list (LLL). Veintemundos is very well designed and I already find it a good complement to newsinslowspanish. Presentation stucture has (positive) bias as well. More resources offer great variety (and better learning through default interleaving practice). Here, I first followed along with the (booming and clear-voiced male) author´s reading of the text while reading the transcript. I saw at the end of the second article that they offered a native female version of the same narration that was noticeably more difficult to follow. I listened to it without the transcript and was able to follow the moiety of it provided that I strictly follow simple guidelines. For those just jumping into narration sans transcript, here are my current and simple rules of engagement:

    1) Concentration is a must. I had to be mindfully present the whole time or the text would slide right in one ear and out some other place without the noggin lodging intended. I find it helps if I close my eyes and focus on breathing in a medidative capacity. I definitely take in more when I do this. Had I been running or podcasting out doing other things, I probably would not have gained the half of what I heard. Were I writing some math proof, my next statement would resemble => Future distraction listening will probably need to be at lower levels. Environment is overwhelmingly important to me. I can miss most of what is said in English if you put me in the wrong environ and can even manage near analphabetism if it gets bad enough. Social creature, I am not.

    2) I had to let go of when it seemed like the narrator would slur her speech or run words together a bit without letting it get to me. I know that the first narration was clearer and I did not notice that happening quite as much. The trick here is not to let the slur hurt the rest of your progress and lose track of the rest of the audio. That goes back again to mindfully present (not stuck on in the past on the sentence that was last narrated).

    3) I definitely paused the text several (edit: numerous) times to regain composure and let my brain catch up/rest for a few seconds here and there.

    4) Used my productivitybuds with noise cancelling and high quality audio to their full potential. Any background noise would have probably knocked me off my precarious rocker.

    5) Perhaps this is a function of my own idiosyncratic leanings, but I was able to see the spelling of many if not most words that I understood when listening to the audio sans transcript. That is not surprising to me as I have used it as a marker when working with my native English. As long as I leave that portion of my brain on, I should be able to see a glimpse of the spoken words in my mind without extra effort. It is kind of a double check to make sure I understand what is being said in English and I am pleased to see that the pattern can be (at times) employed in Spanish just the same. Call it a runtime unit test for information processing.

NHK: Brief hop to NHK. The site looks promising, but on account of a temporarily shoddy home internet connection, I could not reliably interact with the audio, so I had to punt on this one for the moment. Once I get my dedicated conneciton up to bandwidth, I´ll be in much better shape to recommence.

-Erizo
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Current strategies and more Veintemundos

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Mar 12, 2017 5:51 am

To make it transparent (and notate when I come back to this time later), I iterate that my main focus currently is to develop a listening habit to accompany other existing study habits. Leading with reading almost certainly slowed my progress, but at inception, I had my reasons and I definitely do not regret how I approach L2 overall. Listening now is appropriate and challenging especially after I have satisfied certain philological and lexical penchants. I appreciate all the guidance, given that with the many thousands of good Spanish resources out there, it is very important to maintain discipline and to practice mindfully without straying completely off course.

Las Mingas de Chiloé: From Veintemundos. Short but interesting article on ´mingas´ which harkens to a community-based intercambio/barter/help system of quechuan roots. I could not tell appreciable difference between the intermediate and advanced video sections that I have looked at so far, so I will probably take sampling from both. I have a hunch that the intermediate videos may offer more challenge at times and that much depends on the specific magazine article in question. It is definitelly broad and interesting material as it is not often that I read about people dragging houses on slats with tug boats and tribal origins. Diverse and good.

Caminos en Santiago: From Veintemundos. Short article on a famous peregrination that is now open to tourists. It very much reminds me of my many hiking experiences in Colorado. Not a bad article, but as with most senderismos, reading about is nothing like experiencing it in the wild.

