Dean slowly learns Spanish

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Bex
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Re: Dean slowly learns Spanish

Postby Bex » Thu Sep 20, 2018 12:21 pm

You keep Fighting the good fight too Dean!

;)
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Re: Dean slowly learns Spanish

Postby Jaleel10 » Thu Sep 20, 2018 12:46 pm

¡Hola Dean! No creo que nos hayamos conocido pero es un placer leer tu bitácora. :D

I am just like you in a way, I love and enjoy the language and the process but ultimately I wish I had a better command of the language. For that I need to put in the work and I am actually looking forward to it! Just like you, achieving a high level in Spanish would be such a massive accomplishment. It's exciting!

MonoDeano wrote:4. I need to get daily listening in. I tried listening to the news for a few days it was a complete blur. So I need to start a lot slower. Maybe Notes in Spanish and VeinteMundo will be the start for the next 2 weeks. Just making this a routine will be a good start.


Here is a spreadsheet I compiled with podcasts (and other resources) with transcripts. Lots to choose from! For you it would be great comprehensible input. Tell me if you need some recommendations but it's great spending some time with each one and seeing which you like and which you don't.

¡Espero que te sirvan y te deseo mucha suerte!
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Re: Dean slowly learns Spanish

Postby MonoDeano » Fri Sep 21, 2018 9:51 am

Hi Team!
Thanks for the encouragement and the resources.
I think the thing for me right now is just to stick with what I have and work through it. No more collecting material, just working my way through the interesting pieces I have and put in the work.
The goal is to spend an hour a day with the language. That’ll mean taking my time through the reading and listening at the beginning but I’m hoping as the understanding gets better that same hour will be spent on a lot more material. Then I think the podcasts/series/scattergun approach will be a lot more useful. For now, I’m happy to just try and put some work in and do what I know I need to do.

Good luck,
D
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Re: Dean slowly learns Spanish

Postby MonoDeano » Fri Oct 05, 2018 1:13 pm

A quick update folks.

I did duolingo every day. It’s great for momentum. I’m happy to get 10-15 mins in every morning even if it’s not very challenging. It’s a good marker for me that Spanish is an important part of my day and I’m sure it helps me carve out other pieces of the day to fit in more Spanish.

I worked through Practice makes perfect with a light review of past tenses, future and conditional. I’ll give it a better review next week and perhaps move onto other grammar topics. I’m not killing myself trying to memorize anything here, just to be able to understand and recognize grammatical rules when I see them out in the wild. I feel like this is building a foundation and familiarizing myself with the tools in my toolbox allowing me to rack up passive miles and prepare me for when I start doing more intensive output.

I listened to a couple of Intermediate Notes in Spanish podcasts. I got the gist but quite a bit went over my head when it was fast flowing. I'd benefit from repeated listening in smaller chunks so I might look at that next week. I’m just glad I took the plunge and did it. I’ve really neglected listening so I’m going to try to get some listening in every day.

I read 6 or 7 Veinte Mundos articles. I didn’t stress too much about perfect comprehension, the goal was to just get through them and enjoy the articles, which I did. I’m going to study these same articles more closely next week with another read and make an effort to study unknown words and phrases. I haven't decided if I want to take the time to figure out Anki/list yet. I may try with one to see.
I listened to 2 of the VM articles and I really struggled with the speed and length of the podcasts. These too might be better studied in small chunks after I’ve given the article more study time.

The VM articles are really enjoyable. They’re interesting and probably right at my level where I struggle but can still work my way through them. I think the key to keeping my momentum will be to resist the urge to spend hours studying each article to death. This kills the fun for me. I think I’ll naturally get a lot better reading and increasing vocab by just reading more articles and learning along the way. I feel the same with listening but that feels like a much longer journey.

It’s loose at this point, but that's the basis of my studies for the rest of October.

Good luck out there.
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Re: Dean slowly learns Spanish

Postby MonoDeano » Sat Oct 13, 2018 5:11 pm

Hi folks,

I did Duolingo every day. I enjoy it but it's downright easy. The marginal benefit is pretty low at this point.
I would be much better off reviewing vocab and grammar or outright reading for the same 15 minutes.

I read VienteMundos every day - each article twice. I've really enjoyed them. I listened to a couple as well.
My goal is to get through all the intermediate articles available ASAP without killing myself or getting too intense with each article.

