Clara's Spanish Log

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clara
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:46 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?t=16333
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Tue Dec 29, 2020 6:48 am

Wernecker wrote:
I don't find FSI courses boring but challenging! Suerte con tu español!


Estoy de acuerdo. Gracias!
1 x
Spanish Goals
22/23 SC Films: 438 / 18000 438 / 18000 minutes
22/23 SC Books: 6454 / 10000 6454 / 10000 pages
2022 Reading: 8061 / 8000 8061 / 10000 8000 pages

blackcoffee
Yellow Belt
Posts: 65
Joined: Sat May 30, 2020 6:51 pm
Languages: English (N)
Latin
Spanish (beginner)
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby blackcoffee » Wed Dec 30, 2020 1:31 am

Could you say more about the verb conjugation app you are using?

I would like to add in 5-10 minutes of verb practice a day, but I haven't yet stumbled across an app that feels both easy to use and useful.
1 x

clara
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:46 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?t=16333
x 457

Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Wed Dec 30, 2020 3:57 pm

blackcoffee wrote:Could you say more about the verb conjugation app you are using?

I would like to add in 5-10 minutes of verb practice a day, but I haven't yet stumbled across an app that feels both easy to use and useful.


I use an app called Ella for a few minutes a day here and there, and I think it really helps to keep conjugations fresh in my mind. There are tons of conjugation apps, and I only tried 2 others (sorry can't remember their names). One of them was much more configurable and powerful than Ella, but it was hideous. All of the apps I tried required payment to unlock tenses, and you really needed to pay for any of them to be usable beyond basics. Ella is expensive at $22/year, but it doesn't have ads. The others were cheaper but had ads even in the paid versions.

What I like. #4, 5 and 6 apply to all the conjugation apps I looked at and aren't special to Ella.

  1. Simple layout, easy to use interface
  2. Includes keys for accented characters which makes typing easy. You have to type in the answers with correct spelling, which apparently some people do not like, but I do!
  3. You can create your own personalized list of verbs to test
  4. Can configure moods / tenses / pronouns to test. For example you can test first person indicative present or all subjunctive mood without vosotros.
  5. Can choose whether the infinitive form of the verb is shown or if you have to translate it from English
  6. 1000 verbs with pre-made categories such as common, regular, irregular, reflexive, -ar, -er, -ir verbs

I also have a few nitpicks. The irregular category of verbs includes verbs that are irregular in any form, so there's no way to test verbs that are irregular in a specific tense / pronoun combination. The stats are bit weird. I wish I could add my own verbs (I'm looking at you, cocer), but I also understand that would be a big ask programmatically. And it would be nice if I could create more than one list of verbs.

I've read that Conjugato is a another great conjugation app, but from what I could see, the difference between Conjugato and Ella is whether you type in the answer. I don't think Conjugato has an interface for typing answers, and Ella requires it. I prefer typing because it reinforces spelling and accentuation, but I could also see someone preferring not to.

Overall, I feel like it really helps. I still have trouble conjugating on the fly in oral speech, but I've improved a lot.
3 x
Spanish Goals
22/23 SC Films: 438 / 18000 438 / 18000 minutes
22/23 SC Books: 6454 / 10000 6454 / 10000 pages
2022 Reading: 8061 / 8000 8061 / 10000 8000 pages

blackcoffee
Yellow Belt
Posts: 65
Joined: Sat May 30, 2020 6:51 pm
Languages: English (N)
Latin
Spanish (beginner)
x 178

Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby blackcoffee » Thu Dec 31, 2020 9:48 pm

Muchas gracias!

I signed up for Ella and it's pretty much perfect for what I'm looking for. I recognize verb forms pretty well, especially in context, but I'm pretty vague on which ones are irregular in which ways and need lots of practice producing them.

I also don't do much Spanish on my phone, so it will provide a much more useful way to spend odd minutes here and there.
2 x

clara
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:46 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?t=16333
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Sat Jan 02, 2021 8:56 pm

blackcoffee wrote:Muchas gracias!

I signed up for Ella and it's pretty much perfect for what I'm looking for. I recognize verb forms pretty well, especially in context, but I'm pretty vague on which ones are irregular in which ways and need lots of practice producing them.

I also don't do much Spanish on my phone, so it will provide a much more useful way to spend odd minutes here and there.


