Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction
Posted: Tue May 19, 2020 1:13 pm
This is probably overdue. I've been poking my head in and out of here for some time, but I really want to make an effort to become ingrained in the community. I've been studying Spanish for a little over four years now and I'm at the point where I really want to own it, so to speak.
I'm pretty confident that I'm at least around the B2 range and my tutor told me I could probably pass the C1 if I studied for it. I've read a handful of novels, about half of Juegos de Tronos, played a bunch of video games in Spanish that were heavily text-based, and just generally try to consume whatever media I would normally consume but in Spanish. I could have made more progress, but I've probably done more than I give myself credit.
My biggest problems holding me back is lack of consistency and being too content with not challenging myself. I've held off on reading Borges and Bolaño out of fear of them being too difficult, I'm very sporadic with my tutor sessions which are the bulk of my speaking practice, I avoid speaking with my wife's family in Spanish out of fear, etc. I have a really bad mental block whenever the opportunity to speak Spanish comes up and it generally takes me a minute or so to "get in the Spanish flow" and speak without having too many issues. One of my biggest goals is getting over this hesitation I get and just jump into Spanish.
So now I'll keep a log! Right now I have an hour in the morning, maybe two depending on how early I wake up and if my kids sleep through the night. This time is usually used for listening/watching material on youtube. I'm trying to branch out a bit by watching videos covering a larger range of topics, accents, forms of discourse, etc. I also want to get back to intensive listening as it is far and away the activity that has helped the most with my comprehension skills. I've used Radio Ambulante for this in the past and it was invaluable to me. I don't know how practical shadowing is at this point, but it's something I'm willing to explore as it's how I used Assimil. I enter new vocab and structures into anki and study throughout the day. One thing that has helped a lot is reviewing the forgotten cards several times to really engrain everything.
After work, I walk the dog and listen to Noticias Telemundo. I've also been listening more and more to a podcaster named Chente Ydrach. He is Puerto Rican and has a very strong accent and uses a lot of slang and curse words. Each episode is an interview with another person with some kind of relevance to Puerto Rico, which is perfect. It's very, very difficult to follow at times but every time I listen I understand more and more. I'm probably going to try to do intensive listening with this to really build my comprehension of the dialect, but there are no transcripts apart from youtube's auto-transcribe function.
I'd also like to listen to more Spanish language music, but to be honest I've found it very challenging. I feel like I can find boatloads interesting music in every language but for some reason Spanish language music has eluded me despite my best efforts. The few that I've found that I've enjoyed have been Cafe Tacvba, Rosalia, Calle 13, and Izal.
I usually read in the evening. Right now I'm about a third of the way through El Alquimista. It's definitely a pretty breezy read, but at night time this is preferable. Inspired by Vladimir Skultety, I want to try reading comics in Spanish since all of the text is dialog. For Christmas I got the omnibus for Alack Sinner, a fairly well-known Argentian comic series. Apparently, Argentia has a very developed comic scene with a very long history. I also have a copy of El Túnel lying around somewhere. I knew very little about Spanish language literature before learning the language so I'm excited to explore and see what I'll find.
As far as output is concerned, well...I just gotta do it haha. I wanna do the one thing I never did before and actually have a regular schedule to speak with my tutor. We are going to be going to my wife's family's place regularly when the quarantine is lifted and I want to commit to only conducting myself in Spanish. I've been trying my best to speak more Spanish to my children and with my wife, but it's challenging considering the entire foundation of our family dynamic has always been English.
As far goals outside of Spanish are concerned, there is a smattering of possibilities. My family and I want to relocate and depending on whether we go to Canada or Italy, I'd like to learn French or Italian respectively. Chinese is a pretty obvious choice for me as I work as an online ESL teacher to an entirely Chinese student base and live near a fairly robust Chinatown in Philadelphia. Seeing as I speaking to Chinese people every single day of my life, this is almost certainly my next venture. At the beginning of the year, I threw myself into Japanese and while I really enjoyed it, it was simply too much of a juggling act between this and Spanish.
