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 » Sun Jan 24, 2021 4:01 am

Week ending January 23

  • Anki: Daily, 6528 mature + 1822 young = 8350
  • Verb conjugator: Daily
  • El Gambito de dama: 320 pages, finished
  • Other reading: A few news articles
  • FSI Basic Spanish: None
  • Youtube: 30 minutes
  • Los Diarios de vampiros: 1.17-1.18 (2 episodes)
  • Carbono alterado: 2.1-2.8 (8 episodes)
  • Sense8: 1.1-1.3 (3 episodes)
  • Online tutoring: 7 hours

This week has been good for numbers. I’ve realized that I’m slow with numbers, so I started counting all my pushups for the Polyglot Fitness Challenge in Spanish. This is slowly making numbers a little bit more automatic for me. I also read El Gambito de dama which has lots of ordinals numbers to describe chess moves. Plus, I’m forcing myself to subvocalize every number I come across. 1900 and 2000 are fairly well ingrained now, but there’s still lots of room for improvement for 11-99.

Polyglot Fitness Challenge
I kept up pretty steady progress with reading, watching series and pushups, and should easily hit my targets by the end of the month. I was surprised to have watched so many minutes, but after doing the calculations, my numbers are more in line with the ratio of minutes to pages suggested by the Super Challenge, so that makes sense.

: 911 / 1000 911/1000 Pages Read
: 2026 / 1000 2026/1000 Minutes Watched
: 905 / 1000 905/1000 Pushups

Anki / FSI / Grammar
I kept up with daily Anki despite really wanting to take a break on Thursday when I was just feeling terrible. I’m so close to my goal, just 6 more weeks!

I’m still on break from FSI. I haven’t mentioned grammar much, but I’m getting some grammar study in, even if it’s not systematic or particularly well ordered. I mark every sentence I come across with unfamiliar grammar. I also pick topics that I struggle with and highlight all of those instances with a particular color in the Kindle app. For example, I realized a lot of words I didn’t recognize were actually diminutives of words I do know, so I started highlighting all diminutives. This has really helped me improve diminutive recognition, which I reinforced by reading a grammar source about diminutive formation. I’m enjoying focusing on one grammar topic at a time where I have exposure to a bunch of “real world examples” instead of just reading the theory or doing a few exercises. I’ve even used some diminutives in conversations recently!

Reading
As much as I love the style and writing in La Sombra del viento, I didn’t want to commit to a book with so much unknown vocabulary. I got to a paragraph that described a fountain pen in detail and was flummoxed by the number of unknown words in that paragraph alone!

Instead, I started and finished El Gambito de dama. I watched the series in English, and I’m surprised how much the series followed the book. I was hoping to get a little more background on the main character’s feelings and relationships at the orphanage, but there wasn’t much that wasn’t covered by the series. She’s just that obsessed with chess! I learned some chess and smoking terminology, but best of all, I got to see lots of examples of ordinal numbers in the teens. One deviation between the book and the series is that she spends some time learning gym movements in the book, and I enjoyed those descriptions. Despite talking about the gym and working out with several online tutors, I still don’t have a good sense of how to describe body positioning and movements. I’ve added this to my list of things to work on.

Audio / Visual input
I finished Carbono alterado, watched a few more episodes of Los Diarios de vampiros and started Sense8. I was surprised that the first episode back watching Los Diarios de vampiros was harder to understand, but I got back into it by the next episode. I’d like to get to a point where I can switch between series and retain my ability to understand.