Listening is enjoyable but difficult. I can follow along well with an article I've read twice if it's in front of me, but trying to just listen is very difficult. If I haven't read the article, its a blur.
They're also long. I'd like 1 or 2 minutes that I can listen to and repeat a few times. I guess this is just a matter of pressing rewind though.

I also listened to 2 Notes in Spanish. I enjoy them but didn't focus on them too intensely. I'll try to listen to one each day next week.

Now I have a question. It would be great to have a grammar/vocab/sentence review type system that I could work through every morning. I take the tube/train/metro to work so it's a passive 40 minutes. That's great reading/review/listening time that I'm
using for Duolingo and listening but I could push myself more with active reviewing. Anki and or Memrise are the obvious answer here but I haven't taken the time to learn how to efficiently create and use them yet.

Are fellow language learners manually typing in the spanish and then english for each card or is there a quicker way? If you do type them in manually, doesn't that take a REALLY long time!? I've been reluctant to do it because it feels like those hours are better spent just reading/listening/grammar-ing vs time on my computer.

I'd be really grateful for any pro tips/hacks/suggestions or links for some guidance. I think this could make a big difference.

That's it for now.
D
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Re: Dean slowly learns Spanish

Postby James29 » Sun Oct 14, 2018 4:36 pm

I'd suggest finding a book that is easy enough for you to read and enjoy it. Use a kindle and touch every word you do not know to see the pop up translation. By doing that the Kindle will automatically save the word and the sentence it is in into the Kindle's "vocabulary builder." The vocabulary builder is essentially an electronic flash card system. Whenever you want to read you can read and whenever you want to review vocab you have flash cards already made. This is going to be the most efficient way to do things in terms of vocab acquisition.
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Re: Dean slowly learns Spanish

Postby MonoDeano » Tue Oct 16, 2018 9:57 am

James29 wrote:I'd suggest finding a book that is easy enough for you to read and enjoy it. Use a kindle and touch every word you do not know to see the pop up translation. By doing that the Kindle will automatically save the word and the sentence it is in into the Kindle's "vocabulary builder." The vocabulary builder is essentially an electronic flash card system. Whenever you want to read you can read and whenever you want to review vocab you have flash cards already made. This is going to be the most efficient way to do things in terms of vocab acquisition.


Thanks James! I'll have to look into how to do this. I'm a big reader, kindle and paperback so this could be a really good way to get some more reading in while commuting. I have read a few young adult books by Spanish authors that have been translated into English, hoping that I can tackle them in Spanish one day. Isabel Allende has some good ones.
Thanks for the suggestion.
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Re: Dean slowly learns Spanish

Postby Chmury » Tue Oct 16, 2018 4:01 pm

MonoDeano wrote:
Now I have a question. It would be great to have a grammar/vocab/sentence review type system that I could work through every morning. I take the tube/train/metro to work so it's a passive 40 minutes. That's great reading/review/listening time that I'm
using for Duolingo and listening but I could push myself more with active reviewing. Anki and or Memrise are the obvious answer here but I haven't taken the time to learn how to efficiently create and use them yet.

Are fellow language learners manually typing in the spanish and then english for each card or is there a quicker way? If you do type them in manually, doesn't that take a REALLY long time!? I've been reluctant to do it because it feels like those hours are better spent just reading/listening/grammar-ing vs time on my computer.

I'd be really grateful for any pro tips/hacks/suggestions or links for some guidance. I think this could make a big difference.

That's it for now.
D


Hey Monodeano, I used Anki throughout my learning of Spanish, and yes, you type in each word with example sentences in both Spanish and English, and yes, it indeed takes quite a bit of time, especially when you’re starting out and creating the foundation of a deck. However, I believe Anki helped an incredible amount in my building and increasing my vocabulary, and also becoming acquainted and familiar with multiple uses of a word, phrases, prepositions, and so on. Think of it this way though, although it’s true it does take time to create and build a deck, you’re essentially creating your own personal dictionary, unique to your own interests and what you find important in a language. I no longer use my Spanish deck for the spaced repetition feature, but still use it often as a dictionary and reference. Also to make creating the flash cards a bit more active study like, I do remember at some point when my Spanish was decent, simply writing the Spanish sentences in, then translating them to English. So overall I’d highly recommend it, despite the time involved, as creating the cards and reviewing them every day, really does help you hone in on details within the language, whether that be tricky grammatical structures such as the subjunctive, learning slang, learning subtle differences in meaning between related words, whatever. That’s the beauty of it, it is what you make it.

