Team Spanish - TAC 2016

[Kulelyn]

I'd like to join you too. My log is here: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1711&p=18948#p18948

[Allison]

In general I would assume that anyone who is on another Spanish team, probably would not be interested in being on two. They might not even read this log. You can check on the first page of the TAC sign-up thread to see who that would be. You might want to contact some of the others (who aren't on another team) to ask if they want to join you. There were people expressing interest in a team earlier, but that was before the teams existed.

Yep, exactly! Thus, the posting in the thread to join—I don't want to make any assumptions.

Welcome, haziz, aliciaftw, and Kulelyn!

@aliciaftw, please let me know the link to your log and I'll add it to the first post.

@Spoonary and Stelle, thanks for saying hello! I, and I suspect others from this group, will be following your upper intermediate/advanced team with interest, as well.

[eplumb]

Hello!

I started Spanish from scratch about three days ago and am having a good time. I am also on the French team.

Right now I am working through two Assimil sets at the same time; one from 1957 or so and one from the 80s. One is French->Spanish and the other is English->Spanish. This helps me achieve a weird sort of triangulation, and if one explanation doesn't click right away, the other might. Especially with written explanations of pronunciation or instructions for forming sounds.

This marks my first use of Assimil from the start of learning a language; I love the design of the method and am interested to see how it turns out.

Besides this I grabbed a couple pre-made Anki decks for basic vocabulary (with pictures and sound) and am toying with Duolingo and Memrize (which so far I am not too impressed with maybe just because it seems to bug out a lot on my device). I have chosen so many resources just so I don't get bored or tired of one. I am not taking a very concerted effort to advance at the moment, just kind of getting some input in. Most of my brain power is going into my other languages at the moment. My goal is to reach A2 by the end of 2016.

Here is my log
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1245#top

(PS- does anyone know if there's a way to subscribe to logs without receiving e-mail notification? I want to receive notifications while visiting the forum but not to my personal e-mail. All I can think is..to mark it as spam!)

[Allison]

Welcome to the team, eplumb! Don't forget to rename your log. You can do that by editing the first post and editing the subject.

(PS- does anyone know if there's a way to subscribe to logs without receiving e-mail notification? I want to receive notifications while visiting the forum but not to my personal e-mail. All I can think is..to mark it as spam!)

Yes! There is a setting for that here. For "Someone replies to a topic to which you are subscribed" make sure "EMAIL" is not checked and "NOTIFICATIONS" is checked, click "Submit", and you won't receive email, but you will still be notified when visiting the forum.

And just to complete the technical tips, to subscribe to a log (or any thread), go to the top or bottom of any page in the thread, click on the picture of a wrench/tool next to the "Post Reply" button, and click "Subscribe topic." Do this for all your teammates' logs and you'll be notified of new posts.

[Hank]

Hmmm...I figured there would be more to the TAC, and I didn't want to get bogged down feeling like I had to do something I didn't really want to. Sign me up!

Here's the link to my log:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1833

[Allison]

Welcome, Hank!

We seem to be forming a good group here. Let's introduce ourselves a bit to get to know each other. A mix of any of the following would help: who you are, where you are, why Spanish, what you can already do in Spanish, what does your current Spanish studying look like, what other languages you use or study, what your goals are (if you set goals for yourself), any non-language hobbies, or anything else you'd like to share.

I understand that TAC teams usually try to set monthly challenges that are optional to participate in, so it seems a good January challenge would be to introduce yourself in Spanish. We seem to be a mix of levels, so please self-evaluate what amount or part of the introduction would be a "challenge" for you to do in Spanish and you can do the rest in English if you need to. Is everyone okay reading Spanish without an English translation—for our very beginners, by resorting to Google translate or other machine translation, if necessary, and asking for clarification if the machine produces something incomprehensible? If so, I think providing an English translation would be personal choice.

