NoManches - Spanish: B2-->C1 Log

[NoManches]

It has been approximately one year since I really put serious effort into learning or practicing Spanish. Fortunately with my new job I was speaking the language a few times each week with native speakers (usually conversations lasting 10 minutes or so).

Unfortunately, I have been really busy and haven't had the time to study the language (that is a horrible excuse because there is always SOME time to be found). Let's just say that when I did have free time I usually spent it doing work or spending time with friends.

I can now say that I am officially "settled in". I live in a new area and was very happy to find out that there are more Spanish speakers in my new city than I previously thought. It might be a bit harder to speak with them in Spanish because I have less opportunities for random interactions with them, but I think I will be able to start making new friends and getting some real face to face practice in.

I remember a time in my life when I used to go to the gym a lot. I remember getting really sick once and not being able to work out for a while. When I was finally healthy I kept skipping days at the gym and eventually I reached a point where I hadn't touched a weight in months. When I finally got back in the gym I was so discouraged at how much strength and endurance I had lost. After a week or two I felt defeated and basically gave up on the gym because I had lost so much after putting in a lot of hard work.

I thought coming back to Spanish would be a similar experience for me, although I can say that I have been lucky to have been put in situations during my "off time" where I had to use Spanish unexpectedly. The other day I started reading in Spanish again, watching television shows, and having conversations with my dog in Spanish.

My listening (which has always been my biggest weakness) has definitely deteriorated but not as much as I thought it would have. My reading seems to be pretty strong still, and I feel like it is an awesome way of getting back into the language. I am constantly reading some difficult words that I once knew, and remembering what they meant. I should point out that I am reading a book that I have previously read just to make the transition a bit easier for me.

I am hoping that after a week of watching television shows and reading, my Spanish will start to strengthen and be on its way to what it was before. I am happy to say that my conversations with my dog have seemed pretty fluent although I keep coming across words I want to say that I have forgotten. In many cases I can remember the generic word but have problems recalling the Mexican equivalent.

I just downloaded a package containing 8 ebooks by the Colombian author Raúl Garbantes. I am pretty sure I have recommended his books before on this forum. His books are fairly easy to read, contain a decent amount of dialogue, and they are super interesting and make you want to keep on reading.

For television I just started watching the TV show El Chema on Netflix. As much as I am opposed to the drug problems in all of Mexico (and everywhere else for that matter), the show is similar to El Senor De Los Cielos and you can get really hooked watching it. Because I can now study Spanish 100% for fun and not for a necessity for my job, I have the opportunity to read, watch, and listen, to whatever I want without having to force myself to conquer anything that is boring or not interesting.

As for listening, I will be downloading and listening to the Voice of America (VOA) news podcasts along with some of my old favorites such as Radio Ambulante.

It feels good to be back and I feel like my old self again when I speak and listen to Spanish!

[NoManches]

After only a week of getting back into the swing of things, I am very pleased with how quickly it is coming back to me. I can tell that my skills deteriorated a decent amount, but not enough for me to be very disappointed. I suppose the most disappointing thing is knowing that if I had spent 30-60 minutes a day using Spanish for the last year I would probably have seen improvements in my language skills rather than a loss of skills

With my new career I no longer have the opportunity to spend hours each day actively studying (sometimes I really miss college ). Now I am really at a point where I must make Spanish a part of my everyday life if I want to improve. I was pretty good at reading/listening to the news in Spanish and only reading and watching movies in Spanish. I just need to get back into my old habits and I will be fine.

With the book I am currently reading by Raúl Garbantes, I understand everything fine, although sometimes I need to re-read certain things to make sure I understood it correctly. I think my new goal will be to read all of his books. I believe he has written 15-17 total which are all available on Kindle. I understand the importance of reading work from many different authors. However, I feel like reading different books from one author has many benefits too, such as being exposed to the same words and style of writing without having to "readjust" to a new author.

I have made it a habit to listen to the VOA news podcast each day, along with some other podcasts I have found using the iVoox app. Many of these podcasts have lots of calls from listeners which can be hard for me to understand. I do best listening to one or two people talking into a microphone in a studio, rather than people on a telephone. (The same applies in "real life" where I can understand one person face to face in a quiet area but listening to others talk with distractions can be very difficult).

