Isn't it Romantic? SCMT learns Spanish and French

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Caromarlyse
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Re: 40something Spanish Log

Postby Caromarlyse » Tue Jan 05, 2021 10:58 am

SCMT wrote:Anyway, what i didn't mention in that thread was how I was going to try to improve my listening comprehension, partly because my log seems like a more appropriate place and partly because i don't really know how. I do believe in the idea that practice doesn't necessarily make perfect, but it usually does make better, so the initial plan is to practice listening more and then adjust the plan as needed. So for January, I'm going to set the goal of listening for at least an hour a day, at least 6 days per week, of authentic, native, Spanish language content. I may listen to content multiple times, or break it into small segments, or slow down the speed, but I'm going to do it without subtitles. That is going to take the form of the El Explicador podcast, youtube videos, movies and TV shows on Netflix, and Spanish language news. I may watch stuff like movies or Netflix with subtitles on, but I'm not going to count it towards my hour. If I watch it a second time without subs, it will count. That's a minimum of 1 hour a day, every day, with a one day cushion in case life gets in the way. If I miss a day, I will either flagellate myself with the green branches of an olive tree or make it up the next time I can. Sounds reasonable, right?


I'm doing similar with German, and have been for a couple of months already, and kind of feel it's working - it definitely feels more comfortable to listen to German, I'm finding that when I do "fill-in-the-gaps" exercises I seem to know subconsciously which word is correct, and if I've just looked up a word and then come across it in a podcast I listen to on a walk, I do notice it (which in turn reinforces my learning of the word). I've also started doing "expectation-free" listening with Russian, where my listening ability is terrible. I'm listening with subtitles in the TL, but deliberately not stopping/starting, writing stuff down, etc. Even then, I found when speaking this week, I knew a word I didn't know I knew, i.e. I just came out with the correct, not so common, word, and almost shocked myself that I knew it. Reconstructing things, I think I had heard it and, clearly, absorbed it without realising. All to say that I'm doing what you're doing, so at least we'll be able to commiserate with each other at the end of the year if it's a complete disaster!
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SCMT
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Re: 40something Spanish Log

Postby SCMT » Mon Jan 11, 2021 2:32 pm

Guess what happens when you set a goal of listening for one hour every day, at least 6 days per week?

Well, in my case, I listened pretty much one hour, 6 days, and not much else. I watched Favoritos de Midas with subs and then without, and I read my newspapers in Spanish most weekdays, but other than that, the listening project was my only 'study.' I did accomplish that, though, hitting the 60 minute mark almost exactly every day except Saturday, in which I only did about 20. I made a list of each day through Thursday or so, but I lost it, so I won't itemize by day. But my materials included:

Casa de las Flores season 3 episode 10 (there is one more in the final season, plus one special episode about the funeral;)
Los Favoritos de Midas episodes 2 and 3;
Several Easy Spanish episodes, each of which I listened to several times making special effort to ignore the subtitles;
Noticias Telemundo.

Sadly, the elexplicador podcast seems to be broken. I hope it returns, but I was unable to access any of the audio files all week, so I may have to find another.
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SCMT
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Re: 40something Spanish Log

Postby SCMT » Mon Jan 18, 2021 8:07 pm

I met my listening goals this week, getting in 60 minutes every day except Friday, when I could only squeeze in 30. I also read the news most days, and i had two sessions with tutors, but despite my good intentions, I did not return to my novel or shore up any of the areas on my "list of weaknesses." I did drink a little bit of Spanish wine, an unusual white from Priorat that paired well with a shrimp pasta thing. My listening consisted of:

The final episode of Casa de las Flores (there is one more special episode that wasn't in a "season;")
A few Easy Spanish episodes;
Nociticas Telemundo;
Several of those terrific videos from BBCmundo, which I often forget about;
The ElExplicador podcast, which I was able to locate on something called TuneIn;
Favoritos de Midas episode 3.

