Walt's Spanish log

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greatSchism
Yellow Belt
Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
Studied but inactive: German (A2), Hungarian (A2), and French (A1)
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Re: Walt's Spanish log

Postby greatSchism » Sun Sep 19, 2021 4:45 pm

Querneus wrote:Aunque conste que las dos oraciones significan casi lo mismo, prácticamente lo mismo. :D Hmm... Qué tal les pareció. How was it? Qué les pareció. What do you think of it?


Las frases tienen significados similares, y las he visto ¿qué tal? y ¿qué le parece? un monton de veces, pero no combinadas.

AllSubNoDub wrote:I was actually referring to the thematic lists. I can see them being useful for picking up quick vocab in areas that I don't have much reading interest in, e.g. business, sports, etc. Funny that the CEFR tests don't focus on stuff that I am interested in (like science), so I can see lists like these being useful for quickly reviewing and rounding off your knowledge for testing purposes.

Iversen alguna vez hizo la excelente observación de que el CEFR (...MCER...) parece haber sido creado teniendo en mente las necesidades de los políticos europeos, con enfoque en habilidades argumentativas...[/quote]

Esto no es muy sorprendente considerando el hecho de que en la mayoría de los casos los políticos solo hacen lo que les beneficia a ellos o su imagen pública..
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greatSchism
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Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
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Re: Walt's Spanish log

Postby greatSchism » Sun Sep 19, 2021 4:54 pm

Today I wrapped up unit 18 and will move on to unit 19 tomorrow. I have been continuing with the vocabulary list from Spanishdict.com. I am moving through this vocabulary list quicker than I expected because it is much less challenging than I thought it would be.

Spanishdict.com: 610/1000

I should be finished with it within the next few weeks. Then, I will have to move back to the Anki top 5000 deck. I'm considering extracting all of the vocabulary terms out of the deck and porting them into Spanishdict.com. This way, I can continue learning them without physically interacting with my phone; the only downside is that I would lose all of my Anki stats thus far.
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greatSchism
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Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
Studied but inactive: German (A2), Hungarian (A2), and French (A1)
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Re: Walt's Spanish log

Postby greatSchism » Tue Sep 21, 2021 12:05 pm

I have been working on unit 19 for the past two days. Yesterday, I spent the whole day traveling, and it was not very productive because my focus was off. But, I managed to drill the dialogue and first few sections before listening to the entire lesson. I also watched the Motorcycle Diaries for the first time. I didn't make it through the whole film, but I watched a little over an hour of it.

Also, the other day I watched an episode of "Carmen Sandiego" on Netflix. It's not bad for a cartoon, or was it not difficult to understand. But, I noticed that some of the Spanish (American) audio and subtitles did not match word-for-word, whereas the European Spanish audio and subtitles did.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80167821

FSI Spanish Basic: 19 / 70
Spanishdict Advanced words: 657 / 1341
Duolingo: 5 / 10
Anki Spanish Vocabulary Top 500: 3213 / 10000
Anki Spanish FSI: 319 / 6128

*** These books may be a bit of an overreach in terms of comprehensible input.
El Inocente by Michael Connelly: 3 / 63
El Visitante by Stephen King: 3 / 87
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greatSchism
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Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
Studied but inactive: German (A2), Hungarian (A2), and French (A1)
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Re: Walt's Spanish log

Postby greatSchism » Wed Sep 22, 2021 5:08 pm

I continued unit 19 today. I woke up at 3:00 am, and could not sleep so I some drills for unit 19 silently. I fell back asleep around 430, when I finally got up it was 630 am I went running. I listened to the audio on my run, and again on my afternoon walk. I will review Anki tonight and start unit 20 tomorrow.
On Apple music, you cannot rewind easily, so I switched to the Scribd version because you can rewind or forward in increments of 30 seconds. It is free if you have a subscription to Scribd (along with all of the other places on the internet.)

https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/440434 ... ute-Course

FSI Spanish Basic: 19 / 70
Spanishdict Advanced words: 657 / 1341
Duolingo: 5 / 10
Anki Spanish Vocabulary Top 500: 3213 / 10000
Anki Spanish FSI: 319 / 6128

*** These books may be a bit of an overreach in terms of comprehensible input.
El Inocente by Michael Connelly: 4 / 63
El Visitante by Stephen King: 3 / 87
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greatSchism
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Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
Studied but inactive: German (A2), Hungarian (A2), and French (A1)
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Re: Walt's Spanish log

Postby greatSchism » Thu Sep 23, 2021 2:08 pm

Today, I started unit 20, which covers "direct and indirect clitics in the same construction", and this will be my primary focus until Sunday/Monday when I start the next unit. I did a cursory review of “Question intonation patterns: Choice questions”, "Exclamatory qué, cómo" and “Review: Postposed full-form possessives”, and I will not spend much time on these areas.