And also remember that Anki is simply just one of many ways to study, it doesn’t suit everyone. I guess my obsession with wanting to know details and proclivity to tolerate the dryness of using it in order to gain the benefits, means that it works for me. But I know that Iguanamon (I’m pretty sure this is true), doesn’t use Anki or any spaced repetition program, and yet he’s one of the most successful language learners and polyglots I’ve ever seen. So it’s also about figuring out and understanding which learning techniques are most effective for you.
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Re: Dean slowly learns Spanish

Postby StringerBell » Tue Oct 16, 2018 8:15 pm

MonoDeano wrote:Listening is enjoyable but difficult. I can follow along well with an article I've read twice if it's in front of me, but trying to just listen is very difficult. If I haven't read the article, its a blur.

Now I have a question. It would be great to have a grammar/vocab/sentence review type system that I could work through every morning. I take the tube/train/metro to work so it's a passive 40 minutes. That's great reading/review/listening time that I'm
using for Duolingo and listening but I could push myself more with active reviewing. Anki and or Memrise are the obvious answer here but I haven't taken the time to learn how to efficiently create and use them yet.


Hi MonoDeano!

The more you listen, the easier it will become. Avoiding it because it's difficult (which I think you alluded to in an earlier post) is a good way to ensure that you never get good at it, because it will never magically get easier...there's no way to get around the fact that like any other skill it just takes a lot of practice (I hope that doesn't sound like I'm lecturing or scolding you, that's not how I intend it). After all, your main goal is to communicate with people, right? This requires good listening comprehension because if you don't understand what they are saying to you, it will be pretty difficult to keep the conversation going.

Anki, Duolingo, Memrise...none of these are going to really strengthen your listening comprehension. I would suggest thinking about what you really want to improve and then focus on doing things that will specifically help you to get better at that thing. You can do grammar or Duolingo or whatever in addition to reinforce your general knowledge, but I think if you mainly focus on these things you'll probably continue to feel disappointed that you can't follow native conversations.

I don't know what your interests are, but if you like to cook, you could find a Spanish language YT channel, find a recipe that looks interesting, and spend some time listening and following along. Cooking shows are great for language learners, because most of what the person says revolves around what they are demonstrating, so it's a little easier to figure things out from context. I did this with travel channels in Italian as a beginner/low intermediate. I used the CC auto generated subtitles (which were pretty accurate) and made note of anything I was confused about and asked a native speaker later on, but for the most part I didn't get concerned if I didn't understand everything as long as I got the general idea of what was said.

Using the dead time during your 40 minute commute can be a great way to work on your listening. What I'd recommend since you are in the phase where listening is really challenging is to find some short podcasts (5-10 minutes is ideal, but you can work with parts of longer podcasts) where you can listen+read several times and then just listen to them repeatedly.

What I did for Polish was to take a 5 minute podcast with the transcription in Polish and create a parallel text, color-coding certain words/phrases.
1) Then, I L+R using this parallel text a few times until I felt like I had a good sense of what the sentences were about.
2) Then I'd listen to that same podcast without the text a few times and make note of the places where I got confused.
3) Then L+R again, focusing on the areas where I got lost without the text.
4) Then listen again without the text.

I could easily spend an hour with a 5 minute podcast, but by the end of it, I could follow that podcast without a text and understand very well. The next day I'd listen again to see if I got lost again, and if so I'd L+R once more. Then a few weeks later return to the podcast. Every time I read or listen to something new, I then return to something old and listen again. At this point, I've done this with over 300 5 minute podcasts and listening is one of my strongest skills. I can usually follow normal-speed conversations or the news even if I'm missing some words. It takes a long time, but as long as you are consistent and patient, you will get much better!
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Re: Dean slowly learns Spanish

Postby M23 » Wed Oct 17, 2018 5:45 am

MonoDeano wrote:I have read a few young adult books by Spanish authors that have been translated into English, hoping that I can tackle them in Spanish one day. Isabel Allende has some good ones.
Thanks for the suggestion.


Isabel Allende is pretty enjoyable reading, but it might not be a good choice right off the bat. She has a pretty ample vocabulary, and if you spend most of your time reading the dictionary instead of her book it will result in a frustrating and unpleasurable experience. Pick up something like "Cómo Tía Lola salvó el Verano" from the library and see how you do with it. If it is easy as pie, try some teen stuff like the Hunger Games or Harry Potter. If that is not too rough try a trashy detective novel for adults. If you are not spending a lot of time looking up words then I would suggest trying Isabel Allende.

Just my two cents, anyway.

Keep up the good work. :)
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