Los Hipopótomos Colombianos: Veintemundos: Al primer rubor, pensé que este hilo era sobre nuestra población de engorde. Pensándolo bien, recuerdo que nos se refiere a Colombia en lugar de EE UU. Parece que los hipopótamos se reproducen a un ritmo alarmante dentro de las fronteras del país. ¿Quién habría pensado en eso? Supongo que solo se necesitan dos para bailar tango.
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Lo que funcionaba y lo que no

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Mar 12, 2017 11:26 pm

Progreso - Dos o tres horas de noticias en español por mi rutina habitual.

  • Escuchar + Leer + Trotar - Una combinación de deslumbramiento del sol, las manchas en la pantalla, y las fuentes pequeñas hizo inútil este esfuerzo. Haré otro esfuerzo en el futuro cercano.
  • Llevar mi smartphone conmigo y usarlo en mi tiempo libre - Éxito. Escuché dos episodios adicionales de la noticia de esta manera.
  • Escuchar + Leer + Noria - Fracaso. La máquina sacudió el suelo como un terremoto.

(Añadido) Veintemundos - El corazón ganadero de Sudamérica - Tema --> hombre taladrado. Etimología --> interesante. Parece que la palabra "pecuario" proviene de las mismas raíces que "pecuniarias". Este hecho no es demasiado sorprendente.

(Añadido) NHK - Buenas noticias. Podía seguir la primera emisión que escuché sin dificultad.

Cita - ¨Daría todo lo que sé, por la mitad de lo que ignoro.¨ - Descartes

-Erizo
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El hombre hace el ajuste (no se disculpa)

Postby coldrainwater » Tue Mar 14, 2017 2:24 am

Jugada a jugada:

La madrugada: En forma de zen, yo dediqué unos 35 minutos para leer un artículo de la noticia. Un comienzo tranquilo.
El almuerzo (las escaleras): Traté de escuchar y hacer ejercicio al mismo tiempo. ¡No funcionó!
Después del trabajo: Cinco millas de carrera. Esta vez he levantado el brillo de la pantalla y la fuente en mi smartphone. Al fin y al cabo, escuché otro episodio sin la transcripción. Fue tan bien como se podría esperar.

En general, mis estrategias de aprovechar el tiempo de ocio fue un éxito.

-Erizo
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Listening Practice with Yabla (round 1.5)

Postby coldrainwater » Tue Mar 14, 2017 6:10 am

To complement and balance my newly minted magazine and news listening custom, I resubscribed to Yabla. I recall shelving Yabla previously due to an overarching interest in improving reading skills. It dawned on me presently that I should reevaluate and recommence this tryst now that listening has gained triage. It seems like a perfect site for my fledgling A2 level wiring. Their content is varied, unmistakably native, and acceptably engaging (for now). I went with the month by month subscription since I may want this to be an on again off again affair, fickle as changing winds.

Time and distance yield perspective, a notion that is as true in Yabla as it is in life. I am introverted and introspective by nature, and Yabla does much of the heavy lifting for me, allowing me to tunnel into a video to my heart´s content. So I took an optometry video by the glasses and did just that. I watched the short video on eye health five times as a proof of concept. The first four times I watched and read concomitantly and finally listened without transcript on the home stretch. Round one involved a wide range of pauses, back clicks and various other forms of legerdemain. Each time I watched, I absorbed slightly more and my aural gaze alighted on new turf. I chose a small number of repetitions (5) knowing that musing not mastery was the goal here. I aimed instead to exercise the ears and create some neural links between my existing knowledge and this curiously new material. From my current vantage point, Yabla leans on the side of intensive and has piqued my interest. [This message made possible in part by tactically mixing news listening time with idle time (yielding free time to think and scheme).]