Last night and this morning I went through the "Anki Spanish Vocabulary Top 5000", and selected words that I don't know or know well. I found a little under 2000 words and added them to my vocabulary list on https://www.spanishdict.com/vocabulary. The list keeps growing.

FSI Spanish Basic: 20 / 70
Spanishdict Advanced words and select Anki top 5000: 678 / 2542
Duolingo: 5 / 10
Anki Spanish FSI: 657 / 6128

*** These books may be a bit of an overreach in terms of comprehensible input.
El Inocente by Michael Connelly: 4 / 63
El Visitante by Stephen King: 3 / 87
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greatSchism
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Posts: 78
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Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
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Re: Walt's Spanish log

Postby greatSchism » Sat Sep 25, 2021 2:17 pm

Yesterday and today, I continued to work on unit 20, which is the most challenging Unit I have encountered. “Direct and indirect clitics in the same construction” do not flow off of my tongue very well. Due to the imaginary three-person setup in the conversation, I have spent more time on this area than I would like.

Juan le presta el libro a la profesora.
Juan, ¿qué me prestó Ud.?
José, ¿me prestó Juan el libro?
José, ¿cuándo me lo prestó?
Juan, ¿quién me prestó el libro?
José, ¿me lo prestó Ud.?



Yesterday I spent the majority of the day traveling, which was not very productive. I can only listen to FSI for 45 minutes before my attention wanders, and once it does, I drift in and out of focus. I watched “Dolor y Gloria” on the plane, which was a pretty good movie, although it was just for entertainment.

I started a new Netflix series, Oscuro Deseos, the other night and binge-watched a few too many episodes last night. I thought there were only 12 episodes, so I stayed up later than usual to watch the 12th. When I reached episode 12, I decided to look at the episode list and discovered there are 18 episodes. I would not have stayed up so late to watch those last two episodes if I had known this. I thought the story was ok, but it could have been much better if they had not added so much filler. I hate when series do this to extend it a few more episodes. The situation became too strange and unbelievable.


FSI Spanish Basic: 20 / 70
Spanishdict Advanced words and select Anki top 5000: 678 / 2542
Duolingo: 5 / 10
Anki Spanish FSI: 657 / 6128

*** These books may be a bit of an overreach in terms of comprehensible input.
El Inocente by Michael Connelly: 4 / 63
El Visitante by Stephen King: 3 / 87
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luke
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Languages: English (N). Spanish (intermediate), Esperanto (B1), French (intermediate but rusting)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16948
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Re: Walt's Spanish log

Postby luke » Sat Sep 25, 2021 5:15 pm

greatSchism wrote:
Juan le presta el libro a la profesora.
Juan, ¿qué me prestó Ud.?
José, ¿me prestó Juan el libro?
José, ¿cuándo me lo prestó?
Juan, ¿quién me prestó el libro?
José, ¿me lo prestó Ud.?

I've found that one of the most challenging drills so far. It's long. It's complicated. You have to play all three roles.

One thing that helped me was gathering 5 coins, a pen, pencil, book, and 3 quarters (or nickels or whatever). When Juan le presta el libro a la profesora. I would do the thing like put the book on a chair. Then I would stand or switch seats very quickly depending on who was "called on" to talk about what was going on. For me, it was super helpful using these props.

greatSchism wrote:I thought the story was ok, but it could have been much better if they had not added so much filler. I hate when series do this to extend it a few more episodes.