My introduction:

Mi nombre es Allison. Soy neoyorquina y anglohablante. Aprendía español en escuela secundaria, pero solamente empecé a aprender de nuevo el abril pasado porque español es útil en el ámbito jurídico, en el que trabajo. Me gusta aprender español porque es divertido. Si aprendiera un otro idioma, aprendería lenguaje de señas americano, pero estoy aprendiendo español solamente. Mi única meta para español es mejorar. Ahora, mi rutina española se está convirtiendo. He estado asistiendo a una clase cada semana. El último nivel antes de la clase de conversación va a empezar dentro de unas semanas. He empezado a usar libros y programas españoles. Estoy experimentando para encontrar una rutina que funciona para mí. Puedo leer libros más o menos con un diccionario, y puedo escuchar algunos programas y entender la esencia. Espero que la lectura y la oída se hicieren cómodos con la práctica. Fuera de aprender español, me gusta ver programas de televisión y leer la crítica de televisión.

My name is Allison. I'm a New Yorker and an English speaker. I learned Spanish in high school, but only started to learn again last April because Spanish is useful in the legal field, in which I work. I like learning Spanish because it's fun. If I were to learn another language, I would learn American Sign Language, but I am only learning Spanish. My only goal for Spanish is to improve. Right now, my Spanish routine is changing. I have been attending a class every week. The last level before the conversation class is going to start in a few weeks. I have started to use Spanish books and TV shows. I am experimenting to find a routine that works for me. I can read books more or less with a dictionary, and I can listen to some shows and understand the gist. I hope that reading and listening become comfortable with practice. Outside of learning Spanish, I like watching TV shows and reading television criticism.

I'm going to go post this on lang-8 so I can get corrections.

[emk]

I keep going back on forth on how much time I want to commit to Spanish this year. I'm sorely tempted, but I've got a lot of other stuff on my plate. But I'm going to go ahead and subscribe to the logs of Spanish TAC members, and watch everybody else have fun at least.

[Tomás]

Would like to join the Spanish team. My log is at: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1867

[Mohave]

¡Hola!

I'd like to join the Spanish team as well - although I will not start Spanish in earnest until 1 Feb with the 6 week challenge - which I recommend everyone consider participating in. The basic idea is that you study as much as you can within a six week period to see how far you can progress.

I am probably a false beginner - but I haven't studied Spanish in over 35 years! I grew up on the Texas/Mexico border and had to take mandatory Spanish in elementary school. I was exposed to a lot of Spanish, but never studied it after 6th grade. I pursued French in high school and college, and restarted it approximately 2 1/2 years ago. My husband and I have travelled a fair amount in Mexico, Latin America and Spanish-speaking Caribbean so I have some basic survival Spanish and vocabulary, however I couldn't properly conjugate verb or string together a grammatically correct sentence. We plan to travel in Peru in early 2017, and I'd like to have a "basic conversational" capability for that trip. My goals in Spanish are different than I had for French. In Spanish, I want to have great listening skills and to be able to speak well whereas my initial French goals were more about reading the awesome literature, watching films, and having enough French to "get-by" when we traveled.

Happy Language Learning!

[Allison]

Welcome, drthomasfbrown and Mohave! You're both added to the first post.

@Mohave, will you be using the log in your profile? I added that one to our list, but if you're going to use something different, let me know so I can update.

For the six week challenge, is it like TAC where you self-determine what "study as much as you can in X time" means or is there tracking or goals of some kind?

@emk, glad to hear you'll be following along!

I got corrections for my January challenge paragraph on lang-8. I forgot how confusing it can be to get conflicting corrections! It was still very helpful. Among other things I was trying out, I was excited to use the "en el que trabajo" phrase, since "el que" is a construction that fascinates me, but I don't actually understand yet. For example, why is it sometimes "el que" and sometimes "lo que"? (The answer, according to studyspanish.com, is that "el que" is for people and things and "lo que" is for abstract ideas.)