I think I have decided that I'm better off giving up subtitles entirely, at least for a while. For instance, when watching Midas (the most difficult material I am using,) I have been using subs, then watching another time without. And while this is probably better than just watching with subs, it's a cheat, and I think it may be hindering progress. I find that I know the story, and I can remember some of the dialogue, so I don't have the motivation to engage as intently as if it were new without subtitles. I think i would be better suffering through the scene, then rewinding and listening over and over if I have to, but forgoing the written word entirely. And I think it would be a better use of my "listening" time if I didn't have to put in an hour of prep before I do it. Anyway, that's the strategy for this week.
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SCMT
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Re: 40something Spanish Log

Postby SCMT » Mon Jan 25, 2021 3:51 pm

It still surprises me how setting a goal creates some sort of disincentive to do anything beyond that goal. I'm sure there is an economist with a prize somewhere who named the phenomenon, but if your goal is to run a mile without stopping, it basically eliminates your chances of running 2 miles, until and unless you move the goal. Anyway, I got my hour of listening done every day except one this week, and I got about 40 minutes that day (Thursday?) Materials included:

A bunch of BBC videos;
Los Favoritos de Midas through 20 minutes of episode 6;
Noticias Telemundo;
The final episode of Casa de las Flores
Some Easy Spanish Videos.

I've found that I can pay close attention for about 20 minutes before my mind starts to wander, so that usually consists of watching an episode of Casa de las Flores, viewing Midas or listening to ElExplicador for 20 minutes (and repeating again later,) listening to BBCmundo or Easy Spanish repeatedly for that time, or watching the news once. I'd like to get to the point where I have a normal attention span in Spanish, but it still takes too much focus to just live in the language without burning up a bunch of mental power.

I had two sessions with tutors this week. I discussed the last episode of Casa de las Flores in one of them. My tutor congratulated me on finishing the show and asked what my next challenge should be, to which I didn't have a good answer. I will try to come up with one, although I never really considered watching a show a challenge. Maybe I should have, because I can't really list the reasons why it isn't but finishing a grammar or reading a book seem like they are. Anyway, I have the special funeral episode of Casa left, so I ahve a little time to figure out the next step.

With my other tutor, I worked on todavia and ya, as well as their negatives. The concepts are simple but different than English, so I need some practice. And while some of the uses sound right, some of them just don't (especially "ya no,") so I need a little practice. I will try to put them in my conversations whenever I can, probably to the point of making people wish I would stop.
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SCMT
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Re: 40something Spanish Log

Postby SCMT » Mon Feb 01, 2021 3:20 pm

January is over, and with it my own personal listening challenge of 1 hour a day, 6 days a week as a minimum amount of native Spanish language content. I really think I did pretty well, and only missed my goal once, this past week, in which I had no Spanish one day and only about 35 minutes another. I made up for the shortfall by watching a full 2 hour movie on Saturday, so I won't beat myself up over that too badly. I think focusing on listening for a month has improved my comprehension. I think I am catching more meaning on the first pass of new material. I know I am more familiar with the Peninsular accent, although that wasn't really the goal. I haven't measured any of this, but my perception is that 30 days and some 30 or so hours of absorbing Spanish language audio spread over almost daily practice had some effect. It came at the expense of almost everything else I do in the language, which isn't ideal, but maybe my weakest skill is a little better.

Going forward, I have to make this type of practice a regular part of my study. I'm going to set a goal for the foreseeable future to try to get 5 hours of Spanish listening per week, preferably an hour or so a day for 5 days, but I know that will have to be flexible. And hopefully that will give me more time to go back to my novel, to shore up the items on my list of weakness, to find conversations,, and to open the seal on French. Certainly paying attention to the amount of time I'm listening, setting a goal, and tracking it encouraged me to do it more often, and i do believe it improved the skill, so I'm going to continue, although not quite as strictly. And I quit subtitles, and I'm not going back.

Materials last week included:
Several videos from BBC mundo that I watched 2 or 3 times each;
The ElExplicador podcast;
The final episode of Los Favoritos de Midas;
The special funeral episode of Casa de las Flores;
El Laberinto del Fauno
.

Another thing I should note in this variety of resources is that I noticed how low density in language movies and tv shows generally are compared to podcasts or news items. The amount of time movie characters spend in car chases or walking suspensefully down hallways while music plays and no language is spoken prevents that form of entertainment from delivering as many words per time as somebody explaining something does.

So that's the recap of my month of listening, which I consider worthwhile. And if nothing else came of it, I did determine to throw away my crutch of subtitles, so that's something.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: 40something Spanish Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:05 pm

SCMT wrote:Another thing I should note in this variety of resources is that I noticed how low density in language movies and tv shows generally are compared to podcasts or news items. The amount of time movie characters spend in car chases or walking suspensefully down hallways while music plays and no language is spoken prevents that form of entertainment from delivering as many words per time as somebody explaining something does.
So true. Plays overcome this obstacle, and once in a while a publisher produces an audio DVD of a novel that is not an audiobook per se but rather uses several actors for various voices. I am aware of this happening only for French, but surely it occurs for other languages as well. The French I know of are Ensemble c'est tout by Anna Gavalda, and Une longue dimanche de fiançialles by Sebastien Japrisot.

