Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

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luke
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby luke » Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:25 am

FeoGringo wrote:Finally finished El Dragon and may go through it slower now.

Having just found your log and read it, what I like about this idea is that it's been with you all along and watching El Dragon didn't seem like it was a drag.

Trust your intuition. You can always change course.

I remember some posts I made voicing concern about "spreading myself to thin". As the weeks rolled by, I confirmed that concern by trimming some stuff that was overwhelming or just not fun enough.

You can always go back to stuff. If you're one who isn't into re-watching stuff, then maybe find something new. If you do like re-watching stuff, don't hesitate. It still counts.

On the 3 times through an FSI drill. I would be ecstatic if I got through most of them with only 3 reps, but most of them I do until I feel pretty comfortable. That varies with the exercise.

But listen to what your heart is telling you. That may be the best guide for now.
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:45 am

luke wrote:
FeoGringo wrote:Finally finished El Dragon and may go through it slower now.

Having just found your log and read it, what I like about this idea is that it's been with you all along and watching El Dragon didn't seem like it was a drag...

You can always go back to stuff. If you're one who isn't into re-watching stuff, then maybe find something new. If you do like re-watching stuff, don't hesitate. It still counts.


Yes, I think I needed to hear this! Part of me was torn between getting new different exposure or working through something again I've already watched (I can both too).

luke wrote:On the 3 times through an FSI drill. I would be ecstatic if I got through most of them with only 3 reps, but most of them I do until I feel pretty comfortable. That varies with the exercise.


I've been reading through old forum posts on FSI Basic Spanish trying to figure out a common thread on how people approached each unit. As with most things there doesn't seem to be one "right" way.
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Mon Jul 19, 2021 1:06 pm

I've been doing my best to collect useful phrases that I would commonly say at work (and cross referencing accuracy with native speaking friends). My comprehension in real life situations has definitely improved, producing those useful phrases leads to native speakers at work busting out rapid fire Spanish to me which luckily so far I've been able to understand.

I did my first run through of Unit 2 of FSI Basic. It had lots of pronunciation drills which is great but also very frustrating as I really think I'm horrible at attempting to produce most of these sounds. I think I will progress through the units when I feel I'm ready. If I waited around until I felt I mastered all the pronunciation drills in Unit 1 and Unit 2 then I'd never make any progress. What I will do is periodically review the drills from Unit 1 and 2 weekly so I'm consistently working on pronunciation.

Overall I'm glad I'm taking the plunge into FSI Basic and excited to see the progress I'll make with the course.
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Sun Jul 25, 2021 2:10 am

I saw an interesting video on YouTube where a guy used TedTalks to work on listening comprehension and vocabulary building. He said TedTalks usually have very accurate transcripts. I may add this to my learning routine. I briefly looked through some and found there are quite a few TedTalks with speakers from the Dominican Republic (this is the holy grail for me, Dominican Republic accent with an accurate transcript!). But it looks like there are lots of Mexican, Argentine and Spanish speakers that have given TedTalks as well. Seems like a good way to be exposed to some different accents. Also, when compared with TV Shows, the TedTalks is all talking, granted not dialogue or conversations, but still, there is no downtime just pure listening content.
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Sun Aug 15, 2021 6:33 pm

I just did another transcription exercise using one of the phone dialogues from the Defense Language Institute. They are labeled, I did a Level 3 (the highest level). Unfortunately they do not come with transcripts which is a real shame. In my opinion its a gold mine of audio, but without transcripts it becomes less useful.

I still feel like they're not totally at full speed although they seem fast. Certain stuff is clear as day, other stuff no matter how much I relisten it is indecipherable (but I suspect at this point this is more of a vocabulary issue as much as it is a listening comprehension skill issue). The speakers talk over each other, often repeat the first three words of a statement as if collecting their thoughts before giving their complete statement.

It took me almost 90 minutes to work through a 2min45sec audio clip, using audacity to loop chunks of 10-15 seconds at a time. Intensive listening is tiring. But I feel that so much progress can be made doing these kinds of exercises.

I found that after reading through my partial transcript while listening, I was missing certain small words, a gender might be off and I think (I may have mentioned this in an older post where I did this exercise) my mind is "autocompleting" versus actually listening to what is being said.

I have a meeting with a language exchange partner this week to help fill in the gaps where I couldn't understand words and also to correct any errors in my transcript. We'll soon see how poorly I did...
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Mon Aug 16, 2021 5:38 pm

Passive Listening: 1 hour of the Creativo Podcast with Roberto Mitz and guest Alan X Mundo. I listened while doing some work stuff. My focus was in and out but it was a nice endless stream of conversation with little to no breaks.

Language Transfer: Lessons 15 - 20. I really have to bite the bullet and just get through this course. It's not even that I dislike the course, it is mostly my procrastination. So far nothing is really new to me (all stuff I've just picked up through input) but hopefully as I progress through the lessons I'll gain some new insights.

There are about a million things I want to do in my language learning routine just gotta whittle it down and be consistent with something (or a few things) or else I'll be spinning my wheels or at the very least making extremely slow progress.
Last edited by FeoGringo on Tue Aug 17, 2021 9:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Tue Aug 17, 2021 12:28 am

Just had my language exchange where my partner helped me go over my transcription.

According to her, the speed of the audio, at least for this dialogue, was normal speed or even a little faster. She said in some ways the conversation was natural in that it utilized lots of modismos and muletillas but that the topic and how they navigated through it was a bit strange (She said "Que raro!" about a million times as she corrected and added to my transcript, and I laughed each time she said it).

I got a good chunk right and a lot of stuff wrong. Based on this exercise and the corrections, I'd say my parsing is decent but not all the way there and as I suspected in my other post, several of the places where I just put question marks in the transcription ended up being vocabulary that I didn't know (i.e. la heladera, de semejante, acelerada).

Ideally I would do one of these transcription exercises each week. I'll have to talk to my language partner and see if she minds basically editing my transcripts on a weekly basis.
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luke
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby luke » Tue Aug 17, 2021 9:08 am

FeoGringo wrote:Passive Listening: 1 hour of the Creativo Podcast with Robert Mitz and guest Alan X Mundo. I listened while doing some work stuff.

Thank you. Seems like a nice podcast. Found a channel here:
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/cr ... Z1jtzRy0X/
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: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Tue Aug 17, 2021 10:02 pm

luke wrote:
FeoGringo wrote:Passive Listening: 1 hour of the Creativo Podcast with Robert Mitz and guest Alan X Mundo. I listened while doing some work stuff.

Thank you. Seems like a nice podcast. Found a channel here:
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/cr ... Z1jtzRy0X/


Ahhh nice, I wasn't sure where it was available online. I've been listening on youtube.
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:49 pm

Hey, it's your resident procrastinator here. I'm sure I've been written off by at least 50% of the members here who have read my log. I'm still here! Haven't touched a lesson of Language Transfer in awhile.

BUT, something magical has happened with my listening comprehension (as least some of the time, inconsistently). I started watching more TV shows without subtitles and I'm picking up a lot. I've also been "conversing" with customers at work and while I know my grammar and pronunciation are horrid, I understand most of what the customers are saying to me. So I think I really need to put even more focus on listening comprehension while I've found myself here at this level where I'm starting to understand native speech (still admittedly in a narrow field of topic and vocab).
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