What next? (learning Spanish, maintaining German, random dabbling...)

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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Chill (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Tue Aug 04, 2020 9:16 pm

I've finished chapter 6 in Nos Vemos which means that, nearly 4 months after starting Spanish, I am officially just over 50% of the way to A1. Chapter 7 introduces the first past tense (of many, it seems) which is very exciting. When I first started German, I developed a habit of giving up just as whatever course I was using was about to introduce the Perfekt. Looking back, I'm not entirely sure why it became such a hurdle at the time. To learn any language, the two main things to do are 1)start and 2)keep going, after all.

Anyway, back to Spanish. I've already had some minimal exposure to the perfect, imperfect and simple past, thanks to the Lernkrimi and a couple of the example sentences in Gramática de uso del español, but will be nice to start developing this further. Looking ahead, Nos Vemos introduces the perfect and the simple past at A1, and then brings in the imperfect in the first part of A2, whereas the Lernkrimi, which is graded A1, makes the point of providing an introduction to the imperfect. In any case, if A2 is my goal, I'll need all three. It would also suggest that maybe the Lerkrimi is intended for people who have just finished an A1 course, rather than hardcore individuals like myself who are only halfway through...

6WC is providing a healthy dose of motivation although I've got a couple of minor problems. Firstly, I've now had to increase my new cards on Anki to 50 a day, as I am covering so much new material every day. I need to keep an eye on it to make sure I don't overload myself, but for now my recall when reviewing is still pretty good, so it's manageable. Secondly, ignoring the Anki new cards issue, there is still a limit to how much time I can usefully spend on the language every day. A page or two of Nos Vemos and a unit in Gramática de uso del español is really enough. Any more would mean too much new information and not enough time to let it sink in. And since I'm not yet ready to have a conversation or engage with native materials, and there's not enough Lernkrimi around to keep me satisfied every single day, there does come a point where I'm better off putting Spanish down and doing something else.

Once I get the Fonética book it should hopefully give me something else useful to add in, but even then, I think 2 hours a day is probably going to be the maximum before studying becomes a waste of time. It won't get me to the top of the leaderboard, but I need to keep in mind that my goal is about getting better at Spanish rather than just scoring points on the leaderboard.
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Tatort und Chill (DE|ES|FR)

Postby Brun Ugle » Wed Aug 05, 2020 1:34 pm

If you want some extra material that’s fairly light, you could always try watching Destinos, the slowest, most repetitive telenovela in existence. It’s made for Spanish learners. There is a textbook and on the Annenberg Learner site, there are supposed to be exercises, but I think it’s only available in the US now. But since you already have another textbook, you could just use the videos for listening practice and they are available on YouTube.

You can also try Mi vida loca from the BBC. I think it is also some kind of show for beginners, but I haven’t seen it as it wasn’t available in my country when I was a beginner.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Chill (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Wed Aug 05, 2020 4:58 pm

Good call on Destinos. I'd pretty much written it off as an option since the official version isn't accessible in the UK, but as long as it stays around on YouTube it should do the job nicely.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Chill (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Sat Aug 08, 2020 7:36 pm

And now I'm finding myself regularly at the top of the leader board on the 6WC, which is crazy. I think it must be down to the fact that there are fewer people participating than in previous challenges, and maybe a lot of the participants are concentrating more on clocking up loads of hours on all the languages, not just their nominated 6WC language, since I'm way down the list on total hours studied overall. I'm not logging any time spent on German, but even if I did I wouldn't be logging anywhere near the number of hours that some people are. And even on my target language, Spanish, I fully expect to get overtaken by someone doing a Netflix binge or similar in their target language within the next few weeks!

Spanish is going well though. I've managed to turn round my attitude from doubting whether I should even continue with the language prior to the challenge, to clocking up 1-2 hours of study a day and feeling really motivated to continue. I have plenty of Spanish bubbling around my head and I am starting to make up my own random sentences in my head related to random things in daily life, as some kind of precursor to self talk.