Note that both are out as movies and as single-narrator audiobooks, too.

You are making impressive progress, and I filch an idea or resource from you from time to time. ;)
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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SCMT
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Re: 40something Spanish Log

Postby SCMT » Mon Feb 01, 2021 8:20 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
You are making impressive progress, and I filch an idea or resource from you from time to time. ;)


Thanks, and filch all you want! I'm sure I filched all of them from someone, so i like the idea of paying it forward ;)
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Re: 40something Spanish Log

Postby SCMT » Fri Feb 12, 2021 2:38 pm

Sometimes things just don’t go according to plan. I had a work emergency that required a trip to Mexico, and while I think I probably conducted myself better than the below report suggests, I was disappointed in my Spanish. In no particular order, there follows a list of the high and low points of an American abroad:

--I have been working fairly hard recently on listening comprehension, and I think I have made some progress. Familiar shows, which I generally watch while wearing headphones so as not to disturb the other members of my household, are more intelligible now. Unfamiliar shows through hotel quality TV sound systems might as well be broadcast in Klingon. It is a wave of very fast random sounds with no meaning, kind of like the rave party scenes from a movie.

--Trying to discern what people are saying while they are wearing masks in a busy, noisy setting is really, really hard. This is reason #831 why Coronavirus sucks.

--I know lots of Spanish words. I have lists of them, and lots of words are necessary to do things like read the news, which I do regularly and without a lot of trouble. I use a bunch of those words in sessions with my tutors. In spontaneous conversations, however, I think I use approximately 14 of those words over and over again. OK, maybe that is an exaggeration. Maybe I only use 14 verbs. And I use them in the present tense or the future with IR. I don’t know where the rest of the words go.

--Most of the people I know speak English at least as well as I speak Spanish. This results in odd conversations of switching back and forth between languages, either because one of us needs help or because the other person would like to practice and demonstrate their language skills. And while I appreciate the hard work they have put in to learning English, I think that fairly, because I am in their country, it is my turn to practice their language, no matter how stupid I sound in it.

----Even with these shortfalls, I managed to converse in mostly intelligible form most of the time, but there were a couple of instances where my Spanish just fell apart. For example, I got completely tongue tied over some topic I don’t remember trying to say “I was.” Was it fui or era? Was it an ongoing “was”or did it have a definite time? Or wait…is this ser was or an estar was? Estaba? Estuve? Hell, is the thing I’m trying to say subjunctive? Estuviera? I don’t even remember the subjunctive for ser. How do you do past subjunctive? Is it preterite subjunctive or imperfect? “Was” is one word in English! Fortunately, my very patient host rescued me by telling me to just use estuve all the time, I’m sure thinking that I am incapable of grasping a concept that her 3 year old daughter understands perfectly well, and I believe she is probably right.

So overall, I survived the trip. In my mind, I expected more Spanish to go more smoothly. I need to come up with some sort of study plan to shore up some of my weak points (remember the “list of weaknesses," SCMT?) in both grammar and vocab, but honestly, my Spanish brain is tired and a little frustrated right now, and there is no hurry, so I will take a few days and reevaluate. ¡Manaña es otro dia!
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SCMT
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Re: 40something Spanish Log

Postby SCMT » Wed Feb 17, 2021 6:11 pm

My schedules--work, kids, study, log posting--are all messed up. And while I'm usually an order muppet https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/arc ... ty/327133/ I'm actually enjoying the chaos at the moment.

I finally finished my novel, Manuel Vázquez Montelbáhn's Los Mares del Sur. I think it was pretty good, but honestly I read it in such a fragmented fashion that I never could get into the flow of the book and actually got some of the characters confused in my head. There was quite a nice summary at the end where the detective explains the whole plot to his client which I really appreciated. I have also started a new series on netflix, El Diablero, a bloody supernatural story about a demon hunter in present day Mexico City that has a ton of plot holes, but I'm enjoying it anyway. The language is slangy, fast, and at times very difficult to understand, but I'm watching wtihout subtitles (there has been one exception of about 5 minutes where it just seemed like the right thing to do,) and then I watch sections or even entire episodes again if I need to do so. Currently, I have finished episode 4, so I'm breezing through at a fairly fast pace trying to use an extensive approach unless I totally miss a scene or can't follow a plot point. I am also still reading news mostly daily in El Pais or BBC mundo.

