Thomas's TAC 2016 Spanish Log

[Cavesa]

Thank you for the tv suggestions. I would like to find some shows with good subtitle transcripts available online. That way I could read the transcript before watching the show, and thus bootstrap my listening comprehension.

Thanks for the comic book link.

About tv with transcripts: rtve.es is an awesome site, which offers tons of their tv series for free, without region restrictions. And you can watch them with a transcript!!! I've just found out but I can't use it anymore as that would be too easy at my level, but you might like them. I am quite sure there are transcripts for Cuéntame cómo pasó and el Ministerio del tiempo (which are both just great!), not sure about others.

[tommus]

About tv with transcripts: rtve.es is an awesome site,

The site looks great. The transcripts are there. But for some reason, I cannot play any videos. I tried Chrome and Firefox on Ubuntu, and Chrome and Firefox on Windows 7. But the videos just sit there and do nothing, and/or show a montage of other video first frames.

[Tomás]

About tv with transcripts: rtve.es is an awesome site,

The site looks great. The transcripts are there. But for some reason, I cannot play any videos. I tried Chrome and Firefox on Ubuntu, and Chrome and Firefox on Windows 7. But the videos just sit there and do nothing, and/or show a montage of other video first frames.

I had a similar problem. I was not able to get ep. 1 of Cuéntame cómo pasó to play.

I was able to get ep. 1 of el Ministerio del tiempo to play, with Spanish subtitles. Good show! Does it count as language study to watch tv with L2 subtitles? Because that's what I did instead of studying my courses tonight.

[Hank]

I found out about a site from a post on Duolingo.

A word of warning first. My antivirus says this site wants to download an app and it blocks a popup. I generally avoid sites that do stuff like this, but my antivirus says it is safe. I have looked at stuff on the site and have had no ill effects on my computer. I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to avoid clicking the link. I don't have any issues with the site on my iPad.

http://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1732

There are a bunch of really old (1940s and 1950s) Spanish language comics on the site, plus a bunch of comics in other languages. Some of them are hard to read because the text isn't very clear. It's pretty cool.

[tommus]

I was able to get ep. 1 of el Ministerio del tiempo to play, with Spanish subtitles.

Thanks for that encouraging info. However, that one won't play for me either. There may be an additional browser add-on that I need to play these videos.

[Tomás]

I found out about a site from a post on Duolingo.

A word of warning first. My antivirus says this site wants to download an app and it blocks a popup. I generally avoid sites that do stuff like this, but my antivirus says it is safe. I have looked at stuff on the site and have had no ill effects on my computer. I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to avoid clicking the link. I don't have any issues with the site on my iPad.

http://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1732

There are a bunch of really old (1940s and 1950s) Spanish language comics on the site, plus a bunch of comics in other languages. Some of them are hard to read because the text isn't very clear. It's pretty cool.

Nice find--thanks!

[Tomás]

Week Three

Lessons
Spanish without Toil, studied Lessons 68-76 (six new lessons)
Linguaphone 1960s course, studied Lessons 14-21 (six new lessons)

Reading
LR CHs 1-4 in El Principito
Several chapters in "Historias de Puerto Rico"
Two-thirds of Tintin "Objectivo Luna"

TV
Backyardigans, two episodes
Phineas y Ferb, one episode
Moomins, one episode
Ministerio del Tiempo, one episode
Destinos, Eps. 20-22
Extras, Eps. 9-10

Lots more tv than usual this week, mainly because I've been working out more. I did two workouts a day over the weekend because we've had snow and I've stayed home. I find that sometimes I stop paying attention to the tv while exercising. I don't think this is a big problem, but I don't want to get into the habit of ignoring Spanish sounds.

For the first time I read the transcript of an Extra episode before watching it, and made certain that I understood all of the words before watching. Don't know if this is good practice or not. I did learn the word "cobaya" (guinea pig) from Extra, and then the same day read it in Tintin. ¡qué casualidad !

Podcasts
Notes in Spanish Intermediate, six episodes

This week I explored podcasts for the first time. I checked out four or five different series. For now, Notes in Spanish Intermediate is hitting my n+1 CI sweet spot. They teach several new words in each episode, and I look up one or two more. I understand the gist of everything, if only 80% of the actual language. It's quite rewarding. My only concern is that I understand the English guy's Spanish better than the Spanish girl's.

I rearranged my Anki to give me 45 new cards a day: 20 each from two vocabulary decks, plus 5 from my idioms deck. This sounds like too much, but the two vocab decks overlap a lot. Plus I find them very easy. Many words I already know, or are easy cognates from English. I've been doing roughly this number of cards for over a month, and only have about 200-250 reviews/day, which go very fast. It was the idioms deck that was slowing me down before, so I cut those back to 5 cards. I still think the idioms deck is gold, though. It is so important to learn that stuff.

I am still not doing anything active other than self-talk. I have not kept up with the Anki active wave. Nor have I studied any grammar. I have plans to remedy the grammar deficit. Production can wait a little longer I think.

[Tomás]

This week I stopped doing lessons in Assimil and Linguaphone, after several months of regular work. I did study Assimil for two days, and completed one new lesson. But I did not have the motivation to keep up with the daily routine. I did put in a lot of listening to native materials, and kept up with nearly 250 reviews/day in Anki.

Most fun was discovering the world of Latinas who are living in Japan and vlogging about it on Youtube. The three I listened to were Makeiri, Sandyael, and Ruthi San. They are all cute as a button, but Ruthi San is my favorite to listen to for language learning. She is a young Mexicana living in Japan with her Japanese husband and their child. Her vlogs describe Japanese culture from a Latina's perspective.

They are good for my language learning purposes because not only does she speak clearly and simply, but her vlogs are structured. Each one is organized around a specific theme. Most of them have numbered points, and she flashes the number on the screen when transitioning from one point to the next. This structure gives me some scaffolding to hang onto at times that I might otherwise have gotten lost in a thicket of incomprehensible language. Sandyael's vlogs are remarkably similar, but she is not quite as compelling to me as Ruthi San.

During my half hour workouts in the evenings, I've been knocking out Notes in Spanish Intermediate episodes, as well as Phineas y Ferb cartoons. So hardly any real formal lessons work, and no Extras or Destinos. Just nearly all native material plus Anki.

This week, I will try to get back into some more formal studying. I also want to supercharge my vocabulary work. I'm going to try for 100 new words/day. I think I can do it most days, except perhaps the two days a week when I work until 9pm. I will have to become far more strict about managing my Anki, pushing easy words far into the future so as to keep the reviews/day down to a manageable number.

[Tomás]

Anki tells me I reviewed 700 cards in 50 minutes today. I broke it up into two different sessions. It did not feel too strenuous. This is Day Two of my attempt to learn 100 words per day. How long can I sustain this pace?

[Tomás]

Yesterday I completed two full weeks of my 100 new words per day campaign. See here for details: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2110&p=25271#p25271

In addition to the vocab studies, I have also kept up with my listening every day, around 10-40 minutes per day--news, blogs, and TV shows. I also read the second book in the Blacksad series: "Arctic Nation". It was even better than the first. I think it's my favorite comic book/graphic novel, of the various series I've read.

I have stopped doing any formal course work, after four or five months of faithfully doing lessons every day. I'm a bit bored with it now. I do feel the need to work on grammar. I've been playing around on https://conjuguemos.com/, and will probably try to keep doing some grammar studies on there.