Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun May 22, 2022 7:06 pm

luke wrote:
The LIX index is 16x higher than Cien años de soledad. The audible audiobook is 9 hours 43 minutes. At 115 sentences, that means the average sentence is 5 minutes long.
Does this explain why I didn't like El Otoño? I wonder.
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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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luke
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Mon May 23, 2022 3:15 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
luke wrote:The LIX index is 16x higher than Cien años de soledad. The audible audiobook is 9 hours 43 minutes. At 115 sentences, that means the average sentence is 5 minutes long.
Does this explain why I didn't like El Otoño? I wonder.

There may be several, but the challenge of the book could be a factor. Professor Arguelles says that insufficient vocabulary coverage is sufficient to make a good book boring and unenjoyable. I've heard a few native Spanish speakers complain that Gabo's fondness for the dictionary is apparent and makes him hard to read.

I've watched about 4 fragments of El otoño del patricarca on the exercise bike. I'm not in a position to commit to it now. I've got smaller fish to fry. :lol:
5 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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luke
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Fri May 27, 2022 6:54 pm

Milestones

I listened through and mostly shadowed Gabito's 20+ hour autobiography again. Usually, I had the audio speed set at 85-90%:

: 1249 / 1249 Vivir para contarla (3x)

RTVE's El Quijote del siglo XXI was a pleasant listen:

: 97 / 97 El Quijote del siglo XXI (5x)

Next on deck
We're coming up on a 3-day holiday weekend in the United States. My current plan is to read through the Anaya El Quijote graded readers I and II.

Mr Salas - a Refolder
I've watched several of Mr Salas' videos over the last many months. They have the double benefit of being in natural Spanish and he often talks about language acquisition.

I watched this one this morning:



What particularly caught my attention was "paso 2", which is immersion. Lately, I've been watching more English content, mainly because it's been tickling recent fancies. But watching Mr. Salas today makes me think doing closer to a total immersion would be helpful at this point. He's doesn't say, All Japanese All The Time (AJATT), but he is learning it, and he didn't say paso 2 is "all the time", but personalizing his counsel makes me think it would get me hitting some more challenging youtube videos on the regular. Also, when I want to ease up, Deutsche Welle has a lot of documentaries on youtube and they are usually easy to comprehend.

There's also a House of Flowers series on NetFlix that is originally in Spanish of the Americas (Mexico?). It's supposed to be good, funny, etc, in other words, designed for bingeing. Maybe that can capture my attention this weekend.

Another spike in the Anki forecast
Below is the 90 day forecast for my Cien años de soledad deck. There's a spike this Monday, so the holiday is smiling fortune upon me:

prog_100_20220527.png


The deck has been tamed a good bit from a few weeks ago when the daily card count was in the 80s.

Below is the time for the last 30 days for the "collection" (all decks). It has an encouraging trend. The days closer to 0 have less study time, and that's been a goal for a while:

collect_repaso_20220527.png


More tube time, the El Quijote reader, and maybe a binge on House of Flowers should keep the Anki Angel at bay for a few more days and that will pay dividends down the road.

13 weeks clean on the Distraction Limiting Challenge.
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5 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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luke
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Mon May 30, 2022 3:53 pm

With a lot of helpful answers and perspectives in when I lose enthusiam, ..., I ... came to some small adjustments in my program:

La mala hora - out (for now).

Other adjustments:

El Quijote reader - narrating out loud and paying attention to vosotros, vos, and enjoying the story. I'm not going through it in a couple days. The FSI unit I'm working on and the one after that will be keeping me occupied for the next few weeks, and they go through those pronouns, verb conjugations, etc. The Quijote reader has been very helpful here.

Oh, and it should make that Anki deck breezier. Officially, Anki counts cards over 30 days are "mature". Over 90 days is a nice follow-up milestone. For the El Quijote deck, the average maturity is 3.6 months right now.

Cien años de soledad is back in the audiobook rotation. I like listening it. I've been doing it at 140% speed and chapter 3 (of 20) is next.

That's how La mala hora got kicked out. It lost its place on the walk.

Also, using a new technique that Aranold wrote about, which is pretend you are telling the story you are listening to.

: 73 / 124 Cien años de soledad (10x)

Anki - got a new trick for the old dog
I've been writing the key words for Anki cards for a couple months. That has helped. The new technique, which I just started this morning, re-read what you wrote for the Anki card. This is a very quick review and I can do it in a couple minutes at any point in the day and isn't a "task" per se. I used to do use it for exams back in the olden days. One difference here is that instead of it being a quick review before the test, it's a quick review after the test.

I've also decided that rather than continue with chapter 14 of my intensive read of Cien años de soledad, I'll circle back to the beginning and listen-read-narrate again. That will give the existing deck time to continue maturing and be another type of review as well. The intensive read-narrate of this book is enjoyable. The challenge has been that Anki keeps getting out of hand. By going back to the beginning, it should provide more weeks of little card adding, which is how to really get the deck under control. (Anki being an enthusiasm robber right now, knowing there are still many cards that will be added for the project, once I again get the listen-read-narrate point in the story I'm at right now (chapter 14)).

