LawyerMom gave me an idea for road trip entertainment. The Lord of the Rings with audio descriptions from the movie. The trilogy is 9 hours. The dialog and descriptions are in Spanish. I've listened to 5 of the six parts. Borimir said "My Captain, my King" to Aragorn, just after his dying confession. Frodo may be dead. Sam thinks so. He has Sting and maybe another thing. Dark forces are attacking Minas Tirith. The heads of Farimir's friends rained down on him and his troops while sent on a suicidal mission by his demented father Denethor. Two woman have spilt tears for Aragorn. Merry and Pippin are in the stone city and will defend it and Gandalf will try to keep them alive. Pippin sang to Denethor after pledging himself as debt owed for Borimir - Denethor's son - saving their lives. He sang to Denethor as the heads fell from the sky, catapulted by Orcs.
Very good selection.
Also did the FSI Variation Drills at random and a few folders of sequential FSI. The radio on this trip found less Spanish speaking stations.
Mainly it was FSI and LOTR.
Finished FSI Unit 29
Including the written exercises. Yeah!
la gramÁtica
Wanted to make some notes on helpful posts. Not always easy to find them when I want to put them in practice.
First is Mr. einzelne's method that makes grammar less scarey.
einzelne wrote:First, you take a short grammar book and read it as a travelogue. When you drill certain grammar points to the point they become second nature on the basis of useful sentences. Then, if you come across some grammar features in your reading you don't understand, you try to find an explanation in a big grammar book, write down an example and then continue to collect another examples while reading. When you have a dozen of sentences (relevant for you) which illustrate the grammar point, you repeat them out loud till they become automatic.
Kraut's eleFANTE y apaELEs
Mr. Kraut's links to a couple of good free grammar books for Spanish (ELE = ESL for Spanish).
Kraut wrote:papELEs. GRAMÁTICA DEL ESPAÑOL COMO LENGUA EXTRANJERA, NIVEL A
https://marcoele.com/gramatica-a/
ELEfante. GRAMÁTICA DEL ESPAÑOL COMO LENGUA EXTRANJERA, NIVEL B
https://marcoele.com/gramatica-b/
Las Ficciones
Borges Cuentos Completos and it's Penguin translation came along for the ride. Las Ficciones is a relatively small part of Cuentos Completos. Audible has this as a 20 hour audiobook. I haven't done the math, but the first 1/2 of Ficciones - since it's a 2 part book - may be about 4 hours. The first story is the longest. 45 minutes. Others are generally longer than 15. The 2nd half, which isn't on the agenda for the trip has some even shorter short stories, like 8 minutes.
The first one was a relatively complex story. I only read it in English. Didn't listen to the audio. Seemed like a good approach. Almost feel I could read it again in English just to fully get the story. So, you can imagine the Spanish is even a bigger challenge for me.
But I like this idea because it doesn't have to intrude on the visit at all. If I do 1 story, fine. If I do the 7 that are recorded, well that would be amazing if they are as labyrinthical as the first. Hoping to not just make a dent/first pass, but get a story or two or more up to the level where I can listen to it or read it and pretty much understand the whole thing in Spanish. Or at least that it's memorable when I come back to it.
It strikes me now that I can do various Listen-Reading experiments on Borges Short Stories. So, the first experiment I think will be reading it first and understanding it well in my native language.