Clara's Spanish Log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
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 » Sun Aug 08, 2021 5:27 pm

August 1-7

  • Recursión: 284 pages
  • Dubbed movies on Netflix: Twilight Saga 1-5, Kung Fu Panda, Star Trek (2009)
  • Siempre bruja: Season 2, episodes 7 and 8
  • Diarios de vampiros: Season 3, episodes 7-11
  • Andes magicos: Season 2, episodes 1 and 2
  • Anki and Ella every day
  • Podcasts, youtube, various news articles

Reading

The thought of Como polvo en el viento was such a turn off that I just wasn't reading at all and instead watched lots of easy dubbed Netflix. After watching all of the Twilight Saga, I considered the differences in my approaches to reading and listening. By Super Challenge metrics, I have watched far more than I have read, over 2x the watching challenge but only 1x the reading challenge.

Going into the challenge I thought of myself as more of a reader and dreaded the film portion. What happened? Well, because I’m more of a reader, I have pushed increasing reading level at a faster pace because I’m impatient to read better. Instead, this has backfired and led to taking longer breaks from reading because it can feel excruciating -- either because my pace is slower than I’d like or because I’m forcing myself through materials I dislike. In English, I would have finished Como polvo en el viento despite hating it because it would have taken an hour or two. In Spanish, I was looking at 6 hours at best if I could manage to focus (unlikely).

So what will I do with this information? I am going to dial back on reading difficulty. A lot. Plus I'm going to start abandoning books if I find myself procrastinating reading. I hate abandoning Como polvo en el viento almost 80% of the way through it, but it's for the best. I started reading Recursión, and I feel like I am flying through it in comparison. Stuff is actually happening! Even if the language is easier, I'm still exposing myself to vocabulary at a faster rate than I can add to Anki, and I'm getting more exposure to words and phrases I already "know."

Thoughts on vocabulary

Speaking of words I “know,” I love that I’m constantly learning alternative meanings/usages for words I thought I knew. For example:

  • Bahía: I thought bahía was strictly a bay as in a body of water, but it seems it can also be used in the sense of cargo bay.
  • Orden: I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to realize orden can be masculine or feminine and has different meanings depending on gender.
  • Galón: I thought it was just gallon, but it can also be a military stripe or a decorative ribbon / braid.
  • Haz: I’d exclusively seen haz in the context of “haz de luz” or “hazlo” to mean “beam of light” or “do it”, but it also means a bundle.

This is a good reminder that even though I “know” X # of words in Anki, that generally means I only know one meaning for each word, not nearly all the nuances that I learn from reading and other sources. I’ve seen debates where people argue for Anki or reading, but it’s not an either/or situation. The combination of both does a very good job enforcing word recognition for me.

I guess all this to say that I’m dialing everything back a notch or two and going for sheer quantity over “quality” because I think it will lead to more engagement and ingraining concepts that I already “know” but haven’t completely absorbed. I’ve said before that I like a lot of repetition.

Polyglot Fitness Challenge

I realized I haven’t set goals in a while. I’ve just been trying to “be healthier” in small steps and am starting to get back into it. For August, I’d like to go to the gym at least 15 times, read at least 1000 pages of Spanish, and watch 50 hours of Netflix in Spanish. Maybe I should also get back on the 1000 pushups per month goal, but I haven’t done any so far this month so will start with 750 for the remaining 3 weeks.
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
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Sun Aug 15, 2021 5:36 pm

August 8-14

  • Recursión: +76 pages, finished
  • Los caídos: 136 pages, finished
  • Delirio: 68 pages
  • La mitad evanescente: 63 pages
  • Diarios de vampiros: Season 3, episodes 12-16
  • Bolívar: Season 1, episodes 1-3
  • Anki and Ella every day
  • Conversation practice: 4 hours
  • Podcasts, youtube, various news articles

Reading
I never quite bought the underlying premise behind Recursión, and there wasn’t nearly as much science as I’d like for a sci-fi novel. The story itself was okay if a bit repetitive. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, so that’s all I’ll say.



