Reading Spanish

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nuncapense
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Re: Reading Spanish

Postby nuncapense » Sat Mar 05, 2016 3:18 am

Had my first online language exchange. Absurd, since I live in Mexico, to do it online. But! Left the chat feeling pretty good. My partner was extremely helpful, and pointed out that I can't do the "rr" of "perro." And there are are some words I pronounce wrong, like pelucilas I say in a very American way. The guy should be a professional language teacher. I'm supposedly an English language teacher, and I have no idea what I'm doing, especially compared to him. I think I need to focus more on understanding expressions and speaking with correct grammar. I still get tripped up using "que" or "lo que" or "mas de lo que," etc. and those sorts of things. My partner spoke with a good amount of normal Mexican expressions (not slang) that I didn't really follow except for the context. Now that I think about it, that's probably because almost all my material is translated, both books and movies.
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nuncapense
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Re: Reading Spanish

Postby nuncapense » Sat Mar 05, 2016 3:21 am

Had my first online language exchange. Absurd, since I live in Mexico, to do it online. But! Left the chat feeling pretty good. My partner was extremely helpful, and pointed out that I can't do the "rr" of "perro." And there are are some words I pronounce wrong, like pelucilas I say in a very American way. The guy should be a professional language teacher. I'm supposedly an English language teacher, and I have no idea what I'm doing, especially compared to him. I think I need to focus more on understanding expressions and speaking with correct grammar. I still get tripped up using "que" or "lo que" or "mas de lo que," etc. and those sorts of things. My partner spoke with a good amount of normal Mexican expressions (not slang) that I didn't really follow except for the context. Now that I think about it, that's probably because almost all my material is translated, both books and movies.

I feel like most people with language exchange (at least with this language pair) could arrange at least 7 hours a week of talking. Many people have messaged me, but I'm on the fence about how much time I want to spend talking, since it will mean a lot less time reading and listening.

In my current Mexican city, I've just been working online. (If anyone knows of an online English teaching company that might hire, please let me know!) I may end up looking for a teaching job in person. I imagine I might get exposed to a little more Spanish that way. There are some financial problems with working in person though.
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Re: Reading Spanish

Postby arthaey » Sat Mar 05, 2016 12:03 pm

nuncapense wrote:In my current Mexican city, I've just been working online.

Which city in Mexico? I just got back from a year living abroad in various parts of Mexico. :)
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nuncapense
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Re: Reading Spanish

Postby nuncapense » Mon Mar 07, 2016 7:13 am

Did some more language exchanges. Watched a lot of bad sitcoms dubbed in Castilian Spanish. Haven't read a line in a while. Hopefully getting a kindle in a few weeks, so I imagine I'll start reading again. Maybe this break has been good. I've noticed I get really mentally fatigued after half an hour of speaking Spanish. It usually becomes really difficult for me to string a sentence together.
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reineke
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Re: Reading Spanish

Postby reineke » Mon Mar 07, 2016 2:38 pm

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nuncapense
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Re: Reading Spanish

Postby nuncapense » Tue Mar 08, 2016 5:50 am

Thanks. Did you happen to hear about the short story in which a guy writes a new Quijote, but he's so obsessed with writing Quijote the right way, that he writes a completely new Quijote, exactly the same as the original? He publishes and the critics review is more favorably than the original Quijote, even though it's exactly the same.

I've been watching a lot of TV. I don't think listening helps much with pronunciation. I still make basic pronunciation mistakes, mostly with the vowels. I think reading is really superior to watching TV and maybe even audiobooks.
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reineke
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Re: Reading Spanish

Postby reineke » Tue Mar 08, 2016 1:16 pm

nuncapense wrote:Thanks. Did you happen to hear about the short story in which a guy writes a new Quijote, but he's so obsessed with writing Quijote the right way, that he writes a completely new Quijote, exactly the same as the original? He publishes and the critics review is more favorably than the original Quijote, even though it's exactly the same.

I've been watching a lot of TV. I don't think listening helps much with pronunciation. I still make basic pronunciation mistakes, mostly with the vowels. I think reading is really superior to watching TV and maybe even audiobooks.



Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote by Borges. Listening to sounds, words and language in general should be of help with your pronunciation. Phonology practice should be of help to you too. Strong pre-reading language skills and knowledge would enhance your reading activity. I would mix various activities but your log is named "Reading Spanish" for a reason.
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Re: Reading Spanish

Postby sfuqua » Tue Mar 08, 2016 2:05 pm

I found it useful to do a lot of shadowing at one point. I was working with Assimil, and I started out adding one lesson per day. I would shadow through all of the lessons in order each day. After I worked up to 40 lessons, (so I had shadowed the first lesson for 40 days), I started dropping the earliest lesson off when I added a new one. This was over an hour of shadowing each day.
At that point, after shadowing lessons for 40 days, I could pretty easily shadow right in sync with the voices on the Assimil recording. I think my Spanish pronunciation might have hit its best at this time.
Assimil is convenient, but other sorts of input might work. Maybe a person could shadow a TV show or a movie, especially if we used emk's program that slices out the dialog from a movie. I've always thought the spanishpod101 dialogs might be good to use for this. Using audacity you could slow it down a little if it is too fast to shadow at first...

I put in all this detail, because I'm daydreaming about doing a bunch of shadowing again myself.
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nuncapense
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Re: Reading Spanish

Postby nuncapense » Wed Mar 09, 2016 3:23 am

This month I've been watching a lot of Spanish tv and not reading. Before I started reading this fall, I spent all my Spanish studying time with TV and audiobooks, occasionally radio, also meeting with a private teacher once a week for a conversation, as well as talking to roommates and people. I think the biggest gains have come with reading.

The history of my Spanish learning goes something like: Before I moved to Mexico, I used to deliver pizzas in he US. Each 9 hour shift, I had about 4 hours of driving in my car. I studied Spanish that way off and on, not too seriously, for about 6 months. At first, I listened to Spanish dubbs of Seinfeld. It sounded like pure noise for months and months. Eventually I switched to Harry Potter audiobooks, which I listened to over and over. I thought I understood a lot, but then I moved to Mexico City, where I could barely say anything. I could sometimes understand my roommates. I lived in Mexico City for 8 months, then moved here. In Mexico City, TV became my main "studying" activity. I bought some books, but I couldn't understand them. Sometimes, I could listen to something an understand it, but if I'd read the exact same thing, I wouldn't have understood it.

Anyway, that's too long: I listened to audiobooks for 6 months. Then I lived in Mexico for 8 months, talking, and watching TV. I continued to live in Mexico, doing no studying. Eventually I started reading, at which point my comprehension got a lot better. I just started trying to have longer conversations with people from different areas online.

I still have a lot of trouble talking. This week I've found that I am constantly messing up masculine and feminine, something I didn't think I had a problem with before.

That's a great idea to shadow. I like the idea of it. And it's probably incredibly useful. I can't convince myself to spend much time "studying" for the sake of studying, but today I have been shadowing or mimicking the TV show I've been watching a little bit. I just say the words right after they say them. The show is in Castillian, but I'm finding it fun to try to notice the differences in expressions and accent, and it's funny to me to try to imitate the Castillian, which I do very poorly. One of my conversation partners is from Columbia, and interestingly he said he liked the Castillian accent. When I said that most Mexicans tells me they hate the that accent, he said he thought it was a cultural things involving colonialization. That makes sense to at extent. I have a pretty shaky understanding of Mexican history. I'm from the US, and I don't hate the British accent. In fact, since coming to Mexico, I've noticed that I am not even able to notice if someone speaks in a kind of subdued British accent. The obvious ones I pick up on, but the smaller differences in English accents don't hit me the way they used to when everyone I talked to was from the East Coast.
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Tomás
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Re: Reading Spanish

Postby Tomás » Wed Mar 09, 2016 3:48 pm

I've been following your log and not understanding how you can live in country but not have conversation partners locally. It should be easy to find people over say aged 70 or so who are bored and/or lonely and who would love to sit with you. Or a girlfriend/boyfriend with a taste for the exotic.
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