My journey to Spanish fluency

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westminstress
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Re: My journey to Spanish fluency

Postby westminstress » Wed Dec 21, 2016 8:13 pm

Hi everyone. Still plugging away over here. Let's see, hmm.

Something wonderful happened in the world of language learning! Now the Netflix app lets you download content for offline viewing. Finally! I feel like I have been waiting for this for years. I downloaded several episodes of La Reina del Sur, which I had basically given up watching because I never had time, and have been watching them on the train. This is definitely the best way to make a crowded commute fly by! And the downloaded episodes are way better than streaming for language learning because if you want to go back 30 seconds to rewatch something you don't have to wait for the content to reload. There is so much great Spanish content now available for download on Netflix. I am planning to watch Celia when I am done with La Reina del Sur. It's a no brainer for me, I love that music so much. I had a bit of a hiccup last week because my headphones broke, but I got new ones and going forward I expect to be watching a lot of Spanish TV while commuting. I will likely cancel my Yabla subscription now since I was only paying for it in order to have access to downloadable content.

I finished La amiga estupenda and have moved on to the second novel in the quartet, Un mal nombre. I really highly recommend these books in Spanish or any language (they were originally written in Italian and I believe have been translated into many languages).

And have been plugging away on my various other Spanish activities - VOA and Democracy Now news, Radio Ambulante podcasts, the grammar book (a few chapters a week), Memrise verb drills and a bit of Clozemaster every day.

Aside from continuing to listen to/read Spanish nearly every day, I have a few specific learning goals for 2017:
1. Complete Memrise verb drills (I cannot WAIT to be done with these!)
2. Complete grammar workbook
3. Find a way to get regular speaking practice (this is the big ticket item on my list and will take enormous effort.)

Happy holidays and a happy new year to everyone here on the forum.
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iguanamon
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Re: My journey to Spanish fluency

Postby iguanamon » Wed Dec 21, 2016 8:27 pm

Good to see you are continuing to improve your Spanish. Hope to see you in the new Spanish Group here, where everyone learning Spanish is welcome to share with each other- methods, resources, tips, etc. There is no membership requirement. You can drop in and drop out whenever you want.
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westminstress
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Re: My journey to Spanish fluency

Postby westminstress » Thu Mar 23, 2017 2:01 pm

Hi everyone, it's been awhile since I posted. I got a little thrown off around the holidays in December, and that basically continued all through February. I was still reading, listening etc. but I felt that I didn't have anything special to report ... but now I do!

Well, as I had mentioned, those verb drills I was doing (the EdThird courses on Memrise) were really starting to bring me down. I felt I had diminishing returns, and they took too much time that I would rather spend on other Spanish activities, but I didn't just want to drop them either. I decided to edit down the courses substantially, leaving only the minimum I felt I still needed to cover, and put in a focused effort to finish them. And this week I did! Let me tell you, that is a good feeling. I feel like I know my verbs pretty well now. The courses helped me a lot, and I'm glad I completed them. And I am thrilled to reduce time spent on Memrise substantially. I am now able to devote my commute time to reading, listening, and watching videos in Spanish, which I think will be great.

I don't like slowing down my reading to pick up new vocab (unless the unknown words are really interfering with comprehension) but I find that Radio Ambulante episodes are great for close listening. I listen once and catch most of it, listen again while following along with the transcript and looking up unknown words (I may get 5-15 per broadcast depending on the topic), and listen a third time - this time I am usually able to hear and understand everything very clearly. I plan to do be doing more of this. I have also set a goal of four grammar lessons per week from my grammar book (which I haven't used since December). Finally, I really want to finish La Reina del Sur. I have been watching this show on and off for so long that I have become bored of it even though I still have about 20 episodes left. I may make a big effort to just get through it at a quicker pace (dropping some of these other activities temporarily) so that I can finally finish it and move on to something else.

As far as reading goes, I am in the fourth and last volume of the Dos Amigas series by Elena Ferrante (translated into Spanish from the original Italian). What great books. I love to read and at this point can enjoy a novel in Spanish almost as much as in English, which is wonderful. I also continue to listen to the VOA news almost every weekday.