Great, I hope it's useful for you! It's especially helped me get a better handle on irregular verbs, and I have better intuition for how stems change.
1 x
Spanish Goals
22/23 SC Films: 438 / 18000 438 / 18000 minutes
22/23 SC Books: 6454 / 10000 6454 / 10000 pages
2022 Reading: 8061 / 8000 8061 / 10000 8000 pages

clara
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:46 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?t=16333
x 457

Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Sat Jan 02, 2021 9:13 pm

Year End Thoughts 2020 and Looking Ahead to 2021

It seems to be a good time to reflect on the year and think about plans and goals going forward. I am just about at the half year mark into Spanish studies. I didn’t track time initially, but I’m sure I’ve averaged over 3 hours a day which seems… dedicated? obsessive? insane? I’ve made progress but still have some very obvious room for improvement. I feel like I’m still at the stage where doing anything at all consistently will improve my Spanish skills, so I’m not too worried about crafting the perfect plan for going forward. I’m putting in 20+ hours a week, so a month of progress always feels significant even if my activities aren’t “optimized.”

My number one goal for 2021 is consistency. I don't know how my learning routine might evolve in 2021, but I'm sure it will. As long as I am consistently putting in the time and challenging myself, I believe I'll make progress. I signed up for the 365 Day Challenge and the Super Challenge, and I’m considering the Output Challenge as well.

My current short term goals are taming Anki and binging input over the next few months. Anki has been very useful, but it’s becoming an unruly beast. I’ve added 40 words a day and spend about an hour per day on it. I have sustained this pace for months and could tolerate a few more, but I am reaching a limit. At my current rate, I will hit my original goal of 10k words in March. After that, I want to stop adding so many new cards for a while and get down to something more reasonable like 20-30 minutes a day.

Longer term, I'd really like to travel to a Spanish speaking country, and I've toyed with the idea of taking an exam to see what my level really is.
2 x
Spanish Goals
22/23 SC Films: 438 / 18000 438 / 18000 minutes
22/23 SC Books: 6454 / 10000 6454 / 10000 pages
2022 Reading: 8061 / 8000 8061 / 10000 8000 pages

clara
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:46 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?t=16333
x 457

Week ending January 2

Postby clara » Sat Jan 02, 2021 9:27 pm

Week ending January 2

  • Anki: Daily. 5557 mature + 1952 young = 7509 total
  • Verb conjugator: Daily
  • El juego de Ender: Chapters 12 - 15, FINISHED! (+39%)
  • Other reading: 4 longer NY Times articles
  • FSI Basic Spanish: None
  • Podcasts and Youtube: Minimal, maybe 30 minutes total
  • Diarios de Vampiros: 1.5 (1 episode)
  • Sobreviviente Designado: 1.17-1.21, 2.1 (6 episodes)
  • How to Get Away with Murder: 1.1-1.7 (7 episodes)
  • Online tutoring: 7.5 hours

This week, I had a horrible headache that lasted a few days which meant I watched more TV and did less of everything else.

Challenges
I signed up for the 365 Day Challenge and the Super Challenge, so of course I put together a spreadsheet to track all the series I’ve watched and books I’ve read. Plus I made some progress bars. Hooray for progress bars!

Reading
I read a few pages of El Club de la Lucha (Fight Club) and La Reina del Sur, but those both felt more difficult than I wanted to tackle. Fight Club is written in first person present tense with a lot of 2nd person thrown in which kept throwing me off. I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought in English, but in Spanish I kept having to think about whether “you” referred to the reader, another character, or an impersonal “you.” I think the narrator was mostly speaking about his own past actions using an impersonal “you,” but I had to pause on every sentence to think about it. La Reina del Sur has so much more idiomatic language and unfamiliar vocabulary. There was also some 2nd person in La Reina del Sur. I don’t know how far I am from being able to read either of those books easily, but I’d like to give them a go later this year for sure.

Audio / Visual input
I finished the first season of Designated Survivor and started How To Get Away With Murder which is much harder for me to understand. Part of it is the legal language, and a lot more is conveyed through speaking (legal explanations and arguments, etc) vs action. Plus the group interaction is different, with more characters speaking and interrupting or talking over each other.