Online Lessons
I feel like I am slacking on lessons by only taking 7 hours this week, but then I realize that is a fair amount of time! The sheer amount of reading and series watching is definitely helping, and I find myself spontaneously using phrases from books and shows in conversation. Unfortunately I didn’t think to cancel my BL membership until after the billing cycle started, so I still have a few weeks left. I plan to switch to iTalki in February, or maybe I will take a couple weeks off and start iTalki in March.
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 Jan 31, 2021 12:02 am

Week ending January 30

  • Anki: Daily, 6850 mature + 1780 young = 8630
  • Verb conjugator: Daily
  • Crepúsculo: Finished! (174 pages)
  • Other reading: A few news articles
  • FSI Basic Spanish: None
  • Youtube and podcasts: 1 hour
  • Diarios de Vampiros: 1.17-22, 2.1-2 (8 episodes)
  • Sense8: 1.1-3 (3 episodes)
  • Distrito Salvaje: 1.1-10, 2.1-2.3 (13 episodes)
  • Siempre Bruja: 1.1-10, 2.1-6 (16 episodes)
  • Online lessons: 5 hours

Audio / Visual input
This week has been very Netflix heavy. I was inspired by success stories of language learners who have improved listening comprehension by watching hundreds of hours of TV shows and movies. Being able to easily understand movies and TV shows would hugely improve my enjoyment of the language, and I have a long way to go so I want to get moving on this!

I decided to try some native language series instead of dubs, starting with shows set in Colombia. Siempre Bruja started out tough but eased up a bit. Distrito Salvaje is way harder due to all the swear words and slang which I am not at all familiar with, but I enjoy the series more. I think my listening skills have improved this month, but there is still a LOT of room for improvement. This is something I want to continue hammering. I’m starting to see that there’s no way to get around it, I’m just going to have to put in an enormous number of hours if I want to understand TV and movies. Far more than just one Super Challenge.

Reading
I finished Crepúsculo instead of starting something new. I also read Kindle samples of other books and have a few contenders for what to read in February.

Online Lessons
Just 5 hours of conversation practice this week, but all the reading and listening is definitely helping my speaking. I notice myself using phrases I’ve read or heard more frequently. I am disappointed that I am still slipping up on gender, but at least now it’s usually due to not knowing the gender of a word vs just forgetting that I need to be cognizant of gender. Or sometimes the chain of thought is long enough that I forget the word I’m referring to.

Polyglot Fitness Challenge
I hit all my January goals and have been thinking of goals to set for February. Pushups have gotten easier, and they’re already having a positive effect on my bench press.

January goals completed:
: 1085 / 1000 1085/1000 Pages Read
: 3478 / 1000 3478/1000 Minutes Watched
: 1050 / 1000 1050/1000 Pushups

For February, I’d like to set similar goals. Read 1000 pages, watch 3000 minutes, do 1000 pushups. At least one book will be native Spanish instead of translation. In January, I did pushups in easy sets of 10, but I plan to increase that to sets of 15-ish by the end of February.

Anki / FSI / Grammar
Anki and conjugation practice are still going strong. I’ve been using more subjunctive while speaking, but I’m not close to mastering it.
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 » Sun Feb 07, 2021 7:03 am

Week ending February 6

  • Anki: Daily, 7182 mature + 1725 young = 8907
  • Verb conjugator: Daily
  • El Príncipe de la niebla: 238 pages, finished
  • El ruido de las cosas al caer: 51 pages
  • News articles: 2 articles
  • FSI Basic Spanish: None
  • Podcasts and Youtube: 1 hour (Noticias Telemundo, Platzi)
  • Diarios de vampiros: 2.3-6 (4 episodes)
  • Distrito salvaje: 2.5-10 (6 episodes)
  • La Ley secreta: 1.1 - 4 (4 episodes)
  • Ozark: 1.1 (1 episode)
  • Also watched Ocean’s 11 and Ocean’s 12
  • Online tutoring: 5 hours

Anki / FSI / Grammar
Not much to say here. I kept up with daily Anki and verb conjugation. I’m actually itching to try KwizIQ again to see if all of this reading and listening has helped my grammar instincts. I suspect it has, but we’ll see. I’m going to hold off on KwizIQ until after I’ve reached my Anki goal.

Reading
One of my February goals is to read a book natively written in Spanish, and I decided it would be better to get that out of the way earlier instead of starting a book in the last week and realizing it was too hard. Well, I started and finished El Príncipe de la niebla which wasn’t too bad at all. Sentence structure was more complex than any of the translations I’ve read, but vocabulary was comfortable. I marked about 200 words or just under one word per page.