-Erizo
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Prática diaria y deliberada

Postby coldrainwater » Wed Mar 15, 2017 4:28 am

I slept in today and missed my normal newsinslowspanish, but caught one episode of it this evening. Tonight's practice with Yabla was not as rewarding as predicted. More than anything, I believe I picked poor quality videos and am still finding stride. The first video I watched was over personal finance and also turned out to be the best. It was somewhat above my level and I listened to it five times. The deliberate part of my thinking system took note of the factoid that the only way I was going to follow the speech of the interviewee was to turn off my own shadow voice (I neither think nor talk anywhere near that speed in any tongue) and use my eyes to glide over the words at the rate of her speech, matching what I saw with what I heard. Since it was beyond my level, I can see how a trained ear could capture the differences. Of the four (newsinslowspanish, Yabla, NHK, and VeinteMundos), Yabla has offered the toughest content for my ears so far, even at what they consider lower levels.

Editar: VeinteMundos -> Guerreros de la basura - Buen estilo (Incluso si estamos platicando basura).

Style Comparisons (from my current listening resources)

Considering the different modalities present, Veintemundos definitely feels closer to reading a novel than news. It seems sensible enough to pin this to the common umbrella under which fiction novels and magazine share shade. It is also a bit of a complement to their good topical suggestions and delivery of content. Noticias seem much more formulaic and repetitive, with the known pluses and minuses of structured, predictable presentation. One of the largest detractors of newsinslowspanish is the slow speed itself. On the other hand, the diversity of Yabla brings a certain opportunity and risk. It is personality flaw to be sure, but I tend to generally dislike anything that invokes drama, gossip, small talk and the like. Some of the videos I picked from Yabla were a pretty big turn off given that I more or less selected at random. I listened to a couple of them anyway, not for torture, but to increase awareness. Just as in English I tend not to listen to anything with a significant socializing component (I have not owned a television since 1999) and for this reason, I can find conversation style Yabla videos very challenging. They also tend to use more verb conjugations, but generally common diction. I can slowly see the light of a few more areas where grammar study will benefit me. As it stands, I like the notes I have made on the topic for tonight and with those ideas, I leave a bit in my study tank and build a quiet bridge to the next day's efforts.

-Erizo
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Mateo effect as it pertains to vocabulary acquisition

Postby coldrainwater » Thu Mar 16, 2017 12:00 am

My Spanish listening practice this evening included native material from Coursera on the topic of learning. The Mateo effect, which the course described as ̈́the rich get richer and the poor get poorer' was examined in the context of a longitudinal study of students across many grades. Paraphrased, they concluded that there is a Mateo effect in school that often requires intervention to bring students who do not enjoy reading up to par. The video lesson is very timely for me as they also contrasted a meme style magazine excerpt with a much more eloquent piece of fiction writing. The difference was immediately clear in the sense that there would be a Mateo effect. Furthermore, it made me think about our language acquisition process a bit differently in the sense of interchangeable parts. We essentially often apply self-directed interventions to supplement our lack of native reading material at higher levels (or to get us to a point where we can consume such material).

In the same video, the presenter defined 'fluidez' as a concept in Spanish which is somewhat related to the English concept of fluency. They then subdivided it into three categories (velocidad, prosodia, y presición). Last night I listened to a shorter explication over intensive vs. extensive reading. It is very interesting to start with having an experiential understanding of intensive vs extensive reading and then to follow it in a meta sense by taking a course on it in the very language you are learning. Kind of cool. The course also has some quiz material throughout the video, as Coursera is fond of giving, where I can read a bit in Spanish and answer comprehension questions. I notice that I miss slightly more in Spanish than I do in English and I attribute this mostly to be distracted/interested in the language aspects while failing to take advantage of my more natural test taking skills.

The Mateo effect can likely be applied in a stronger sense than fiction novels. Dictionaries, philology, linguistics and several other areas are likely to offer their own Mateo effects that are worth considering. Perhaps, another way of wording it is that you are what you consume.

