Desafiars’s Spanish Log
Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2022 6:10 pm
Hello, I'm creating a log for my input based approach to learning Spanish. I probably won't update too often, as my primary purpose for the log is not to record all that I do, but rather to highlight changes to my plan, note insights, or ask questions that I may have, and maybe get some feedback for which I'd be grateful.
Before I started studying Spanish, I spent some time evaluating the best approach. I understood the time investment would be massive, and given that, I wanted first to make sure I was fully committed and had a plan to succeed with a minimum of wasted effort and time.
I came to the conclusion that an input-based approach would be best for me. I'm introverted so early conversation is secondary to my desire to read and understand spoken language. I wanted to maintain a balanced ability in both reading and listening, so I tailored my approach to spend time with both. I've been studying almost a year and so far satisfied.
Resources I've used:
- Grammar ebooks by McGraw Hill and Schaum's
- Routledge Spanish Frequency Dictionary
- Anki on my phone and laptop
- Español a la Mexicana podcast with transcripts
- Short stories and audio by Spanish Input, a member of this forum
- Graded readers and regular books.
- LingQ
- Glosbe
- Linguno
- Dictionary's by Ultralingua and Collins on both my laptop and phone
- LanguageTool grammar checking
- DeepL
- Various spreadsheets
- macOS TTS
My first few months:
I used LingQ as my primary tool and have enjoyed it, but it's now time to let my subscription expire. I feel using it early was a good decision. In particular, the 60 Mini Stories were incredibly helpful for engraining basic sentence structures and introducing verb tenses in an efficient manner with plenty of repetition and all important audio. I downloaded the MP3's and played them many times. Some of the sentences ended up in Anki.
For grammar books or other material that doesn't have audio, I often use TTS when I want to hear it spoken. macOS TTS is quite good. It has its weaknesses but it is still very helpful to me.
All my grammar book answers were written as notes on my computer. Sentences I felt were noteworthy, I put into Anki for repletion. I have many cards that were created for the purpose of internalizing the usage of pronouns.
All my Anki cards use TTS. At the start I collected anything that I felt repletion would be helpful, grammar, idiomatic phrases, etc.
I've read and listened to podcasts with transcripts by Spanish Input. They were enjoyable for early material.
What I've been doing more recently:
I have been satisfied with my balance of listening and reading, but it quickly became apparent that word acquisition was my best way forward to get to an intermediate stage. I figured that I can collect nouns from just immersing myself, but verbs have been more difficult, yet more important.
My current approach to verb acquisition is to collect and study them in Anki and a spreadsheet. My current verb count in my spreadsheet is 759, of which 685 have been transferred to Anki. I suspect that I'll need to get to 1200 - 1500 known verbs to read well enough to read extensively. I have no data other than my own verb acquisition and pondering to come to that number, so really I pulled that number out of a hat.
The approach to collecting and studying verbs:
- Any sentence that I come across in books or other materials with a verb I haven't encountered previously is put into a holding document for later processing. At that time the verb infinitive is also added to my spreadsheet.
- Later I'll take a quantity of the sentences and translate them with DeepL, and make Anki cards.
- The verb infinitive is put in a separate deck with a single word verb infinitive and definition. These are the only single word cards I use, all others are sentences.
- If I have trouble with a particular verb, I'll add additional sentences with using various tenses. I may collect these additional sentences from reading material or from Glosbe, or create them myself.
- I practice conjugations in my spreadsheet. The ability to sort, classify, and highlight text with color has made has helped me to see and learn patterns of conjugation. I may practice conjugations by writing out the conjugations horizontally, vertically, or randomly. I'm a visual learner and I believe the spreadsheet and Anki repletion has been helpful.
- I'm not collecting any Anki cards at this point unless they are related to verb acquisition.
I've also joined the Super Challenge as a double for Spanish. I'll be going slow with intensive reading and study at first and suspect I'll pick up the pace later with extensive reading and also binge-watching shows.
Before I started studying Spanish, I spent some time evaluating the best approach. I understood the time investment would be massive, and given that, I wanted first to make sure I was fully committed and had a plan to succeed with a minimum of wasted effort and time.
I came to the conclusion that an input-based approach would be best for me. I'm introverted so early conversation is secondary to my desire to read and understand spoken language. I wanted to maintain a balanced ability in both reading and listening, so I tailored my approach to spend time with both. I've been studying almost a year and so far satisfied.
Resources I've used:
- Grammar ebooks by McGraw Hill and Schaum's
- Routledge Spanish Frequency Dictionary
- Anki on my phone and laptop
- Español a la Mexicana podcast with transcripts
- Short stories and audio by Spanish Input, a member of this forum
- Graded readers and regular books.
- LingQ
- Glosbe
- Linguno
- Dictionary's by Ultralingua and Collins on both my laptop and phone
- LanguageTool grammar checking
- DeepL
- Various spreadsheets
- macOS TTS
My first few months:
I used LingQ as my primary tool and have enjoyed it, but it's now time to let my subscription expire. I feel using it early was a good decision. In particular, the 60 Mini Stories were incredibly helpful for engraining basic sentence structures and introducing verb tenses in an efficient manner with plenty of repetition and all important audio. I downloaded the MP3's and played them many times. Some of the sentences ended up in Anki.
For grammar books or other material that doesn't have audio, I often use TTS when I want to hear it spoken. macOS TTS is quite good. It has its weaknesses but it is still very helpful to me.
All my grammar book answers were written as notes on my computer. Sentences I felt were noteworthy, I put into Anki for repletion. I have many cards that were created for the purpose of internalizing the usage of pronouns.
All my Anki cards use TTS. At the start I collected anything that I felt repletion would be helpful, grammar, idiomatic phrases, etc.
I've read and listened to podcasts with transcripts by Spanish Input. They were enjoyable for early material.
What I've been doing more recently:
I have been satisfied with my balance of listening and reading, but it quickly became apparent that word acquisition was my best way forward to get to an intermediate stage. I figured that I can collect nouns from just immersing myself, but verbs have been more difficult, yet more important.
My current approach to verb acquisition is to collect and study them in Anki and a spreadsheet. My current verb count in my spreadsheet is 759, of which 685 have been transferred to Anki. I suspect that I'll need to get to 1200 - 1500 known verbs to read well enough to read extensively. I have no data other than my own verb acquisition and pondering to come to that number, so really I pulled that number out of a hat.
The approach to collecting and studying verbs:
- Any sentence that I come across in books or other materials with a verb I haven't encountered previously is put into a holding document for later processing. At that time the verb infinitive is also added to my spreadsheet.
- Later I'll take a quantity of the sentences and translate them with DeepL, and make Anki cards.
- The verb infinitive is put in a separate deck with a single word verb infinitive and definition. These are the only single word cards I use, all others are sentences.
- If I have trouble with a particular verb, I'll add additional sentences with using various tenses. I may collect these additional sentences from reading material or from Glosbe, or create them myself.
- I practice conjugations in my spreadsheet. The ability to sort, classify, and highlight text with color has made has helped me to see and learn patterns of conjugation. I may practice conjugations by writing out the conjugations horizontally, vertically, or randomly. I'm a visual learner and I believe the spreadsheet and Anki repletion has been helpful.
- I'm not collecting any Anki cards at this point unless they are related to verb acquisition.
I've also joined the Super Challenge as a double for Spanish. I'll be going slow with intensive reading and study at first and suspect I'll pick up the pace later with extensive reading and also binge-watching shows.