Online Lessons
I finally got into a groove with my usual tutors, so of course my favorite tutor changed his schedule. :( My goal this coming week is to try out some new tutors. It just takes so long to build a rapport, and I don’t enjoy doing the usual introductory chit chat, but I keep telling myself it’ll be good practice.

FSI Basic Spanish
I took this week off from FSI and am re-thinking my approach to automaticity. I’m not sure how useful the dialogues are, but I feel as if I’m “not really doing FSI” if I skip them. I like the concept of drilling, but I’m wondering if there’s a better way to drill using visual cues instead of verbal cues which I think would be closer to how I “feel” language if that makes sense. I suspect that an Anki drilling deck with images and audio could be a much more useful way to drill, but… I just can not bear the thought of more Anki right now. In any case, I want to take another week or two off FSI to figure out a better approach. Maybe I will do just the drills from FSI until March, and then I will taper Anki Vocab and transition to more Anki grammar / drilling.
6 x
Spanish Goals
22/23 SC Films: 438 / 18000 438 / 18000 minutes
22/23 SC Books: 6454 / 10000 6454 / 10000 pages
2022 Reading: 8061 / 8000 8061 / 10000 8000 pages

clara
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:46 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?t=16333
x 457

Super Challenge

Postby clara » Sat Jan 02, 2021 9:44 pm

Code: Select all

------------------------------------------------------------------------
        FILMS / SERIES                          BOOKS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 29:49  La Casa de Papel                   338  Crepúsculo (incomplete)
 15:21  Sobreviviente Designado            540  Sol de medianoche
  9:24  El Dragón                          480  Ready Player One
  5:02  How to Get Away with Murder        432  Armada
  3:29  Diarios de Vampiros                368  El juego de Ender
  1:44  Mi Obra Maestra
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 64:49  Total Time                        2158  Total Pages Read
150:00  Target Time                       5000  Target Pages Read
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
4 x
Spanish Goals
22/23 SC Films: 438 / 18000 438 / 18000 minutes
22/23 SC Books: 6454 / 10000 6454 / 10000 pages
2022 Reading: 8061 / 8000 8061 / 10000 8000 pages

clara
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:46 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?t=16333
x 457

Week ending January 9

Postby clara » Sat Jan 09, 2021 5:30 pm

  • Anki: Daily, 5875 mature + 1916 young = 7791 total
  • Verb conjugator: Daily
  • Perdida: 63 pages, 11%
  • Zona Peligrosa: 359 pages, 68%
  • Other reading: 2 news articles
  • FSI Basic Spanish: None
  • Podcasts: None
  • Youtube: None
  • Diarios de Vampiros: 1.6-11 (6 episodes)
  • How to Get Away with Murder: 1.8-11 (4 episodes)
  • Online tutoring: 10 hours

Yet another challenge
I signed up for the Polyglot Fitness Challenge even though I currently have no aspirations for being a polyglot. I plan to give myself a different challenge every month, so I can adjust my goals as needed instead of planning the year in advance. For January, I will read 1000 pages of Spanish, watch 1000 minutes of Spanish, and do 1000 pushups. I’m on track to make it.

Anki
I spent a few hours yesterday adding more words to Anki and have enough to last another 2 weeks. I downloaded the unwieldy RAE frequency list which is sorted by part of speech. My current method is to add words I encounter in reading, though this is very time consuming so I only add perhaps 50 of these words per week. For more words, I add some hundreds of words from the RAE list to a Google spreadsheet with a column translating it to English, then another column translating the English back to Spanish (S2). I filter out all words where S2 is the same as the original Spanish word and then review these to make sure they "make sense" or don't conflict with other cards I already have (such as confusing near-synonyms). I then add those words to Anki.

Reading
I started reading Perdida (Gone Girl), and it felt surprisingly slow even though I have the advantage of having read it in English. I’m not exactly sure what the problem was, if the grammar was difficult, if there were too many unknown words, if I was annoyed with the characters, or what. Something about the writing felt like overly-hipster English translated into stilted Spanish (not that I would recognize stilted Spanish), and I just couldn’t focus.

Instead, I started Zona Peligrosa, the first Jack Reacher novel, because it’s part of a series with over 20 novels, and I’d love to have a series to fall back on when I don’t know what to read next. It’s surprisingly easy in comparison to Perdida, El Club de la Lucha and La Reina del Sur. The sentences are short and simple, there’s much less unknown vocabulary, and a lot of vocabulary is repeated several times. I wonder if the original English is this repetitive.

