Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

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thevagrant88
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Mon May 25, 2020 11:42 am

It took longer than I hoped (busy weekend) but I finished my second viewing. All total I'd say this more 'in-depth' watching took about two hours all said and done. A few thoughts:

1. Not knowing just a few words or expressions completely screws up my comprehension.

2. Since my goal in Spanish has always been about becoming communicative, I should have been focusing on dialog and conversation-based content this entire time. Spoken language is drastically different than literary language, exposition, news broadcasts, etc.

3. I "knew" the overwhelming majority of the content on my first viewing, but my ears and brain just couldn't process the sounds into meaning due to the speed, speech patterns, accent, etc.

All said I think I pulled a few dozen, maybe fifty, new words or phrases out of the episode. Understanding of the episode as a whole was way, way easier this time, even without taking these additional measures. I'm going to do one more viewing without subtitles or pausing with as much focus as possible, maybe even not looking at the screen, to put all the pieces together before moving on. To be honest, I can see myself getting bored doing this very quickly so I may have to change my approach. I'll view the second episode the same way, but if I feel it goes to slow for me I may skip the first step and go right to the second step of referencing the subtitles, relistening to difficult sections, and jotting down every single unknown word/phrase, and so on. This could be dangerous though because obviously, I'm trying to reach advanced fluency, which means improving my abilities to spontaneously convert spoken Spanish into meaning without a crutch. Realistically, I'll probably adopt a hybrid-approach where I'll watch with subtitles off and only use those crutches when absolutely necessary. We'll see, but if I do go this route then I will only do it for a few episodes to help build momentum. If I don't get into the telenovela thing, I'm going to be using the same thing with video game dialog on youtube. Same idea either way.

As far as reading is concerned, I am certain more than ever that I want to take a break from novels/books to focus on reading the Aleck Sinner omnibus. Spoken language--or in the case of comics and tv, an approximation of spoken language--is so much more vital to me to become a functional user of the language.

Something I learned a long time ago, and something I become more certain of as time goes on, is that at least fifty percent of all my effort as been banging my head against the wall figuring out how to learn rather than the learning of Spanish per se. On the one hand it's a little discouraging to think I could have been at the level I'm at now one or even two years ago. On the other hand, its really encouraging that when I begin a second language in earnest, I'll have much clearer direction and anticipate making much quicker progress (unless it's Japanese haha). This is precisely why I'm waiting to get into the C levels before taking on the next language. Even as a confident B2, I still have so much to learn and am limited in so many ways. Taking on a second language now would not just take time away from Spanish, it would take time away from learning how to learn. For me, learning Spanish properly is an investment in language learning as a whole.

Anyway, happy with how this is going so far and I'm anxious to see where this journey takes me.
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thevagrant88
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Tue May 26, 2020 10:51 pm

So I'm definitely going to get back into shadowing. I don't have the opportunity to practice speaking right now and it helped me out a lot in the past. Right now I'm searching for programs that will let me download just the audio of Netflix and Youtube videos in the form of mp3's so I can play them in audacity and ear2memory. I have no idea what programs are legitimate and some look like straight-up viruses so if anybody has any recommendations so I don't get friggan ransomeware that would be awesome.
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby iguanamon » Tue May 26, 2020 11:30 pm

I've used this site for youtube with no problems.
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thevagrant88
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Wed May 27, 2020 4:36 pm

Perfect! Thanks so much.
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thevagrant88
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Thu May 28, 2020 12:35 am

Ok, I gotta make a change in my regiment because this is so goddamn boring. I somehow managed to pick materials that feel like they were engineered in a laboratory to be laser-focused in their singular goal of boring me to death. The idea of continuing with this show--let alone rewatching the episode I watched today--sounds painful to me. El Alquimista can go shove it's ass up its own ass. Life's too short to watch telenovels and read shitty books. I don't think I've ever had so little fun learning Spanish the entire time I've been studying the language, and that's saying something.

I think one of the reasons I was feeling more comfortable with Spanish after I added Japanese was because studying another language helped break up the monotony. It was fun. I learn languages for fun and I feel that refocusing my efforts on "mastering" Spanish has killed some of the joy for me. Or maybe it's the shitty book.