In a nutshell, when enthusiasm wanes, focus on your real goals.
Last edited by luke on Wed Jun 08, 2022 11:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
11 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Tue Jun 07, 2022 5:48 pm

FSI Basic Spanish 53/55s complete
Vosotros, relative pronouns (lo que, la cual, etc), irregular ndo forms (diciendo), reviews of por and para, indirect commands, and the future and conditional tenses rounded out this unit.

Vargas Llosa's long treatise on early Gabo
I finished the audiobook. It was good. A Nobel Prize winning writer analyzing a topic of interest.

: 1473 / 1473 Mario Vargas Llosa - García Márquez: Historia de un deicidio

Cien años de soledad
I have two tracks running here. The intensive read with parallel text is getting ready to start chapter 3 (of 20). I've only added 2 * 10 = 20 cards to Anki covering those first two chapters. I'll paste one of the new cards lower in the post to give a better idea of the beauty of Gabo's prose.

I'm on chapter 15 with the audiobook while walking. This stuck out to me today as a beautiful insight into Amaranta:

Nadie conoció su pensamiento desde la tarde en que rechazó definitivamente al coronel Gerineldo Márquez y se encerró a llorar.
Cuando salió, había agotado todas sus lágrimas.

No one knew her thoughts since the afternoon on which she had definitively rejected Colonel Gerineldo Márquez and shut herself up to weep.
When she came out, she had used up all of her tears.


Anaya El Quijote Reader
: 122 / 365 Anaya El Quijote (6x)

I'm enjoying reading the Anaya reader out loud. Sancho and Don Quijote have a humorous chemistry.

Jose Arcadio Buendia notices he has two sons
conjuro.png
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6 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Tue Jun 28, 2022 7:57 pm

FSI unit 54 of 55 done
It feels good to be in the home stretch. I'm into the last unit.

: 54 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish

El Quijote
In my last report, my Anki deck for El Quijote had an average maturity of 3 months. Now it's over 4.

Sancho and Don Quijote are becoming more amusing.

The synergism with FSI units 53 and 54 was helpful.

: 295 / 365 Anaya El Quijote (6x)

Count von Counting
For all with a counting fetish I have two progress bars for you. This first one makes me watch youtube in Spanish when I don't want to.

: 162 / 1001 1001 Youtubes y podcasts y libros

Here's a Diego Ruzzarin "mini project". He does youtube videos too. Going for a 101 here:

: 7 / 101 Count von counting Ruzzarin

Cien años de soledad
I'd started doing 1 intensive listening fragment per day from the beginning several weeks back. There are 124 fragments. I'm 35 frags in.

I also finished listening to the audiobook again on a recent walk. 10x + 1 = 11x.

: 73 / 124 Cien años de soledad (11x)

I discovered a "life of deck" button for Anki "added" cards. Here's Cien años de soledad:

100_adds_20220628.png


You can see the card adding has been gradually diminishing from the start.

Today it took 15 minutes to clear the deck.
hoy_20220628.png


Going back to the beginning of the book for another intensive read has helped me tame Anki.
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8 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby Le Baron » Tue Jun 28, 2022 8:24 pm

Has anyone else here actually completed FSI Spanish or is this crown yours (or soon to be)?
5 x

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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Wed Jun 29, 2022 4:50 pm

Maybe iguanamon has? I remember that FX from HTLAL did:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/ ... anish.html
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luke
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Wed Jun 29, 2022 7:27 pm

Le Baron wrote:Has anyone else here actually completed FSI Spanish or is this crown yours (or soon to be)?
jeff_lindqvist wrote:Maybe iguanamon has? I remember that FX from HTLAL did:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/ ... anish.html

I think iguanamon and a handful of others have done it.

The link jeff_lindqvist provided was one of the things that got me interested in FSI in the first place. It was more popular in the HTLAL days.

Of interest to Le Baron may be that FX (François, the webmaster of HTLAL) is French. The courses he used were FSI Programmatic Spanish 1 and 2, and then FSI Basic Spanish 3 and 4. So, the whole FSI Programmatic course and the second half of FSI Basic Spanish.

François was correct that the first half of FSI Basic Spanish is available through Barrons. But what he got from one of the FSI vendors of the time was what I listed above. At that time, FSI Programmatic Spanish was not available for free. Neither was FSI Basic Spanish. But the first half was available at the Barrons discount, so the "big name" vendors, like mulitlingualbooks came up with the alternative that François used, so as not to be undercut by Barrons.

Darren Kenny's FSI-Language-Courses.ORG has lots of courses and their audio available for free.

In a nutshell, if one can study from a desk, FSI Programmatic Spanish is a good way to start. It requires the book to use the audio. At HTLAL, FSI Basic Spanish vs FSI Programmatic Spanish was discussed.

Eyeballing the date of a post over at HTLAL, I'm coming up with about 15 years to finish the course. Maybe Ms. BeaP and I have more in common than meets the eye.
7 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Wed Jun 29, 2022 8:19 pm

luke wrote:The link jeff_lindqvist provided was one of the things that got me interested in FSI in the first place. It was more popular in the HTLAL days.


That was one of the first things I read on the website. Of course I ad to try it out at some point (that was a little more than one year later - FSI German). I have used FSI Cantonese but only to some extent. I can't really remember why. Actually, just a week ago I thought of starting over. :ugeek:
4 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

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