And that's the gist of it. I'm really anxious to jump into another language but it's really important for me to build on my Spanish. Hope to get to know you all better and share in our language journeys together!
I'm pretty confident that I'm at least around the B2 range and my tutor told me I could probably pass the C1 if I studied for it. I've read a handful of novels, about half of Juegos de Tronos, played a bunch of video games in Spanish that were heavily text-based, and just generally try to consume whatever media I would normally consume but in Spanish. I could have made more progress, but I've probably done more than I give myself credit.
My biggest problems holding me back is lack of consistency and being too content with not challenging myself. I've held off on reading Borges and Bolaño out of fear of them being too difficult, I'm very sporadic with my tutor sessions which are the bulk of my speaking practice, I avoid speaking with my wife's family in Spanish out of fear, etc. I have a really bad mental block whenever the opportunity to speak Spanish comes up and it generally takes me a minute or so to "get in the Spanish flow" and speak without having too many issues. One of my biggest goals is getting over this hesitation I get and just jump into Spanish.
So now I'll keep a log! Right now I have an hour in the morning, maybe two depending on how early I wake up and if my kids sleep through the night. This time is usually used for listening/watching material on youtube. I'm trying to branch out a bit by watching videos covering a larger range of topics, accents, forms of discourse, etc. I also want to get back to intensive listening as it is far and away the activity that has helped the most with my comprehension skills. I've used Radio Ambulante for this in the past and it was invaluable to me. I don't know how practical shadowing is at this point, but it's something I'm willing to explore as it's how I used Assimil. I enter new vocab and structures into anki and study throughout the day. One thing that has helped a lot is reviewing the forgotten cards several times to really engrain everything.
After work, I walk the dog and listen to Noticias Telemundo. I've also been listening more and more to a podcaster named Chente Ydrach. He is Puerto Rican and has a very strong accent and uses a lot of slang and curse words. Each episode is an interview with another person with some kind of relevance to Puerto Rico, which is perfect. It's very, very difficult to follow at times but every time I listen I understand more and more. I'm probably going to try to do intensive listening with this to really build my comprehension of the dialect, but there are no transcripts apart from youtube's auto-transcribe function.
I'd also like to listen to more Spanish language music, but to be honest I've found it very challenging. I feel like I can find boatloads interesting music in every language but for some reason Spanish language music has eluded me despite my best efforts. The few that I've found that I've enjoyed have been Cafe Tacvba, Rosalia, Calle 13, and Izal.
I usually read in the evening. Right now I'm about a third of the way through El Alquimista. It's definitely a pretty breezy read, but at night time this is preferable. Inspired by Vladimir Skultety, I want to try reading comics in Spanish since all of the text is dialog. For Christmas I got the omnibus for Alack Sinner, a fairly well-known Argentian comic series. Apparently, Argentia has a very developed comic scene with a very long history. I also have a copy of El Túnel lying around somewhere. I knew very little about Spanish language literature before learning the language so I'm excited to explore and see what I'll find.
As far as output is concerned, well...I just gotta do it haha. I wanna do the one thing I never did before and actually have a regular schedule to speak with my tutor. We are going to be going to my wife's family's place regularly when the quarantine is lifted and I want to commit to only conducting myself in Spanish. I've been trying my best to speak more Spanish to my children and with my wife, but it's challenging considering the entire foundation of our family dynamic has always been English.
As far goals outside of Spanish are concerned, there is a smattering of possibilities. My family and I want to relocate and depending on whether we go to Canada or Italy, I'd like to learn French or Italian respectively. Chinese is a pretty obvious choice for me as I work as an online ESL teacher to an entirely Chinese student base and live near a fairly robust Chinatown in Philadelphia. Seeing as I speaking to Chinese people every single day of my life, this is almost certainly my next venture. At the beginning of the year, I threw myself into Japanese and while I really enjoyed it, it was simply too much of a juggling act between this and Spanish.
And that's the gist of it. I'm really anxious to jump into another language but it's really important for me to build on my Spanish. Hope to get to know you all better and share in our language journeys together!