And in other news, I kind of started to study French. Actually, I started going through PMPs French Vocabulary workbook to see how much I remembered from my schooling or could recognize from Spanish. I will have to say that so far, I'm not really impressed with the book or with the method, but I'm not that far into it yet, so we will see. I have seen a Schaum's book for Spanish vocab that introduced a topic (Sitting Down to Dinner!) then showed a related picture with vocab labels, followed by a list of words and then exercises. Well, the PMP book, although similar in concept, just isn't as well organized or designed. There are lots of words in the exercises never introduced, and there are far too many questions where "answers will vary." Anyway, the point of doing this is to see what I remember (a little bit, with some huge important holes,) or can deduce (which is a bit dangerous, as I keep answering French questions in Spanish,) and to prime my brain for actual study, probably starting with some combination Assimil, FIA, and PMP Complete French Grammar, which I hope is better than the vocab workbook; PMP's Spanish grammar workbook was very good. My first impression (re-impression?) of the French language is that is NOT just Spanish spoken with a different accent, which means I'm going to have my work cut out for me as I'm really pretty good at accents. The jury is still out on the question of how good I am at everything else.

Finally, just as I start my foray into a 3rd language, my office has hired a young man who grew up bi-lingual in a German and English speaking household. So I'm going to try really hard to focus on the things I'm supposed to be doing (improving Spanish,) and the one thing I'm doing as a kind of diversion (French,) without giving in to the temptation of spending time getting diverted from my diversion with something like German. I'm probably going to try really hard not to do that.
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SCMT
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Re: 40something Spanish Log

Postby SCMT » Fri Feb 26, 2021 9:55 pm

I don't know what my logging schedule is. I don't really know what my learning schedule is, either, but I'm still getting some language work done in a haphazard fashion.

I have had a couple of lessons with my Spanish tutors, both of whom coincidentally shifted to the topic of the subjunctive mood. Both of them have different approaches, which I think is good. My main tutor practices with me some of the 10,000 or so phrases that require the subjunctive like "quiero que" or "espere que" as well as the similar phrases without "que"that take the infinitive. My other tutor focuses on the concept that subjunctive infers supposition rather than specific phrases, coming at the topic from a different direction. Anyway, I understand it, but it is very difficult for me to speak this way, as it just isn't what I'm used to doing. Practice, practice, and practice, I think is required, so I started going through the subjunctive exercises in my workbooks again, too.

I have been watching Diablero whenever I have the chance, usually two times per episode with a day or so in between. I think I am on episode 6 and need to watch it once more. I like the show, and I think it is helping my listening skills. I watched a documentary, something like "Tesoros Esconditos de Peru," and I was pleasantly shocked at how much easier it is than my silly supernatural drama, Casa de las Flores, or movies.. I also listened to the ElExplicador podcast, watched a few BBC videos, and took my news from telemundo a couple of times. My listening comp is definitely better than it was just a few months ago.

I'm reading El viejo y el mar again. I started this book many months ago but had to abandon it as above my level. I am not very far into it yet, but it seems like it is going better, with the biggest barrier being some unusual fishing vocabulary. I am also reading my Spanish newspapers regularly.

As for French, I'm not ready to say that I'm studying yet, but I am laying some groundwork, I hope. I'm working my way through the PMP vocab workbook casually to hopefully familiarize myself with enough words to get started. It usually takes me about 5 minutes to stop reading the French words in Spanish, but I guess that's part of the process, too. I also signed up for kwiziq and took the placement test. I passed the A1 level and abandoned the test somewhere on A2 because it was getting difficult, so that's at least some sort of measure of where I'm starting. The concept of kwiziq seems very good, and I suppose I will know soon enough about the execution. I also have about 10 vocabulary lists open in a window right now, so soon I will try to get around to reviewing them.

EDIT: After looking back through my log, I initially started trying to read El viejo y el mar in June or July of 2019 and left it because "between special vocabulary, sentence structure, and verb tenses I got bogged down very quickly." I think it will go much better a year and a half later.
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