I couldn’t help but compare Los caídos to Como polvo en el viento since both are contemporary novels written by Cuban authors. Despite being nearly 5x as long, Como polvo has a fraction of the substance of Los caídos. The treatment of the characters in Como polvo felt superficial and repetitive with some pro-Cuban bias and sexism thrown in. Female characters are consistently sexualized while male characters are not, despite one of the main characters being gay. His gayness feels especially superficial, as if the author is trying to be inclusive without ever exploring what that means in a country known for assassinating people for being homosexual. The characters are unrealistically capable, supposedly due to their Cuban education, so none of the usual problems (money, work, even language since apparently they can easily learn languages perfectly) seem to affect them. Instead, the major problem they dwell on for hundreds and hundreds of pages is that they miss their group of friends from when they were younger in Cuba. It's really too bad since the premise of the book seemed so promising, but it's bogged down by an inane plot.



In contrast, each character in Los caídos feels like a real human being. They are complex, they have both ugly and tender thoughts, they have opinions, and most importantly their problems feel real. I am sure I missed some cultural references, and the language was a lot trickier than other books I’ve read with some stream of consciousness. I would like to re-read this in the future and suspect I’ll pick up a lot I missed out on this time around.



As an experiment, I’m now reading two books concurrently--Delirio and La mitad evanescente. The grammatical structures and vocabulary of Delirio are noticeably more difficult, which isn’t surprising given it’s natively written whereas La mitad evanescente is translated. I am surprised I am still having problems recognizing word derivations (diminutives, augmentatives, pejoratives). Here are some references for later: Wikilengua - Diminutivo, Wikilengua - Apreciativos, Lingolia - La derivación apreciativa en español

Image Image

Polyglot Fitness Challenge - current progress on August goals

: 8 / 15 Gym: 8 / 15 sessions
: 600 / 1000 Read Spanish: 600 / 1000 pages
: 25 / 50 Netflix: 25:14 / 50:00

Everything else

Conversation, Anki and Ella as usual, though I've stopped adding new vocab to Anki for a bit. I'd like to get my review time down some more. The series Bolívar looks interesting, and the speech is surprisingly clear. There's only one season, but it has 60 episodes, plenty of content!

7 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
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Mon Aug 23, 2021 5:35 am

August 15-21

  • Delirio: +48 pages, 34% read
  • La mitad evanescente: +289 pages, finished
  • Diarios de vampiros: 3.17-22, 4.1 (7 episodes)
  • Bolívar: 1.4-8 (5 episodes)
  • The Blacklist: 1.1-6 (6 episodes)
  • Kung Fu Panda 2
  • Anki and Ella every day
  • Conversation: 1.5 hours
  • Podcasts, Youtube, various news articles

Polyglot Fitness Challenge - current progress on August goals

: 10 / 15 Gym: 10 / 15 sessions
: 964 / 1000 Read Spanish: 964 / 1000 pages
: 40 / 50 Netflix: 40:15 / 50:00

Delirio

Delirio is the second book I’ve read that has won the Alfaguara Prize, the other being El ruido de las cosas al caer, and both novels use very long run-on sentences. I wonder if this is a Colombian trend (both authors are Colombian) or a style favored by the judges of the Alfaguara Prize. To give an idea of what kind of run-on sentences I’m talking about, this was the last sentence I read:

Antes de saltar hacia el vacío, el agua se detiene mansamente en un pozo abrazado por piedras lisas y negras, la pareja se sienta sobre una de esas piedras y Blanca le ayuda Nicolás a arremangarse el pantalón y a quitarse los botines y las medias, y él, ahora más sereno, deja que la amable frescura del agua le suba por los pies, le recorra el cuerpo y la sede el cerebro, Qué bueno, Blanquita, qué bueno es mirar cómo corre el agua, y ella le comenta que está preocupada por la gripa crónica que tiene Nicasio, el mayordomo, Tisis ha de ser, opina Portulinus, Tisis no, Nicolás, calla esa boca, Dios nos proteja de la tuberculosis, es sólo gripa, el problema es que es crónica, Las gripas crónicas se llaman tuberculosis, dice Nicolás, Eso será en alemán, se ríe ella, Me gustas cuando ríes, te ves tan bonita, entonces ella le cuenta, A la familia Uribe Bechara le encantó el bambuco que les compusiste para el matrimonio de su hija Eloísa, ¿Les gustó?, pregunta él, yo pensé que se iban a molestar por esa parte que habla del amor que se desangra gota a gota, Y por qué les iba a molestar, si esa parte es muy bonita, Sí, pero olvidas que el padre de novio murió de hemofilia, ¡Ay, Nicolás!, qué obsesión tienes hoy con las enfermedades.