All the novels I’ve read so far have been in Spanish from Spain, so I wanted to take a stab at something written in a Latin American dialect. I searched for Colombian authors, since I’ve been watching Colombian shows, and I came across Juan Gabriel Vásquez. I started his novel El Ruido de las cosas al caer and am really enjoying it. The writing style has very long, practically run-on, sentences, which are challenging in a different way from anything else I’ve read. I was hoping to get some exposure to Colombian slang that I’ve heard in TV shows, but there has been less than I hoped for. Either way, the story is much more adult and interesting to me than El Príncipe de la niebla, and it feels more culturally significant.

Audio / Visual input
I finished the second season of Distrito salvaje, which I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, my listening comprehension wasn’t very good mostly due to unknown vocabulary and because of just plain not being able to make out some sounds. I had to watch a lot of dialogue 3 times: first with just audio, second with Spanish subtitles, and third with English subtitles.

I’m noticing a significant jump in difficulty between dubs and native Spanish-language series which have lots of slang, country-specific vocabulary, and more muddled speech. I’ve gone back to dubs and am not sure how to bridge the divide between dubs and native series. Maybe I just need to trust that if I watch enough dubbed content and continue reading, my vocabulary and comprehension will eventually improve enough that native series will be more comprehensible. Or maybe I just need to dive into the more difficult native content and adapt. I’m not sure.

Online Lessons
5 hours. I felt a bit slow this week, but one of my tutors said he’s been speeding up his speech and noticing that I’m able to keep up, so all the listening practice is definitely helping.

Polyglot Fitness Challenge - February
I’ve kept on target for my February goals. I’ve been doing mostly sets of 12-15 pushups, and I’ve gotten faster at recalling those numbers when speaking.

: 289 / 1000 289/1000 Pages Read
: 805 / 3000 805/3000 Minutes Watched
: 264 / 1000 264/1000 Pushups
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

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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2113
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Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Feb 07, 2021 6:01 pm

clara wrote:I’m noticing a significant jump in difficulty between dubs and native Spanish-language series which have lots of slang, country-specific vocabulary, and more muddled speech. I’ve gone back to dubs and am not sure how to bridge the divide between dubs and native series. Maybe I just need to trust that if I watch enough dubbed content and continue reading, my vocabulary and comprehension will eventually improve enough that native series will be more comprehensible. Or maybe I just need to dive into the more difficult native content and adapt. I’m not sure.

Welcome to the party, Clara! Going from dubbed content to native content is a big leap for most of us. Good luck, or should I say ¡suerte! :)
2 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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 Feb 14, 2021 5:55 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
clara wrote:I’m noticing a significant jump in difficulty between dubs and native Spanish-language series which have lots of slang, country-specific vocabulary, and more muddled speech. I’ve gone back to dubs and am not sure how to bridge the divide between dubs and native series. Maybe I just need to trust that if I watch enough dubbed content and continue reading, my vocabulary and comprehension will eventually improve enough that native series will be more comprehensible. Or maybe I just need to dive into the more difficult native content and adapt. I’m not sure.

Welcome to the party, Clara! Going from dubbed content to native content is a big leap for most of us. Good luck, or should I say ¡suerte! :)


Thank you, if you have any suggestions for bridging the gap, I'm all ears! I had ignored slang for a while, and I'm realizing I definitely need to start tackling slang if I want to understand native series.
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 Feb 14, 2021 6:09 pm

Week ending February 13

  • Anki: Daily, 7492 mature + 1695 young = 9187
  • Verb conjugator: Daily
  • El ruido de las cosas al caer: Finished (+221 pages)
  • FSI Basic Spanish: None
  • Podcasts and YT: 2 hours (How to Spanish podcast, Noticias Telemundo, Platzi)
  • Diarios de vampiros: 2.10 - 22, 3.1 - 3 (16 episodes)
  • La ley secreta: 1.5 (1 episode)
  • Online tutoring: 5 hours