Work has been very busy lately, so I haven't been able to do the thing I really need to do which is get a tutor to practice speaking. I have committed to doing that this year and am serious about it, but will probably need to hold off another month or so.
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westminstress
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Re: My journey to Spanish fluency

Postby westminstress » Sun Sep 03, 2017 2:03 am

Hi everyone. Yes, it's been a looooooong time. Sorry about that!

I haven't been posting but I haven't stopped working on my Spanish. Since I last posted I finished all my Memrise drills (and stopped doing them), finished the Elena Ferrante quartet, read all of Harry Potter in Spanish (so good!), finished La Reina del Sur (finally!).

I'm currently reading La Cuenta de la Criada (Spanish translation of The Handmaids Tale) and watching El Internado on Netflix. Have you seen this Spanish series? It's old (maybe 10 years?) but I love it! It's a bunch of really attractive teenagers in a boarding school where lots of creepy things happen .... campy in a good way. And basically doesn't go beyond PG-13 which is great for watching while commuting.

And at long last I found a local tutor. I'm starting my first lessons on sept. 13. I think this is going to get me over the hump to speaking comfortably at last. Really excited about this!

In other language news, we are planning a family vacation to Paris in April so I decided to learn a little French! I'm not going to put much time into it, I just want the basics for traveling. I started with Duolingo which I am doing from a Spanish base (two birds and all that). One question ..... I've never studied French before and I'm really challenged by the pronunciation. Not sure I trust Duolingo for that either. Any recs specifically for practicing French pronunciation as a total beginner?
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Re: My journey to Spanish fluency

Postby sfuqua » Sun Sep 03, 2017 4:23 am

You could do the FSI French pronunciation course that is available a few places.

I don't like it very much, but it might help you believe the weird way that French speakers twist those sounds that are so straightforward in Spanish...

You could just shadow Assimil, if you have a copy.

Reading a description of French phonology may help. That way, you know what to look for.
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westminstress
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Re: My journey to Spanish fluency

Postby westminstress » Tue Sep 12, 2017 6:53 pm

Hi everyone. Just popping in for a quick update.

My first Spanish tutoring session is tomorrow morning. Very excited about this! I really feel like my comprehension is finally at a level where it makes sense to seriously focus on speaking and conversation. I'm looking forward to developing these skills. Aside from that I'm just engaging in regular Spanish activities, which means listening to the VOA news every day, reading my book (El Cuento de la Criada) and watching El Internado. All of these activities are pretty painless at this point. I pretty much understand the VOA news, I am able to read my Spanish book almost as fast as I can read in English and only rarely need to stop to look up a word (usually I just kind of skip unknown words but I will look it up if I am really curious or it impedes conversation.) I'm enjoying El Internado quite a bit too. I could watch it without subtitles and follow the story very well. But I miss some words and dialogue which annoys me. So my current practice is to watch each episode once with subtitles on (trying not to actually look at them unless I need it) and then rewatch without the subtitles. My second rewatch is probably about 98% comprehension (some slang and fast-talking still slips by) but that's good enough for me. I am really enjoying not doing any drills or grammar work right now, so I am planning on avoiding those activities for a while.

French is going well too! I am surprised by this but I am feeling really excited and motivated about my French project. Part of it is just that the beginning stages of language learning are pretty easy. You can pick up a lot really fast and feel good about it. Of course I don't actually understand a lick of real French but you know, baby steps. I'm working with the French-Spanish Duolingo which is working well for me right now. It really suits my commuting needs and I like that there's a bit of Spanish in it as well. I don't think it's enough on its own, of course, but it's good for a starting place.