Once I got used to the style, it’s not terribly difficult to parse, but it’s a little bit annoying, and I can’t help but think that it’s completely unnecessary. I find myself not wanting to pick up the book unless I’ve got a good chunk of time because each paragraph is several pages of run-on sentences like this mashed together. Sure, it gives the passage a bit more of a connected feel, but compare it to how much easier a parsed version is to read:

Antes de saltar hacia el vacío, el agua se detiene mansamente en un pozo abrazado por piedras lisas y negras. La pareja se sienta sobre una de esas piedras y Blanca le ayuda Nicolás a arremangarse el pantalón y a quitarse los botines y las medias, y él, ahora más sereno, deja que la amable frescura del agua le suba por los pies, le recorra el cuerpo y la sede el cerebro.

—Qué bueno, Blanquita, qué bueno es mirar cómo corre el agua.

Y ella le comenta que está preocupada por la gripa crónica que tiene Nicasio, el mayordomo.

—Tisis ha de ser —opina Portulinus.

—Tisis no, Nicolás, calla esa boca, Dios nos proteja de la tuberculosis, es sólo gripa, el problema es que es crónica.

—Las gripas crónicas se llaman tuberculosis —dice Nicolás.

—Eso será en alemán —se ríe ella.

—Me gustas cuando ríes, te ves tan bonita.

Entonces ella le cuenta —A la familia Uribe Bechara le encantó el bambuco que les compusiste para el matrimonio de su hija Eloísa.

—¿Les gustó? —pregunta él. —Yo pensé que se iban a molestar por esa parte que habla del amor que se desangra gota a gota.

—Y por qué les iba a molestar, si esa parte es muy bonita.

—Sí, pero olvidas que el padre de novio murió de hemofilia.

—¡Ay, Nicolás!, qué obsesión tienes hoy con las enfermedades.


If someone wants to weigh in on the literary merit of this style of writing, I am all ears. Part of me thinks I would find this style annoying in any language, but part of me thinks maybe in my native language it would be easy and something I wouldn’t spend two seconds thinking about. I don’t know.

La mitad evanescente

La mitad evanescente was significantly easier to read than Delirio with much simpler sentence structure and <1 unknown words per page compared to 3. I tried to alternate days reading each book, but I got sucked into La mitad evanescente and binge read it.

I watched a Youtube review from someone who read it in Catalan, and I was surprised that one of the things she really enjoyed was how distinct each character’s voice was, even in translation. I can only assume the same was true in the Spanish translation, but this didn’t have as much as an impact on me. In retrospect, I can definitely see it, and there were a few times when one of the characters said something obviously colloquial where I “knew” every word but didn’t understand the combination, and another character even pointed out “I love when you speak like that with your country-talk.” Even though I could tell that each person spoke with a different voice, and I assumed what type of voice they had based on their characters, I couldn’t always pick up those nuances from the specific word choice alone.



Everything else

I’ve been doing my daily Anki reviews but still not adding new vocabulary. I’d like to get the reviews down to 15 minutes before I start adding more, but that will probably take a while, at least a month if not two.

My August Netflix goal was ambitious. I’m going to make it, mostly by watching lots of “filler” dubbed content.

I think I may be hitting the intermediate plateau where an entire month’s worth of activity isn’t going to have much impact on my progress. I’ve been “having fun” with Spanish by consuming lots of content and doing conversation practice, but I think a little bit of structured learning could be beneficial. Maybe grammar exercises, writing practice, or FSI would be good to add for September goals. I can feel my grammar knowledge slipping a bit.

I’m also wondering where I want to go with Spanish. Do I really want to put in the work to improve my speaking and writing? Will I realistically ever need to write an email or note in Spanish? I know I want to improve my listening skills, but I am not so sure about speaking and writing. I mean, sure I'd love to speak better, but I can see how much work that would take and am not sure I want to do what's required to get there.
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
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Thu Sep 02, 2021 6:47 am

August 22-31

  • Delirio: +4 pages, 35% read
  • La ciudad de las bestias: +122 pages, finished
  • La conspiración de la señora Parrish: +416 pages, finished
  • Diarios de vampiros: 4.2-12 (11 episodes)
  • The Blacklist: 1.7-8 (2 episodes)
  • Anki and Ella every day
  • Podcasts, youtube, various news articles
  • Conversation: 5.5 hours

Polyglot Fitness Challenge - August

  • Gym: 16 / 15 sessions
  • Read Spanish: 1505 / 1000 pages
  • Netflix: 51:27 / 50:00

I met my goals for the month, so that’s good. It was a challenge to hit the Netflix target because I was feeling pretty burned out on shows by the end of the month. For September I’ll keep the same gym and reading goals as August, but I’m going to ditch the Netflix goal. Instead, I’ll replace it with a goal of 10 hours of “focused study” which could be any of the following activities: Intensive listening, grammar, writing, translation, or drills.