The big news this week is that I’ve finished the film portion of the Super Challenge! At my current pace, I should finish the reading portion by the end of March. I’ll reassess then to see if I want to up my targets to a double challenge. I’ve certainly improved my listening comprehension, but I’m still not close to where I want to be. I can generally follow dubs, news, or documentaries with clear speech, but native series feel 2 steps beyond that with much faster and more muddled speech plus slang and region-specific vocabulary. I’ve got a couple ideas I might try to bridge the gap, but I’m still researching options. I may try focusing on one subject area and country for building vocabulary, for example learning Colombian slang, drug-related and legal vocabulary in order to watch Narcos. In the meantime, I’ll keep watching dubs.

Polyglot Fitness Challenge
I’m keeping pace for my February goals, but this week required a bit more effort. El ruido de las cosas al caer felt much slower than El príncipe de la niebla, but I’m not sure the reading level was that much more difficult. I’m going off page numbers for paperback print editions, and I suspect that El príncipe de la niebla used a larger font because it felt like fewer words per page!

February Goals Progress
: 510 / 1000 510/1000 Pages Read
: 1602 / 3000 1602/3000 Minutes Watched
: 514 / 1000 514/1000 Pushups

Reading
I finished El ruido de las cosas al caer which I enjoyed from a learning perspective, but I was pretty annoyed with the main character for the last quarter of the book.

My reading is still very slow, maybe 20-25 pages per hour if I don’t spend time going down the dictionary rabbit hole. I often spend time looking up words, then similar words to see how they differ, etc. I guess I enjoy doing that, but it’s a real time sink.

Audio / Visual input
I dialed back the difficulty level here and just watched a bunch of Diarios de vampiros. My comprehension rate is pretty high, but I have no idea how to quantify it. I’ve seen people giving percentages of comprehension, and I wonder what their methodology is.

Anki / FSI / Grammar / Online lessons
Not much to say here. I kept up with daily Anki and verb conjugation.
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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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2113
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Feb 14, 2021 9:16 pm

clara wrote:Thank you, if you have any suggestions for bridging the gap, I'm all ears! I had ignored slang for a while, and I'm realizing I definitely need to start tackling slang if I want to understand native series.

If only I had bridged the gap myself!
Here are some ideas, not specifically about slang or Columbian, but about some sources for listening to faster dialogue. Forgive me if you already are aware of these.

I. In the Wiki for this forum
1. The topic Improving Listening Comprehension.
2. Another topic Using music to improve your listening.
3. And a useful if semi-geeky process described here Subs2srs. Rdearman has tamed this whole process in a series of tutorials starting here

BTW, in the Wiki HTLAL is mentioned, which = How to learn any language, the predecessor forum to LLORG.

Finally, one of those entries in the Wiki mentions a book called Language Is Music, which I have just bought and looked at the first pages and think it looks useful.

II. Going beyond the Wiki, there is an app associated with the radio series Radio Ambulante. It is called Lupa, and I briefly describe it here:
Lupa


III. For practice listening to faster speech, not necessarily Colombian or slang.
Interviews with many spanish speaking celebrities with both audio and pdf transcript.
Quince Turisto Cultural
And more videocasts here: Reddit Suggestions
Videos at different difficulty levels: Deliberate Spanish
IV. Last, iguanamon has posted in this his way of working with movies, but for the life of me I can’t find his post. (If you read this, iguanamon, sorry man. :oops: )

Most of this I pulled together from this forum. If you have not done so already, reading the logs of other members will yield lots of ideas.

Gosh, this is a pretty full plate. I hope at least some of it helps!
6 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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iguanamon
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Studies: Catalan
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby iguanamon » Sun Feb 14, 2021 11:26 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Last, iguanamon has posted in this his way of working with movies, but for the life of me I can’t find his post...
No worries, Mork, took a bit of digging for me too. Actually, it was about working with a series, not a movie when listening skills still need training. I've written about it in several places here. Here's a post I wrote about it.