"Filler" has shown up in more than one series. I don't think it's a good content strategy for Netflix.
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greatSchism
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Re: Walt's Spanish log

Postby greatSchism » Sun Sep 26, 2021 12:57 pm

luke wrote:
greatSchism wrote:Juan le presta el libro a la profesora.
Juan, ¿qué me prestó Ud.?
José, ¿me prestó Juan el libro?
José, ¿cuándo me lo prestó?
Juan, ¿quién me prestó el libro?
José, ¿me lo prestó Ud.?

I've found that one of the most challenging drills so far. It's long. It's complicated. You have to play all three roles.

One thing that helped me was gathering 5 coins, a pen, pencil, book, and 3 quarters (or nickels or whatever). When Juan le presta el libro a la profesora. I would do the thing like put the book on a chair. Then I would stand or switch seats very quickly depending on who was "called on" to talk about what was going on. For me, it was super helpful using these props.


That is a great idea. Using visual props to recreate situations is an excellent method for capturing "who, what, and when," leading to a clearer mental image. I probably should have staged something like this from the beginning. I have been a bit frustrated by the fact that I hesitate in the breaks between sentences because I am too slow to decode what is going on or I simply lose track of who is saying what to whom. However, if I pause it and give myself some time to process it, I am fine.
Last edited by greatSchism on Sun Sep 26, 2021 3:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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greatSchism
Yellow Belt
Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
Studied but inactive: German (A2), Hungarian (A2), and French (A1)
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Re: Walt's Spanish log

Postby greatSchism » Sun Sep 26, 2021 1:13 pm

I continued working on Unit 20. I am still not satisfied with my progress on all aspects of unit 20, but tomorrow I will move on to unit 21. In addition to the new unit, I will spend 10 minutes a day on “Direct and indirect clitics in the same construction” drills from unit 20 until I have them mastered. I'm finding that as I go back through concepts that I have already learned, I am identifying more weak areas or new areas that need I to work on.

FSI Spanish Basic: 20 / 70
Spanishdict Advanced words and select Anki top 5000: 678 / 2542
Duolingo: 5 / 10
Anki Spanish FSI: 657 / 6128

*** These books may be a bit of an overreach in terms of comprehensible input.
El Inocente by Michael Connelly: 4 / 63
El Visitante by Stephen King: 3 / 87
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greatSchism
Yellow Belt
Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
Studied but inactive: German (A2), Hungarian (A2), and French (A1)
x 209

Re: Walt's Spanish log

Postby greatSchism » Mon Sep 27, 2021 11:18 pm

Today I had an early flight, so I woke up at 3 am to make it to the airport on time. I listened to “Direct and indirect clitics in the same construction” drills on my drive to the airport. While on my flight, I listened to units 21 and 22, but I may have dozed off for a few minutes here or there. I'm going to spend two days drilling each topic because I feel comfortable with these areas:

Unit 21
Irregular preterit forms: The verb dar
Verbs with extended stems: estar, andar, traer
Verbs with modified stems: poder, traducir
Verbs with suppleted stems: ser, ir

Unit 22
Present tense irregular verbs: Stem vowel changing
Statement intonation patterns: Sentence modifiers
Review: Theme class in preterit tense forms

I also watched the last two episodes of Oscuro Deseo that I downloaded to my iPad. The series was mostly enjoyable, but a few parts were too far beyond the boundaries of plausibility, to the point that they detracted from the story.

As I mentioned in an early post, over the past year, I had been using Glossika and iTalki.
My stats on Glossika

Spanish Intermediate
B1 Low (35.9%)
218:13 Hours
77575 Reps
5388 Sentences


With Glossika, I did not make much progress in pushing myself beyond what I already knew, but it helped with retention and other areas. My Glossika subscription expires on Dec 30, 2021, and I do not intend to resubscribe. Instead, today I decided to resubscribe to lengalia.com and picked up where I left off on B2, Lesson 6, Exercise 17. I will do 1-2 exercises per day, which should take 5-10 minutes. Once you have answered a grammar question, you can listen to the native speaker reading the sentence, then record yourself.

FSI Spanish Basic: 21 / 70
Spanishdict Advanced words and select Anki top 5000: 790 / 2811
Duolingo: 5 / 10
Anki Spanish FSI: 657 / 6128

*** These books may be a bit of an overreach in terms of comprehensible input.
El Inocente by Michael Connelly: 5 / 63
El Visitante by Stephen King: 4 / 87
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