Reading

I read a few pages of Delirio, decided to go back and finish La ciudad de las bestias, and then started and finished La conspiración de la señora Parrish. I realized after my last log update that the “style of writing” in Delirio is what would be called a “wall of text” in internet speak. I absolutely do avoid reading walls of text in English, so it’s not surprising that it’s offputting in Spanish as well.

La ciudad de las bestias was in time out for a while because I found the characters too one-dimensional. The break was perfect, and I managed to power through even though I’m still not a fan of the book. La conspiración de la señora Parrish was even worse. I’ll even go so far as to say that not only did I hate this book, but I question the moral character of any person who enjoyed it. It was very easy to read with simple grammar structures and common vocabulary, so at least it served its purpose of easy exposure to Spanish.

August recap

My Spanish reading is still improving, particularly speed with simple grammar. I should complete the double reading portion of the Super Challenge by the end of October at this pace.

Listening has been frustrating. I don’t feel I’ve improved much in a while. I know I’ve been spending too much time on dubs, and that they aren’t helping me progress, but they do help me maintain speaking skill. There’s a noticeable decline in my speaking ability when I take a break. I’ve found a few native conversational style podcasts that seem more difficult than dubs, but not quite as hard as native series. I hope that listening to these will help me bridge the gap.

Vocabulary has been on maintenance mode. I’m keeping up with Anki reviews, but I haven’t added new words in a while.

My grammar knowledge is definitely slipping. I’d like to get into a habit of more structured grammar review. I plan to spend time in October exploring various options to see what sticks.
7 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
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Tue Sep 07, 2021 9:48 pm

September 1 to 6

  • Divergente: 464 pages, started and finished
  • Cuatro: 31% (79 pages)
  • La hija de la española: 20% (45 pages)
  • Anki and Ella every day
  • Podcasts, youtube, various news articles
  • Conversation: 3 hours

Polyglot Fitness Challenge - current progress on September goals

  • Gym: 5 / 15 sessions
  • Read Spanish: 588 / 1000 pages
  • Focused Study: 0 / 600 minutes

Reading and gym are going well, possibly at the expense of everything else!

Reading

It’s amazing how much more I can read when I dial back the difficulty. I’ve read about 1000 pages over the past two weeks. It’s not just the faster pace but also that I can read for hours without feeling fatigued.

I put down Delirio for now and instead started and finished Divergente, a translated YA novel for very light reading. There were few unknown words (62 over 464 pages) which let me focus more on grammar and word usage. It is written in first person present tense with above average use of subjunctive. Surprisingly, one of my main takeaways was the usage of the verb dar to mean hit / bump. I’m sure I’ve seen it before, but it was used a LOT in this book. This is just a small sampling:

  • Cuando bajo de nuevo la mano, me doy con el codo contra una pared.
  • El edificio de cristal que se yergue sobre el Pozo hace que la luz del sol me dé en los ojos.
  • Una bala le da en el estómago.
  • Se agarra el vientre, se da con los hombros contra la pared y dispara una vez.
  • Corre a la pantalla del ordenador y le da unas cuantas veces con el dedo.
  • Durante un instante me encuentro suspendida en la nada, hasta que mis pies dan contra el cemento.

I’m continually surprised by what I learn. This feels like something basic, but here I am finally absorbing it more than a year in.

La hija de la española is a novel set in present(ish)-day Caracas, Venezuela. I’m a bit confused about the timing and can’t figure out if it takes place during the Chavez or Maduro presidency. There have been references to “el Comandante Presidente” and the devaluation of the currency, but I’m not sure if I’m missing other cultural references that would help me pinpoint exactly when the story is happening, if it’s intentionally ambiguous, or if I’m just not far enough along. The author is Venezolana living in Spain, and she writes with an international audience in mind. Local terms are explained which I’ve found very helpful!