I had to take a short break from Gramática de uso del español because studying a unit a day alongside Nos vemos is just introducing too much new material to process on a daily basis, and I've come to the conclusion that it would be far more beneficial to keep ploughing on through Nos vemos to cover the rest of the A1 syllabus as quickly as possible. Although there are some good things about the way material is structured in Gramática de uso del español, it is still starting to do things like throwing in various different verb tenses (which I haven't studied yet) in the examples and exercises in advance of the section of the book where they are covered. I can cope with this, obviously, but I think I'll get to my goal quicker if I keep up the pace on Nos vemos to get these new verb tenses covered asap and then I'll be able to use Gramática de uso del español more as a tool for revision and consolidation. I still intend to keep up doing 1 or 2 units from the grammar book every week though. So I don't get lazy.

The Fonética book from Anaya is just about giving me what I need. It's not as good as the 500 exercices de phonétique for French and it wastes some paper on pointless exercises like wordsearches which I am just ignoring, but there's still sufficient audio material with listen/repeat, minimal pairs, and dictations which are all useful.

Also loving Destinos!
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Tatort und Chill (DE|ES|FR)

Postby Brun Ugle » Sun Aug 09, 2020 7:52 am

I’m glad you’re starting to like Spanish now. I love it, so of course I think everyone else should love it too. :D It really pays off once you get past about B1 and can really start enjoying native materials. There’s just so much out there and a lot of it is easily accessible for free.

I’m glad you like Destinos too. It gets a bit slow sometimes like when they start counting things. :roll: I remember getting a bit annoyed at the kid and wanting to get back to the story. But of course, it’s supposed to be teaching Spanish, so I guess they have to do a bit of that. And they do do a fairly good job of keeping it interesting and teaching a language at the same time.

I didn’t go through GdUdE until I was probably already A2 or higher. I found it really useful then though. I think it might be better to use for consolidation like that because then you already have a fairly good idea about most of the grammar and can use the workbook to help you firm it up a bit and figure out some of the details you may have been missing. I always find it helpful to go through the same grammar points multiple times with various resources because I usually only get a fairly superficial understanding of the grammar the first time and it gets a bit deeper with each new resource/repetition. It can take a lot of repetition before it becomes second-nature and I don’t have to waste brainpower thinking about it. The other advantage of using GdUdE a bit later is that you don’t have to learn vocabulary since you’ll probably already know most of it from other sources. I find that if I’m going to really learn the grammar well, I need to be only working on grammar and not distract myself with new vocabulary. Of course, when you first start learning, you have to learn a bit of both, but I think regular textbooks a better for that.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Chill (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Sun Aug 09, 2020 3:53 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:I’m glad you’re starting to like Spanish now. I love it, so of course I think everyone else should love it too. :D It really pays off once you get past about B1 and can really start enjoying native materials. There’s just so much out there and a lot of it is easily accessible for free.


Well I know it is something of a heresy on this forum, but I'm not finding the promise of native materials to be particularly alluring at the moment. I've said it before in relation to my decision to park French at B1. I'm not much of a TV person, and I'm a slow (but enthusiastic) reader with a massive pile of English and German books still waiting to be read. My motivation at the moment lies more in keeping the dream alive, that by next year the pandemic will be over and Brexit will somehow be settled in such a way that I'll be going back to Spain on holiday and taking part in regular language cafés in my own city (for which Spanish is by far the most popular language, since we have lots of native speakers and learners).

I'm also really feeling the benefits of my study of other languages in quite a new way. Each time I've added a new language, there has been some benefit from the previous, at least in terms of what I've studied as an adult. But now, it feels like I am thinking about language in quite a different way, since I no longer have a single point of comparison and, let's face it, there are loads of similarities overall between English, German, French and Spanish, to the point that when I notice differences I'm like "oh, that's Spanish being weird" or, even better, "oh, English is the weird one here!" Plus I've realised that I've developed ways of working over the years which suit me well and it's nice to put everything I've learned over the years about language learning into practice. So learning Spanish is no longer just about learning Spanish, but also about honing my language learning skills in general. I'm really curious as to how far I can take it.