As far as TV, I have been watching different shows on Netflix. I really enjoyed Ingobernable and think I will watch it a second time because it was that good.

My speaking opportunities are limited so it looks like the near future will be focused on input. Since listening is my weakest skill (still), I think being forced to listen more is a good thing. Before I focused too much on speaking and even in conversations with native speakers I probably did too much talking and not enough listening .


In summary my new goals are:

1. Make listening a DAILY habit. The VOA news podcast should be my best friend along with other podcasts. I will supplement with YouTube videos and Netflix shows when I can.

2. Read all of the books by Raúl Garbantes. They are fun to read and only challenging enough where they slow me down if I let them, such as stopping to look up a word.

3. As I've done before, replace almost everything I do in English to it's equivalent in Spanish.

That's all for now!

[NoManches]

A few lessons in listening and comprehension:

I had an interesting moment the other day when listening to music from one of my favorite Mexican bands. I was listening to the lyrics and realized halfway through that I could understand most of the lyrics. I've been listenining to this band for a few years now and I've always had problems understanding the words...until now.

I started to wonder why, after all this time, I could finally understand what was being sung. At first I thought I was having a breakthrough after letting Spanish lay dormant for a year. I thought that maybe my brain was now putting together all the pieces after spending hundreds and hundreds of hours with podcasts, music, television, and conversations.

What I realized though, is that I was understanding only because I was really trying to listen...I was forcing myself to understand the lyrics, not just hear them.

I think back on all the hours I've spent walking around with headphones on and realize that with Spanish, I have a horrible habit of listening and then zoning out. I'll force myself to listen and then I'll start thinking about a new word, an idea, what I'm having for dinner, work, etc...and then I'll realize I'm zoning out and try to start listening again.

It seems that most of the hundreds and hundreds of listening hours I've logged in have responded brief moments of minutes of me listening followed by zoning out, and then trying to listen again.

This is a bit frustrating as I feel like I've wasted a ton of my times but it's kind of a relief because I think I've finally pinpointed one of my bad habits that has been holding my listening skills back.

I've spent some time recently going back to old posts about listening and comprehension and I'm really reevaluating how I do things. I like the idea of listening from the beginning:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... ?TID=26634

LIE

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... ing#p58029

And training your listening:

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 313#p17313

Like many of my random posts in my log, I'm posting this as a sort of reminder to myself for sometime in the future. I hope I can look back on this post and recognize the very time I saw an error in my learning method, fixed it, and benefited from it.

[smallwhite]

... I think I've finally pinpointed one of my bad habits that has been holding my listening skills back.

... recognize the very time I saw an error in my learning method, fixed it, and benefited from it.

But you've been talking about your zoning out since

30 Mar 2016

Part of this problem I think is because I start to zone out after a few minutes. Need to work on that!

Search found 24 matches

I think you have simply improved

[NoManches]

... I think I've finally pinpointed one of my bad habits that has been holding my listening skills back.

... recognize the very time I saw an error in my learning method, fixed it, and benefited from it.

But you've been talking about your zoning out since

30 Mar 2016

Part of this problem I think is because I start to zone out after a few minutes. Need to work on that!

Search found 24 matches

I think you have simply improved

Wow! Looks like you are right...I've been zoning out forever and have already realized it. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

I think the difference now is that I've recognized it as a problem and have been making an extra effort to combat it. Before, I recognized the problem but didn't do enough to solve it. Maybe I'm getting better and better at concentrating and not letting my mind wander as much which is leading to "better comprehension".

[NoManches]

This last week has been productive in terms of practicing Spanish, although at the end of the day I always feel like I could have/should have squeezed more Spanish into my day.

As I mentioned in my last post, and like I've mentioned before on this forum, I still have problems zoning out while listening. (Thanks to smallwhite for bringing to my attention that I had this very problem before and even addressed it over a year ago). I think some of this "zoning out" is because when I sit down to listen, I usually have other things going on that are distracting. Even when I walk and listen I tend to zone out because I'm busy thinking about work or something else that pops into my head. I've noticed that this happens in English quite a bit too (when listening to podcasts I zone out; I'm quite good at talking with other people and always stay engaged). Unfortunately, I don't have many people to speak Spanish with right now so I will have to find better ways of staying engaged while listening. A new habit I would like to form is starting my day off with 10-30 minutes of uninterrupted listening. I think doing this with a cup of coffee will allow me to stay focused, and as long as I train myself to not think about anything else during these 10-30 minutes I can really start to "train my listening".