Anyway, I got a list together of some dialog-heavy video games that I want to play. Same idea though. I'll have my notepad beside me to jot everything down that I miss and will resort to youtube play-throughs to check my knowledge if need be. I'm gonna start with something I've already played in English before moving on. I also found out how to access the audio files that I download with my podcast app, meaning I can listen to them with Audacity and ear2memory, which just has me tickled pink. As far as reading is concerned...I really don't want to read this book anymore. I'm a big advocate of not doing things you don't like, so I'm probably going to just call it quits even though I'm more than half-way through the book.

I'm really anxious to either start Chinese or get back into Japanese, but I'm staying the course for the time being. We'll see what happens.
Last edited by thevagrant88 on Thu Jun 04, 2020 10:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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thevagrant88
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 8:28 pm

I've been pretty swept up in current events, so I haven't been studying nearly as hard. Having said that, I've at least given myself at least an hour a day of something. I've been playing The Last of Us on PS4 in Spanish and am enjoying it a lot. The voice acting is very high quality. I toyed around with playing with subtitles but I found them more distracting than helpful. I read like two pages a day of El Alquimista a day. It's ok, I still don't think it's that great.

So yeah, just trucking along mostly. Hoping my fellow American language learners are staying safe with all the madness going on.
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eido
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby eido » Wed Jun 03, 2020 10:06 pm

I used to keep lists of words I learnt from shows in my old log! I think people really liked it (but I can never be sure).

Maybe if you wrote them down here, you could get pointers on tricky cultural points or just a record of when you learnt them. That was the goal in my posting all my vocabulary.

Also, don't stress if you can't get every word from an audio track you haven't encountered before. Just try to nab as many as possible, like a game. And I always recommend writing with them if possible, to make them stick extra good in the noodle.
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thevagrant88
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Thu Jun 04, 2020 10:08 am

Thanks for the encouragement! And yes by doing this I've been picking up a tremendous amount of new words very quickly. Even better is that I seem to be remembering them much more easily as well.
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thevagrant88
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Thu Jun 11, 2020 1:21 pm

My wife must have known about my frustrations with El Alquimista because for my birthday today, she gifted me a copy of Ficciones by Borges. She also got me a copy of Manufacturing Consent, but that's another topic haha.

I'm nearing the end of The Last of Us without subtitles. I'm starting to get a little bored, but it's been good exposure. One of the things I like about gaming in Spanish is that it requires that I be dynamic and ready. Dialog can start at any time without warning, the dialog is frequently either crucial story elements or important gameplay instructions, there's a lot of jumping between reading and listening, etc. I haven't picked up a mountain of new vocab, but what I have learned as been valuable.

Apart from that, I basically decided that I can't help myself; I need to study Japanese too. Fortunately, I feel like I've devised a system that permits me to do so without cutting into my Spanish time. While I'm teaching, I pretty much always have another window open to something. For a while it was Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc. For the past few months I've been using my teaching time to learn my Kanji. In this "dead time" I've gone through the first thousand or so Kanji from the Heisig book. Today, I tried mining sentences from my Japanese For Everyone textbook and found it to be easy to integrate into my schedule. I've also found that by using audacity to snip the sentences out, enter them into an anki card, and writing the translation, it's made it so much easier to understand and retain the grammar and vocab. It's like the act of creating the cards is a form of study outside of reviewing them. So I'm very pleased so far.

So yeah, carrying on as normal.
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thevagrant88
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Fri Sep 04, 2020 1:29 pm

Been a while. I’ve been super busy and also recently have been going through a web development course, but I just wanted to touch base for a bit. I’ve recently been devoting more time to listening than anything else. Specifically, I’ve gone back to watching La Doña. Rather than doing that super intense style of watching and then rewatching, I’ve just been watching it like I would a regular TV show, with Spanish subtitles that is. To be honest, I’m finding it extremely helpful. I find myself looking at the subtitles less and less and understanding my podcasts much more as well.

My biggest thing I’d like to find a way to improve on now is my speaking skills. I don’t know why, but it’s just so hard to switch my brain into Spanish mode. That is, unless I’m speaking with a monolingual Spanish speaker for some reason. Last night I was reading some Spanish bed time stories to my daughter and found that when I was done, Spanish I was flowing out of me much more easily. So that’s something.

It’s just a pain because obviously I’d like to speak better, but I so rarely have the opportunity to practice, which means when I do have the opportunity I don’t speak because I never practice, and on and on like that. It’s a viscous cycle. Maybe reading out loud is something I’ll try doing more of to get into speaking mode, so to speak.

Anyway, that’s my update. Hope all of your studying is going well.
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