Aside from basic acquisition of vocabulary words and starting to understand basic grammar (which the Duolingo app doesn't really teach, but I assume it's similar to Spanish so I'm not too worried about it) a key for me is going to be pronunciation. I am really focusing on this a lot, trying to learn from the very beginning how to hear and produce the sounds correctly, and also match them to a spelling, without worrying too much about the content. I've found a few helpful resources for this. One of these is the Nemo app which is free (or at least I am using the free version and have not exhausted the free content). What I like about this app is that you can listen to a bunch of french words with very clear audio pronounced by a native speaker. You can play them over and over and speak along with or after the native speaker. You can also record yourself saying the word and compare your recording to the speaker and do that over and over. It's a tiny bit glitchy but the ability to easily record and compare the sound is extremely helpful. I also found links to the excellent University of Michigan you-tube videos somewhere on this site. They go through each sound and explain what to do with your lips and tongue to make the sound, and they compare the sound to other similar sounds and explain how the lips and tongue are different. They are short and very clear videos and for now I like working with them very much. I do pronounce all the words and phrases I hear on Duolingo but since I don't 100% trust the robot voices I like having these additional pronunciation resources.

I have a birthday in about a month, and I will likely pick up Assimil at that point depending on how Duolingo is going. I really wish I could do Assimil french from Spanish, but it is out of print I guess? All the copies on Amazon are insanely expensive. I took a look at the various FSI courses as well but I did FSI Spanish eons ago and I just feel like I cannot handle another round of FSI-style drills.
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westminstress
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Re: My journey to Spanish fluency

Postby westminstress » Wed Sep 13, 2017 6:05 pm

So my introductory tutoring session was a success! In that I liked the teacher, I feel that I will learn and progress in the way that I want. It will be a bit costly but for right now, the one on one attention, face to face, from an experienced teacher, seems like exactly what I need and want.
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westminstress
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Re: My journey to Spanish fluency

Postby westminstress » Fri Oct 06, 2017 6:04 pm

So I've been waiting for a good wrap-up moment to post when I have hit some nice even milestones, but time keeps going by ... time for a post even though I haven't hit all those milestones yet!

With Spanish, my biggest news is that I bit the bullet and paid for private tutoring and have had one official lesson so far, which was last week. Then work got really busy so I had to cancel this week's lesson. The first lesson was ok - it was a lot of grammar review. Which is fine, but I really want to practice conversation since that is what I most need to work on and why I am paying him a lot of money! I did mention this to my teacher and he said that we were only going to focus on grammar for the first few weeks to lay an introductory foundation, and then there would be lots of conversation practice. Our communication is entirely in Spanish so there is some Spanish conversation even when we are going over grammar points. I am going to give it at least a couple of months to see how it shakes out. I've also had a fair amount of writing practice emailing with my teacher over scheduling issues that never seem to end.

Other than that, I am doing my same old thing, which is listening to VOA news and Radio Ambulante (the new season is great so far!), watching El Internado and reading El Cuento de la Criada (almost done with this one).

With French, I am still working with Duolingo (have completed level 16) and the fantastic University of Michigan pronunciation/spelling videos (I'm on video 5.3). When I finish up these videos I will move on to Assimil. With Duolingo I was feeling quite a bit of frustration like I was going through the levels but not really taking anything in. And then I had to take 4-5 days off because I was super busy at work. I was pleasantly surprised when I checked into Duolingo this morning, had a bunch of reviews to do and it seems I have retained the material, and the pronunciation seemed quite a bit better/easier as well. Sometimes a little break is very helpful to let it all sink in!

My plan is to do Assimil from a Spanish base which theoretically will allow me to work on French and Spanish at the same time. This is what I am currently doing with Duo and it seems to be going fine so far. If I have problems with this approach I can always switch it up.
2 x

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Brun Ugle
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Re: My journey to Spanish fluency

Postby Brun Ugle » Sat Oct 07, 2017 10:14 am

Wow! I just read through your log. You don’t post very often, but everything you do post is really inspiring. I look forward to reading more.
1 x

ASEAN
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Re: My journey to Spanish fluency

Postby ASEAN » Sun Oct 08, 2017 3:01 am

Mango Languages is great for practicing pronunciation. It is available for free through the NYC library.

My online library has El Cuento de la Criada and I found the telenovelas Celia, La Reina del Sur, and El Internado on YouTube. Thanks for the recommendations.
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