I picked 10 minutes as a minimum amount after reading the very famous "listening from the beginning" post by Leosmith:

listen for at least 10 min per day
There is nothing wrong with listening for more than 10 minutes, but if you find your intensity falling off, you are
better served doing something else at that point. If you have no problem paying attention, then the time limit
should probably be a percentage or your total study time. For example, if you have 3 hours for study, 30 – 60
min of listening is reasonable. 10 min is a little low for that much study time, and 2 hours is high, if you’re goal
is a well balanced language plan.

Less than 10 min is a mistake, imo. And it’s pretty easy to squeeze in that 10 min, with the advent of mp3

I subscribed to UnivisionNow which allows me to watch the news in Spanish almost every morning. Watching the news is something I love to do in English but almost NEVER do in Spanish. I like the news in Spanish because it is usually given in short segments on important events and often times the stories are repeated (giving you multiple opportunities to pick up on things that you may have missed the first time around). I find that for the most part the news is nothing but comprehensible input for me, although some interviews with people (and some of the newscasters) are trickier to understand. I think watching the news daily in Spanish while getting ready for the day will help me out tremendously. I'm dissapointed that it took me 5 years to realize how useful it can be.

For reading I've been knocking out a few pages each night, but usually fall short of my goals because I get tired and fall asleep after only a few pages . I would really like to accomplish my goal of reading 20,000 pages, but if I keep falling asleep while reading I will never reach this goal. I would do it (read) in the morning after my planned 10-30 minute listening session, but I think that time is better spent watching the news in Spanish. After all, listening is my biggest concern right now.


Plans for the upcoming week:

-Start dedicated listening sessions in the morning
-Watch news in Spanish every morning
-Start reading a lot more without falling asleep lol
-Continue to watch TV, and movies in Spanish when I have time.
-Fill in any other available time with podcasts or music in Spanish.
-Try to read a few news articles in Spanish throughout the day to be more productive


Good luck to everyone with their language learning goals. Thanks for reading!

[NoManches]

After practically binge watching the news in Spanish every morning for the last few days I've decided that for my listening skills I am much better off watching the news in Spanish than forcing myself to sit and listen to a podcast. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the news in Spanish has been the best thing to happen to my language learning plan in the last 5 years (and I've only been learning the language for 5 years). I can't believe I went so long without utilizing the news (I'm not counting news radio such as VOA).

The news is a great source of comprehensible input for me which means I still need to dedicate some time each day to just listening. I've been finding bunch of new podcasts put out by Univision which I have started to explore.

I just started watching Dogma on Univision Now and really like it. As a matter of fact, I'm a huge Univision Now fan and am glad I subscribed to it. I have been watching Al Punto con Jorge Ramos and Crónicas which is like a Spanish version of 60 Minutes (at least that's what it seems like so far).

So the reason for this post is to document my decision to dedicate more time to the news in the morning, while saving podcasts for later in the day (instead of working on listening first thing in the morning).

I've made a personal goal to watch 365 hours of television this year...a tough challenge since I'm already 3 months behind and have a busy schedule. For reading I'm aiming for 9,000 pages by the end of the year. Not sure how I came up with that number but I think it was based on what I can realistically do based on my schedule.

When it's time for the Super Challenge I will probably change things around again but for now I like the goals I've picked as they make sure I stay on track.

I'm hoping to see some listening improvements after a few months of watching the news each morning. I will report back in later to see if it has made a difference or not (although it might be hard to measure any improvements in such a short time).

That's all for now. I'll try to not update this log until next week

[NoManches]

I've been pretty consistent watching the news in Spanish every day. I find it easier to do than watching a TV show, although TV shows can be more entertaining. In my opinion, and based on my current situation, it is better for me to watch the noticias everyday and only watch TV shows when I have extra time (compared to TV shows every day and using the news to fill in extra time). There is a ton of talk on this forum about binge watching TV shows, and I am a huge believe in it. However, I have never spent a considerable amount of time with extensive listening, so I think I'm doing the right thing by watching the news every day. There used to be a time when I'd pass up the noticias to watch a TV show, even if it was only 15-20 minutes of a show before work. I already miss "binge watching" TV shows but I want to use the time before the next Super Challenge to get a lot of extensive listening and reading in.