Audio / Visual input
I'm focusing on series instead of podcasts and YT for now. I’m not sure I’ve noticed significant improvements in listening comprehension, but I’m keeping the faith that watching lots of Netflix will eventually get me there. I’m now more familiar with common imperatives, so that’s something.

Online Lessons
I tried new tutors to add variety, but that was … not so successful. I booked three new tutors and thought it would be a good test to go over a few grammar questions and then practice conversation for the remainder. I had three grammar questions I knew the answers to, and I wanted to see how they would explain them to me. Well, we never got to the conversation part because the tutors all flailed trying to answer the grammar questions. :/

FSI / Grammar
I’m still on break from FSI, possibly through March as I focus more on input. I downloaded some Spanish apps in the hopes of practicing some grammar. Ideally, I’d love an app that drills Spanish grammar concepts that aren’t verb conjugations. If anybody has suggestions, I'm all ears!
8 x
Spanish Goals
22/23 SC Films: 438 / 18000 438 / 18000 minutes
22/23 SC Books: 6454 / 10000 6454 / 10000 pages
2022 Reading: 8061 / 8000 8061 / 10000 8000 pages

clara
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:46 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?t=16333
x 457

Week ending January 16

Postby clara » Sat Jan 16, 2021 9:52 pm

Week ending January 16

  • Anki: Daily, 6202 mature + 1869 young = 8071
  • Verb conjugator: Daily
  • Zona Peligrosa: Finished! (+169 pages)
  • Other reading: 4 articles
  • Youtube: 1 hour
  • Diarios de Vampiros: 1.12-16 (5 episodes)
  • How to Get Away with Murder: 1.12-15, 2.1 (5 episodes)
  • Carbono Alterado: 1.1-1.10 (10 episodes)
  • Online tutoring: 6 hours

Polyglot Fitness Challenge: January
Thanks to binge-watching this week, I’ve already gone over my 1000 minute target for films / series! I’m also on pace for pages and pushups.

: 591 / 1000 591 / 1000 Pages Read
: 1380 / 1000 1380 / 1000 Minutes Watched
: 650 / 1000 650 / 1000 Pushups

Reading
I finished Zona Peligrosa which I was able to read extensively due to the simple and repetitive language. My goal was to have a series I could fall back on when I’m not sure what else to read, but I don’t know that this is a good series for that purpose. The writing is extremely simple and repetitive, possibly even more so than Crepusculo! I may try another book from the series to see if this was a lazy translation or if the whole series is like this. There were enough typographical errors to make me think this particular translation was poorly produced.

I started reading the free excerpt of La Sombra del Viento and appreciate that the writing is more natural and literary. The pace will be much slower than previous books, so it might not be a good choice if I want to make my 1000 page goal by the end of the month. I’ll read a bit more to see if the number of new words drops off, but I’m skeptical.

Audio / Visual input
I watched more dubbed series, but it’s still hard to understand when characters speak quickly. When I refer to the subtitles, they rarely match the dialogue. I tried watching a few native language series, but those feel like a big jump in difficulty level. Instead, I binge-watched Carbono Alterado dubbed instead. It’s a step-up in difficulty due to sci-fi elements and terminology.

Online Lessons
I thought I would be ramping up on my online lessons in January, but the BL platform has been flooded with new students, making it difficult to book my favorite tutors. I'd like more stability in class times and tutors I can book, so I am considering quitting BL for iTalki instead. I hope that because the structure of iTalki is different, and each tutor is incentivized to maintain student relationships, that they will take a more proactive role in the success of each lesson and improvement over the long term. I don’t know if this is too big of an ask, but I’d like a tutor who can probe me for weaknesses and come up with exercises to address them. I don’t know that I can objectively pinpoint my own weaknesses.

FSI / Grammar
This is still on the back burner for now, though I’m keeping up with the verb conjugator app. Still haven’t found a grammar app I like.
4 x
Spanish Goals
22/23 SC Films: 438 / 18000 438 / 18000 minutes
22/23 SC Books: 6454 / 10000 6454 / 10000 pages
2022 Reading: 8061 / 8000 8061 / 10000 8000 pages


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