I find series are much better to work with than films. Series give me an opportunity to get used to actors voices over time. Situations repeat and this is an advantage. I would not even consider doing what I did with a series for a film... unless it were a rare language with minimal resources... then you use what you have without complaining and do the best you can with it.

Of course, if a learner knows a book well and has access to an unabridged audio book, or if you follow the news and know it well, audio with a transcript can be used regularly. Democracy Now en español look near the top of the page at the middle for "Titulares" and "Lea/Escuche".

The thing I can say about listening is if you want to train listening, you have to learn how to listen to full speed native speech. So throw yourself in at the deep end a learn how to swim, even if you don't know how... oh yeah, also you must do it regularly for around 15 minutes to a half an hour every day. It could take months to get better.
6 x

clara
Yellow Belt
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Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:46 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate)
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Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Mon Mar 01, 2021 4:35 pm

A bit late on the response here, but thanks for the resources MorkTheFiddle!

iguanamon wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:Last, iguanamon has posted in this his way of working with movies, but for the life of me I can’t find his post...
No worries, Mork, took a bit of digging for me too. Actually, it was about working with a series, not a movie when listening skills still need training. I've written about it in several places here. Here's a post I wrote about it.


Great post and thread! I have read through it and am committed to listening to more. It's interesting to see just how much listening is needed to improve. Hundreds of hours, not mere dozens, which will take a significant amount of time to accumulate. Once I started tracking hours for the SC, I realized just how slowly I was consuming audio content and upped my pace. I started listening to native speed speech as soon as I could. I avoided News in Slow Spanish, for example, because it sounded distorted compared to the "real thing," and I'm not sure how well it would transfer listening skills.
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

Re: Clara's Spanish Log

Postby clara » Mon Mar 01, 2021 4:41 pm

15 day period ending Feb 28

  • Anki: Daily, 8058 mature + 1725 young = 9783
  • Verb conjugator: Daily
  • La vida invisible de Addie LaRue: Started and finished (504 pages)
  • 3 articles (NYT)
  • Podcasts and YT: 1 hour (El Washington Post)
  • Diarios de vampiros: 3.4 (1 episode)
  • Flecha: 1.1-18 (18 episodes)
  • The Social Network (2 hours)
  • Online tutoring: 10 hours

The second half of February wasn’t great, and I missed updating the my log weekly. I started out binge reading and then switched to binge watching. I think I burned out a bit because I’ve been doing just the bare minimum the past few days.

Polyglot Fitness Challenge
I hit all my February goals. I almost forgot to do pushups yesterday, but I got them in before midnight! I started out doing sets of 12+ for the most part and ended doing sets of 15+.

February Goals Progress
: 1014 / 1000 1014/1000 Pages Read
: 3520 / 3000 3520/3000 Minutes Watched
: 1012 / 1000 1012/1000 Pushups

For March, I’m going to change things up a bit and focus a bit more on fitness:

  • Complete the reading portion of the Super Challenge (743 pages to go)
  • Hit 10k words in Anki (217 words to go)
  • 4 workouts per week.
  • Improve my one arm pushup. I can currently do one shaky rep and would like to do multiple shaky reps or a more solid rep, either will do.

Reading
I started and finished La vida invisible de Addie LaRue which was a step down in difficulty from the previous two books. Not sure if I should read another native language book next or read something easy / translated. I’m feeling a little burnt out, but at the same time I’m feeling a push to challenge myself. Having typed that out, I think the better thing would be to dial it back in March and go for easy. It’s better to stay in the game at an easy pace than overdo it and flame out.

Audio / Visual input
I started watching Flecha, another dubbed series, which I know isn’t as challenging as a native series, but I’ve been feeling so exhausted. The dialogue is more varied than in Diarios de vampiros, so that’s something.

I listened to a bit of El Washington Post, and I think that’s a good level for me to learn. The regular speakers have very clear voices, but the people they interview are more challenging.

Anki / FSI / Grammar / Online lessons
I kept up with daily Anki and verb conjugation. I feel like I’ve been missing tons of mature cards lately, but I haven’t looked at the stats. I'm so close to 10k words in Anki!
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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