I’m also reading Cuatro, a collection of short stories from the Divergent series. When I get a bit tired reading La hija de la española, I read Cuatro to rebuild momentum. This process has been working well so far. I’m a little surprised that I’m marking more unknown phrases in Cuatro than in Divergente. There’s a little bit more idiomatic language which makes sense because the narrator specifically mentions trying to speak with more slang / jerga to fit in.

Everything else

I’ve kept up with daily Anki vocab and Ella verb conjugation. I’m still not adding new words to learn and think it will be at least another month before I get my reviews down to the level I want.

I am thinking about enrolling in a more formal course, since there are more distance learning options now due to Covid. I contacted UNAM-LA but unfortunately their current schedule doesn’t work for me. Their placement process included a short writing sample and phone interview and placed me at level B2.5 (I’m assuming that’s unit 5 of their 6 unit B2 level course), so that tells me something about my level.

I may try UNAM Chicago or CEPE UNAM CdM. The Chicago and CdM schedules fit better. The CdM course is pretty intense with 21 hours per week for 6 weeks, and I’m not sure I could keep up with that if there is significant homework on top. The Chicago course, on the other hand, is only 4 hours a week for 8 weeks. I wish there was something in between! In terms of bang for buck, CdM wins by a landslide. It's about $500 for 126 hours of instruction + SIELE exam. Courses don't start until October, so I have some time to think about it.

I watched a video of final presentations given by CEPE students at the end of their highest level course and found it pretty interesting. The non-American accents were difficult for me to understand, so I only watched the last presentation in its entirety. I wonder if oral presentation is a skill I want to develop and how much developing it would help the other skills.

9 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
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Tue Sep 14, 2021 4:54 pm

September 7 to 13

  • Cuatro: finished (+177 pages)
  • La hija de la española: +9% (20 pages)
  • Anki and Ella every day
  • Grammar: 3 hours
  • Writing: 500 words
  • Podcasts, youtube, various news articles
  • Conversation: 1.5 hours

Polyglot Fitness Challenge - current progress on September goals

  • Gym: 9 / 15 sessions
  • Read Spanish: 785 / 1000 pages
  • Focused Study: 240 / 600 minutes

Grammar / Lengalia

I was wondering where all my time went this week, since I’ve barely read my novels or watched any Netflix. I guess I’ve done some grammar, writing, and trying various Spanish apps / website tools.

Lengalia is an online course website, and I liked it enough to pay for it. There are lots of grammar exercises plus some listening and reading comprehension exercises as well. I find myself procrastinating using the McGraw Hill grammar books because I don’t want to write out answers and check them, which I know is silly, but Lengalia solves that problem for me. Plus it’s easier to copy and paste questions I want to practice into Anki.

I’ll have to use it a bit more before I can do a real comparison with Kwiziq, but right off the bat Lengalia is at the other end of the spectrum in some ways. Kwiziq breaks every grammar point down into tiny bits and them jumbles those little bits all together. The randomness of Kwiziq bothers me, since I feel I learn better when information is presented in a more orderly fashion. A lot of the time I spend on Kwiziq is trying to understand what a question is asking because they are given out of context. I’d prefer to choose a specific topic and to drill myself on it repeatedly, like subjunctive vs indicative, por vs para, etc., but I haven’t found a good way to do that on Kwiziq. Their algorithm just seems random, and it definitely doesn’t target my weak spots since it will quiz me on things that are 100% while I have other topics still at 50%.

Lengalia is the opposite. It presents information in a much more orderly fashion, grouped together. I think Lengalia is a little bit more cohesive in how they arrange information. For example, they integrate reading comprehension and grammar by giving a reading sample with fill in the blank grammar questions that focus on a particular topic. This gives more context for how to answer the questions. I haven’t gone far enough into Lengalia to know if it’s as comprehensive as Kwiziq or not, but I’ve spent quite a few hours on the platform, and I’m pretty happy with it so far.

Español avanzado

I’ve had this site bookmarked for a while because I’ve come across it a bunch of times when searching for grammar explanations. I find their grammar explanations to be excellent and was hoping to be able to access the repository of grammar. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there’s a way to navigate their grammar content. You can only access specific grammar topics through links from articles, there’s no table of contents that I can find.