-Erizo

Cita:

¨Obtendrás poco o nada de una página impresa si no le das más que tus ojos.¨ -Walter Pitkin

neat link on children´s learning resources http://disanedu.com/
and a small speed reading app: http://www.disanedu.com/aplicaciones/en ... /mapa.html

Progress today:
Finished week 2 of coursera aprender
2 episodes newsinslowspanish
2 veintemundos articles

Overall listening practice was likely about 4 hours. I seemed to have a bit more stamina today than usual.
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Una vez un chef, siempre un aprendiz.

Postby coldrainwater » Sat Mar 25, 2017 7:51 am

Leí una vez un libro, por el gran campeón de ajedrez, Garry Kasparov, sobre cómo la vida imita al ajedrez. Kasparov era precoz en todo el sentido de la palabra. Su vida revela de un interesante estudio de caso. El ajedrez es, por supuesto, un pequeño microcosmo donde podremos vislumbrar la realidad a través de sesenta y cuatro plazas.

El libro y sus enseñanzas me recuerdan a considerar la vida holísticamente. Así como cada persona tiene muchas historias, una receta puede tener muchos ingredientes. Más al punto, doy credibilidad al hecho que el tiempo importa al aprender un nuevo idioma. Los componentes del aprendizaje de idiomas, verbigracia, la lectura, la escritura, la escucha y el habla, se asemejan a la creación de un plato rico y exquisito. Si uno no prepara cada curso de manera oportuna, es más probable que termine con una serie de meriendas pequeñas, pero no plato principal.

Me di cuenta, mejor tarde que nunca, que mis débiles habilidades de escucha parecían más una talón de Aquiles que el corazón de Roma. También he oído decir que deberíamos invocar un quinto elemento quintaesencial, a saber, la cultura. Trás de una corta cita amorosa inicial con ¨Twenty Worlds¨, diría que estoy de acuerdo. No olvidaré pronto que debo esta placer a mis estimados colegas aquí en los foros. Les envío una cálida gracias por la introducción.

Buscad y hallaréis

Esta semana, tuve una conversación corta pero significativa con un granjero en nuestra tienda de abarrotes locales. No fue casualidad que también conociera a un Iberoamericano con espléndida aptitud lingüística. Ella hablaba español peninsular conmigo. Veinte mundos de cultura ofrecen llaves al castillo de castellano.

Y buenas noches a todos. ¡Hasta pronto!

-Erizo
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El guión siempre cambiante

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Mar 26, 2017 12:02 am

Me gustaría tomar un momento para explicar las razones y motivaciones detrás de mi selección de idioma. El cambio reciente del inglés al español fue inspirado por nada menos que nuestro propio Chmury. Inclino mi sombrero de vaquero (soy de Tejas. Saludos) a tus esfuerzos y calificaciones de caligrafía obvias (o plumas si lo desea).

De los humildes inicios surgen (o brotan) grandes ideas. Sé que haré errores atroces en mis escritos iniciales. También admito que paso mucho tiempo escribiendo cada entrada de diario. Sin embargo, prefiero pensar en ello como una inversión en lugar de los esfuerzos perdidos sin recompensa. El aprendizaje de idiomas es una forma de arte y su degustación es como probar un buen vino.

Mi gran visión es usar mis garabatos aquí para matar dos pájaros con un tiro. Es decir, planeo publicar fragmentos de estas entradas en Lang-8 para su edición posterior. Además, pueden valer la pena como una forma de nostalgia meses y años en el camino.

Una de las grandes quejas sobre el uso de Lang-8 es que se tarda mucho tiempo en escribir entradas. Bueno, algunos de mis fuentes pueden ser derivadas de registros previamente escritos aquí. Para ser honesto, me sorprende que no haya visto a muchos otros haciendo lo mismo. Por lo tanto, extiendo una invitación cálida a unirse a las festividades para cualquier persona que pueda estar intrigada por la noción.

Veinte mundos y mil recuerdos. Sigue así y nunca dejes de soñar.

Erizo.
Last edited by coldrainwater on Tue Mar 28, 2017 5:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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