Speaking of extensive reading, after reading through the "learning to listen" thread, I've been motivated to do a lot more reading. Olim21 made some good points that reminded me of conclusions I've come to before, one of them being: If you can't understand something that is written down, you will have great difficulties understanding the same thing if it is in audio form.

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =14&t=5698

I finished reading La Última Bala and just started reading La Caída de una Diva. So far it seems pretty interesting although I've already put it on hold. I downloaded El Ladrón del Rayo, one of the Percy Jackson books. I've decided that I want to binge read a bunch of easier books just to get my reading skills up before the super challenge. The book is translated (something I usually try to avoid), and is translated in peninsular Spanish (something I also try to avoid). I've always been "afraid" on peninsular Spanish because I don't want to pick up words that are never used in Latin America (such as calling a close friend "tio" instead of "compañero"). I've tried to avoid most shows and movies from Spain under the idea that 99% of my Spanish is used with Mexicans, and that peninsular Spanish will mess up my accent, not help my listening comprehension, and will expose me to words and phrases not common in Mexico. If this is the case, oh well. I think the benefits of reading a few "easy" books in peninsular Spanish will outweigh any exposure I have to not so common words. It shouldn't be a big deal.

So this month will be based on lots of extensive listening and reading. I'm treating this month as a preparation for the Super Challenge (assuming we are doing it again).

As far as listening, I've been doing a lot of driving with podcasts playing in the background. When I can listen I did and when I'm busy I just rewind if I feel it is necessary. I'm letting the news serve as my primary source of listening, at least for this month.

[NoManches]

I am pretty happy with my Spanish studies for the last week!


TV

Ive been watching the news in Spanish almost every morning (depending on how early I have to go to work). I might consider waking myself up even earlier on my early work days to squeeze 30 minutes of news in while I get ready.

On other days when I have extra time I have been watching the following shows:

Dogma- this is a pretty cool show about two investigators who are hired to investigate paranormal activities (mainly on the religious side of things). There is only 1 season and 13 shows. Not sure if they are making a second season or not. Either way, I may watch some of the episodes a second time to pick up on things I missed

El Chema- I think the only reason I watch this and El Señor de Los Cielos Is because it is almost all Mexican Spanish with a lot of street talk and slang that is used . Also, there are many, many, many episodes so it gives me the ability to really pick up on things because the same actors are used and the same words and phrases get repeated a lot.

Reading

For reading, I actually took a break from the 1st Percy Jackson book (only finished 75%). It started off great but eventually I got lost with all the Greek mythology references. It was almost like I was trying to follow a group of people talking about a topic I wasn't familiar with. I can make sense of the words and sentences, but I am lacking knowledge and Greek Mythology so it ended up being a pain to read.

I did start reading some of the Goosebumps books that were translated into Spanish and available on Kindle!I love them! I read some while I was a kid so these are fun to read in Spanish....and they are EXTREMELY easy for me to read. I might read the ones available on Kindle and then order a few paperback ones to read before bed. Even when I'm tired I can read and understand them (I think they are for 10 year olds so they are super easy). I'll save the harder books written for teens and adults for when I'm more awake (I fail every time I try to read one before when I'm already sleepy).

Ive been trying to read more news articles each day too. I have a Google phone that has a "feed" which only shows me things I'm interested in. This makes things very convenient.

Listening:

I've been listening to a few different podcasts every day. I drive A LOT at work going to different job sites, so I just listen when I can....i have to switch a lot between the podcast and work related stuff a lot (and sometimes while listening my mind just wanders off). I try to listen to things I don't care about too much at work, so if I miss material it isn't a big deal. I'm saving the more interesting stuff for when I'm at home and can really listen and focus on it.

With native speakers, I've had a few interactions here and there. My ability to jump into a random Spanish conversation without a "warm up" is getting really good. I remember a time when I'd need a warm up to think and use Spanish. Now I can usually jump right into it, provided I've had my morning coffee!


Thank for reading!

[Lawyer&Mom]

I love that you are reading Goosebumps. I think you need exposure to all ages and stages of a language to be a well-rounded speaker. I’m learning a lot from reading my kids fairy tales and comics in German. So much vocabulary and usage we never covered in college!