The random article I read was more advanced than what I’ve been reading from other news sources like the New York Times. I tried the reading comprehension questions, but they were more about remembering specific highlighted phrases (of which there were many) than testing comprehension of the article as a whole. Overall, worth some more exploration. The reading material is at a good level, and I like the notes they provide.

Everything else

I’ve kept up with daily Anki and Ella. Anki is at 20-25 minutes per day, but I want to get down to 10-15. I’m trying to develop a more regular writing habit but haven’t been very successful. I did manage to write 500 words, mostly in short 100 word blurbs about various topics.

I’ve been thinking more about my “plateau” and realized I’m not in a plateau but a study routine rut. The past few months have been very input heavy. If I am only measuring how well I understand input, yes it will be difficult to notice a jump in comprehension at this level. I think I'll be able to see noticeable improvement in grammar and writing if I keep them up.
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

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue Sep 14, 2021 5:08 pm

clara wrote:
I’ve been thinking more about my “plateau” and realized I’m not in a plateau but a study routine rut.
This line made me laugh. We lose the forest for the trees sometimes, I know I do.
4 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

greatSchism
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby greatSchism » Wed Sep 15, 2021 1:59 am

clara wrote:September 7 to 13
Lengalia is an online course website, and I liked it enough to pay for it.


I used Lengalia for a year and enjoyed using it. I made it partly through the b2 course before my subscription ended, and I didn't renew. I prefer Anki and Ella for vocabulary or verb conjugation sections? Have you used them in Lengalia?
2 x

clara
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:09 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
clara wrote:
I’ve been thinking more about my “plateau” and realized I’m not in a plateau but a study routine rut.
This line made me laugh. We lose the forest for the trees sometimes, I know I do.


Haha, that is definitely me! I too often lose sight of the big picture.


greatSchism wrote:I used Lengalia for a year and enjoyed using it. I made it partly through the b2 course before my subscription ended, and I didn't renew. I prefer Anki and Ella for vocabulary or verb conjugation sections? Have you used them in Lengalia?


So far, I’ve only targetted specific sections that I know I could use some practice in, i.e. lessons B1.6 (past indefinite vs imperfect), B2.9 (indicative vs subjunctive) and B2.11 (verbs with prepositions). After I finish those, I plan to move to the C1 grammar exercises, skipping the verb conjugation sections because I get enough practice through Ella. I agree that Anki and Ella are better for vocab and conjugation! I’m really only using Lengalia for the grammar because that’s the one area I haven't found a good routine for.
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 » Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:15 pm

September 14 to 18

  • La hija de la española: +11% (25 pages)
  • Insurgente: 464 pages
  • Movies: Divergente (50%), Insurgente, Leal (I could only find the first half of Divergente dubbed.)
  • Anki and Ella every day
  • Lengalia: 1 hour
  • Podcasts, youtube, various news articles
  • Conversation: 1.5 hours

Polyglot Fitness Challenge - current progress on September goals

  • Gym: 11 / 15 sessions
  • Read Spanish: 1276 / 1000 pages
  • Focused Study: 300 / 600 minutes

Reading / Movies

I read a little bit of La hija de la española and all of Insurgente. I reached a point in Insurgente where the main character became a bit unbearable and decided to try watching the movies to see if that would inspire me to read more. The movies are … not great. There’s a reason the last one was cancelled, but it was enough to make me want to know how it ends.

Reading easier material has been surprisingly helpful. I’m able to really focus on grammar and repeated phrases instead of vocabulary or parsing run on sentences. There’s something about the style of writing in the Divergente series that seems to translate better to speaking for me. Maybe because it’s written in first person with simple sentence structure, a lot closer to my Spanish speaking level, but also the descriptions of action and movement and thoughts contain lots of stock phrases / constructions that I “know” but repeated exposure is solidifying. For example, it still takes a moment for me to parse clauses like “he grabs my arm,” “I move her leg,” “I cover my eyes,” etc. since the construction is a little bit different in Spanish than English, and I have to really pay attention to the verb ending to know who is doing it. I’m getting tons of exposure to this, subjunctive and passive constructions.

For some chapters, I read along to an audio version on Youtube which is helping with my intonation while speaking and subvocalization while reading. I started with audio at 1x and am now at 1.5x. Overall, I’m pretty surprised that lower level reading is making a decent impact on my other skills.

Everything else
Anki and Ella every day. I didn’t do as much grammar, writing or focused study these past few days.
5 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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