Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Fri Mar 04, 2022 1:36 am

Well, I've taken an unintentional break over a month long. The past couple of days I've been rewatching El Dragon without subtitles and I grinded through the Anki reps that I missed for all my subs2srs decks for the first 5 episodes of Distrito Salvaje.

I really feel like I lost all of my progress. My understanding of native speech has always been hit or miss but it feels like more miss recently. I felt like 6 weeks ago I was on the cusp of a big breakthrough in my Spanish and I feel like I lost it. I have still occasionally had to speak Spanish a bit at work over this unintended hiatus.

Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things.

Also on a semi-related note, does anyone else find that when they speak another language their pitch is different? A co-worker commented that my voice sounded higher pitched when I spoke Spanish (in my Native English I am a bit of a baritone).
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Fri Mar 04, 2022 5:56 pm

FeoGringo wrote:Also on a semi-related note, does anyone else find that when they speak another language their pitch is different? A co-worker commented that my voice sounded higher pitched when I spoke Spanish (in my Native English I am a bit of a baritone).

Nothing I've ever noticed nor that anyone else has said anything about. Interesting phenomenon, though. Any ideas why?
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Wed Jun 01, 2022 2:31 am

Back again. I've been doing a mix of intensive and extensive listening. My intensive listening comes in the form of audio Anki cards with subs2srs and the Migaku browser extension add-on toolkit. My intensive listening involves repeated listening and transcribing of the anki cards. Extensive listening, just plugging away at a long list of spanish language shows on my Netflix queue without any subtitles (the occasional check here and there but mostly I tolerate the ambiguity). Going to add RadioAmbulante to the mix and maybe some focused vocab study. Still have plans on the backburner for focused pronunciation practice and digging in to FSI Spanish. But I think my downfall has been spreading myself too thin. Development of my listening comprehension continues to be the priority.
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Sat Jul 02, 2022 4:30 pm

Does anyone ever have moments on their learning journey where they feel like they are on the verge of a big breakthrough?

I'm feeling like I'm close to one with my listening comprehension. I'm continuing to use Anki - not as intended - and use it for intensive listening and transcription. It continues to surprise me the ebb and flow of listening comprehension, it varies by tv show type, by accent, by person.

I've been using my Spanish a lot more at work and building up a core sentence "toolbox" that I use often at work and which I can easily spout off with decent enough pronunciation but now more than ever, using my limited Spanish out in the wild, I am seeing what a big gap I have between my listening comprehension and my speaking. It can be very frustrating.

Also, with regards to pronunciation, I have to give myself gentle reminders to be humble, ground myself and my perspective and remember that when I'm speaking Spanish - I probably sound like what a hispanohablante sounds like when speaking heavily accented English. We all think we sound perfect in our heads, but I know I don't :lol:

I have had a few bilingual coworkers say that I speak very clearly and understandably which I'm happy to hear.

Things that remain on the backburner - focused pronunciation practice, working through FSI Basic, taking some Italki "lessons" although I'd want to be at a level where I am doing them for conversation practice and not for formal grammar lessons.
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Sun Jul 17, 2022 3:37 pm

I found this entry from April of last year.

I took the receptive vocabulary test from https://itt-leipzig.de/?lang=en and got 58% on it, a decent amount of words I recognized, but a lot I was guessing.


Retook this exam and got a 70% on the Receptive Test. Still with quite a bit of guessing. A 12% increase in over a year, not that great. Granted my goal has never been to ace their little test, it's just a fun way to get some sort of sense of where I am.

I just finally started to make an Anki deck off of the words and definitions on this site for the receptive vocab test; I might do some cloze deletion for the productive test questions I had trouble with. Although I don't think it is an efficient use of my time to try to do it for everything on the test (we'll see, maybe I'll change my mind) I do think it is good to make note of the stuff I clearly don't know or had to guess on.

Will have to give the Productive Test a try later and probably start making notes of what I don't know on there as well. Not sure if cloze deletion to mimic it is necessary, I guess if I actually cared about a score, but I'm interested in filling the knowledge gaps.
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Fri Aug 19, 2022 2:22 am

Random thoughts, using my Spanish a lot more at work. I make plenty of mistakes and either self-correct on the spot or at least there's a buzzer going off in my brain saying "I know that wasn't correct!". I've also been making a habit of when there are things I don't completely know how to say but phrases I need at work. I write them down at the end of the day, I've mostly been using DeepL for the translations but I probably need to spot-check some of these phrases with a native speaker. If this was my, or anyone else's, main way of learning it would be woefully inefficient and probably lead to some ingrained errors in grammar or naturalness but DeepL is fairly reliable and this method of "phrase collection" is outweight by my extensive Netflix watching and my intensive listening/transcription.

I've also reached another milestone, in my opinion, which is being able to figure out new words from context in real time. Client uses a word I've never heard before but I understand every other word in the sentence and BOOM! I realize what the word is. It doesn't happen all the time, but it has happened a few instances and is a pretty cool experience. "Wait a minute, I've never heard this word before. How do I know what it means?!"

Anyway, I'll take that as a sign of progress.

Taking the DELE doesn't interest me (maybe that will change), and tests don't really interest me in general. But at this time I have no interest in writing and reading is definitely not at the top of my list of areas of focus. Add to that my interest in terms of accents does not include Spain (apologies to any resident Spaniards on the forums). But I'm toying with the idea of the SIELE exam, I have to do some more research but it seems they have individual tests for the different language areas (writing, reading, speaking, listening). I'd be interested in taking the listening exam at some point.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby DaveAgain » Fri Aug 19, 2022 8:26 am

FeoGringo wrote:I found this entry from April of last year.

I took the receptive vocabulary test from https://itt-leipzig.de/?lang=en and got 58% on it, a decent amount of words I recognized, but a lot I was guessing.


Retook this exam and got a 70% on the Receptive Test. Still with quite a bit of guessing. A 12% increase in over a year, not that great. Granted my goal has never been to ace their little test, it's just a fun way to get some sort of sense of where I am.
You're making clear progress which is the goal.

As I understand it you're focusing on spoken Spanish, so perhaps if the test had drawn it's vocabulary just from a spoken Spanish word lexis your results would be even better?
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anitarrc
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby anitarrc » Fri Aug 19, 2022 10:24 am

Just did it and had 94% Some questions were a bit ambiguous so I would take the results with a pinch of salt.
If you did 70% after only a year although you don't live in a Spanish speaking country, be proud.
Edit.. thanks Jeff
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Mon Nov 28, 2022 2:11 pm

My log will now just be marking when I finish courses, any other random thoughts, experiences, observations etc. Currently working my way through Learn Spanish with Paul Noble Complete Course. Will have a November update in a few days.
Last edited by FeoGringo on Tue Dec 20, 2022 12:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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iguanamon
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby iguanamon » Mon Nov 28, 2022 2:26 pm

FeoGringo wrote:... I might update the title of this log - if that's even an option? ...

All you have to do is go to the first post in your log and edit the title. Then submit.
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