Brun Ugle wrote:I’m glad you like Destinos too. It gets a bit slow sometimes like when they start counting things. :roll: I remember getting a bit annoyed at the kid and wanting to get back to the story. But of course, it’s supposed to be teaching Spanish, so I guess they have to do a bit of that. And they do do a fairly good job of keeping it interesting and teaching a language at the same time.


I'm quite happy with both the slowness and the counting, but I think this probably reflects the fact that I am at just the right level to get the maximum benefit from it. I think for someone at A2 or above, starting Destinos from scratch might not be ideal. I'm assuming as the show progresses the language used also gets progressively more challenging? Or do we have to wait until the final episode for some kid to count up to a billion stars?
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Tatort und Chill (DE|ES|FR)

Postby Brun Ugle » Sun Aug 09, 2020 4:30 pm

I was referring to the GdUdE workbook when I said that I was probably A2 before I started using it. I just find that kind of grammar workbook is often best for consolidating after you already know most of the stuff it covers.

I think I started Destinos at a lower level, but I don’t really remember so much at this point. It was a while ago now. I was a false beginner though since I’d studied a bit of Spanish in school.

I’d forgotten you don’t like TV so much. You’re going to miss out on all those fabulous telenovelas! Oh well, Spanish is a fun language anyway, but for me a lot of the fun comes from books and TV. Spanish grammar is fun too though.

I also find that having learned several languages helps when learning a new one. There’s so much grammar that basically carries over. It’s kind of funny though; almost every time I’d get annoyed with German grammar, I’d realize that English does the same thing. Spanish just seems so much more logical.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Chill (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Mon Aug 10, 2020 5:50 pm

Finally, I'm almost at the bottom of my new cards pile in my Anki vocabulary deck. For the last couple of days I upped the limit to 60 and am now definitely at the limit of what I can process in a day, as it's taking significantly more mental effort to answer some of the cards, even those where I first studied the material two days ago and created the cards yesterday. I'll be glad to (hopefully) start dialling back down the number of new cards a day. On the other hand, I have just added over 200 new cards to my Anki conjugations deck, since yesterday I did my first study session on the pretérito perfecto...
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Re: Tatort und Chill (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Wed Aug 12, 2020 8:42 pm

My broadband is down so I'll keep this brief. I'm using my phone internet which is slow and unreliable.

Today I finished unit 7 in Nos Vemos. It feels great to be ploughing through the book at such a pace.

The lack of broadband has given me the push I needed to order a decent dictionary and grammar, so I've now got the massive Collins dictionary and the Routledge grammar on the way. This feels like the next level of commitment.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Chill (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Mon Aug 17, 2020 4:30 pm

Now I am on my summer holiday, which means I don't have to work for the next two weeks and can catch up on some much needed sleep. For the first time in years I basically have two weeks leave with no plans or travels to fill the time. With all the recent changes to quarantine rules I am rather glad I didn't try to chance it and book a trip abroad. But anything half decent in the UK is already fully booked. And I've genuinely lost track of who I am allowed to meet and where I am allowed to meet them... But at least I don't have to work, my time is all my own, even if my options are a bit more limited than usual.

In theory this means I get to spend a lot more time at home with my languages. In practice I think it will just mean that I get my Spanish study done earlier in the day, which actually might help with learning and retention.

I did wake up this morning and think to myself "woohoo, today I get to learn reflexive verbs in Spanish!" I suppose my simpler lifestyle means I am easier to please these days.

With my background in French and German, I am finding it very strange that you don't need to choose between two auxiliary verbs for the perfect tense. Since I am familiar with (most of) the French agreement rules on the past participle, I am also finding it strange that you don't have to do something similar in Spanish in the perfect tense either. Even though Spanish is actually simpler in this respect, it doesn't seem to make it easier for me at this stage, because I find myself overthinking what I need to be doing and at times overcorrecting myself. I'm sure it'll settle down in the long run, but it's curious how the brain works.
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