Bex's Spanish log 2016/17

[Bex]

I would suggest that you choose one of the goals as your actual challenge and think of the others as pluses: focus mainly on your actual challenge, and when you feel tired of it, then switch to one of the pluses and then go back to your actual challenge. If you achieve your challenge early, then you can upgrade one of your pluses as your new challenge.

That is a brilliant suggestion, now which one to choose?

[Bex]

For my own reference (in case I ever want to return to any of these resources)....

Reading Harry Potter 1: 2 / 18 2 out of 18.
Listening Harry Potter 3: 0 / 18 No progress
LWT 2000 words known: 1705 / 2000 1705 out of 2000.
Glossika GSR 2: 15 / 104 Last lesson 15
Language Transfer: 71 / 90 Last lesson 71.

Edit: New progress bars now in place

[Bex]

I have created a spreadsheet...530 words written to my new Spanish pen-pals yesterday
Tried not to use Google translate too much, apart from the fact it's rubbish, I didn't want to cheat but I did have to look up the odd word (or two).

I found this... http://spanishchecker.com which I found useful, not sure how accurate it is but it serves it's purpose. Maybe someone knows of something better?

I also need to work out the shortcut keys for accents and the like.

[coldrainwater]

I have tried a few checkers and Spanishchecker seemed to catch more errors than other multilingual options. I too am interested to see if anyone can top it. If it doesn't kill your love of writing, I like to pair Spanishchecker with Linguee and WordReference as I find that they complement the editing tool by providing helpful native comparisons and excellent reverse-context feedback. I do my log in Spanish and there are errors right and left, but it does feel good to know that I have at least minimally passed it through those 2/3 resources (more than anything it eliminates some eyesore for those reading). One of my rules is that it is fine to make a mistake if I simply don't know the grammar/rule or if I misapply it due to cognitive overload, but not so fine if I am just being sloppy/lazy and leave goofs everywhere despite knowing better. I also know that one of my tendencies is to write Spanish in the same idiomatic fashion that I would write English and I keep doing that even though I have been cautioned once against it. The checking tools do combat that a little bit, but personal idiosyncracies can also be tackled calmly one at a time at your leisure (nice thing about writing is that it can be done in a laid-back fashion).

For shortcuts, I set my right-alt key to add accents (and shift + right-alt to add capitalized accents). Depending on your operating system, you may have different options at your disposal, but I opted for the same setup that my Chromebook uses for unity across devices (and right-alt plus a letter is really simple to get used to compared to switching entire keyboard layouts).

[Bex]

If it doesn't kill your love of writing, I like to pair Spanishchecker with Linguee and WordReference as I find that they complement the editing tool by providing helpful native comparisons and excellent reverse-context feedback.

Thanks coldrainwater I shall have a look at Linguee and WordReference....I need all the help I can get with my Spanish writing

I also know that one of my tendencies is to write Spanish in the same idiomatic fashion that I would write English and I keep doing that even though I have been cautioned once against it. The checking tools do combat that a little bit, but personal idiosyncracies can also be tackled calmly one at a time at your leisure (nice thing about writing is that it can be done in a laid-back fashion).

Good to hear I'm not the only one doing this, I noticed straight away that I too am writing in the same idiomatic way that I write English. The good thing about writing emails seems to be that I can study the way that the other person uses Spanish and try to integrate it into my writing when I write a reply. Also having my writing corrected by natives daily is making my weak areas become alarmingly clear

[Bex]

Friday update....

This week:
16 hours Italki lessons: 1 hour (2 x 30 minute trials)
Writing 8000 words: 1045
Glossika GSR 1: 59-62
Anki 241 sentences mastered: 0 - 10 new cards each day.

Thoughts...
Italki lessons were REALLY scary but I spoke Spanish for probably about 80% of the time so I decided to include them in my challenge. One of the teachers I felt really comfortable with and my trial overran, the other just didn't click for me (I was clock watching, never a good sign). Will book a couple more trials next week, as I would like to have more than one teacher however if I end up with just one that I like then so be it.

Writing is going well, I seem to have 3 or 4 people who are emailing me on a daily basis. One is a bit studious but the others seem really friendly and I haven't run our of things to write yet. I am very happy that I have managed to write (badly) 1045 words in just 2.5 days

Glossika is helping, however I noticed that none of the sentences flew into my head during the italki lessons however I shall just keep drumming them in, as it did make me much more confident about my pronunciation and the speed of my speech was pretty good.....I must have spoken over Spanish 30,000 sentences using Glossika by now!

Anki is good, having to write the sentences allows me to really make sure I am conjugating verbs correctly and my grammar is improving, I tend to mumble sentnces I am unsure of when using the Glossika audio and also there are many I know off by heart and so Anki is allowing me to just drill the specific ones I have trouble with. I don't really get on with Anki that well and I usually drop it fairly quickly but this smaller deck with a very specific target seem to be less daunting.

So there it is my new "output heavy" schedule is now in place and will remain so until the New Year.

Edited x3 because I don't seem to be able to write properly in English anymore!

[AndyMeg]

Edited x3 because I don't seem to be able to write properly in English anymore!

Hahaha... it sometimes happens to me in spanish too. It seems to be a residual effect of learning foreign languages and interacting a lot with them XD!

[Bex]

Well after having a 1 hour lesson attempting to speak very bad Spanish today (and a couple of 30 min lessons last week), it appears that my problems are very clear.

My speech is atrocious but I do have the vocabulary I need to cobble together what I want to say, all the past tense work I have been drilling into my brain recently has made it much easier to express myself (badly) but I can get my point across. I can see with more speaking practice that this will improve, so I don't really see this as a big problem to overcome - this is just a practice issue.

However, and this is a bigger problem, it appears that my listening skills need some serious work. If the teacher slows down I can hear each word but I CANNOT piece them together into a sentence, I can recognise each individual word pretty well but I cannot make sentences out of the words, it all takes too long for me to understand and by the time I've got to the end of the sentence I'm so worn out and frustrated that I've forgotten it all.

If the teacher then writes the sentence down, I can understand perfectly and then respond, it is EXTREMELY frustrating and I was very stressed after an hour long lesson.

I struggle to have conversations for any length of time in my native tongue, I am a very quiet person and I find someone asking me questions, repeatedly for an hour extremely unpleasant, it feels like I'm being interrogated and it just makes me want to go hide in a corner and

[Stelle]

Well, at least you know what you need to work on!

Have you watched Destinos yet? That, along with the conversational intermediate Notes in Spanish podcasts, formed the bulk of my study when I started out with Spanish. Another potential resource is A Mi Aire, a podcast with full transcripts. I haven't used it, but I do use the Italian version, Al Dente.

Pair some daily listening (to get used to deciphering spoken Spanish) with some reading (to keep building vocabulary), and I think you'll see some huge improvements in comprehension!

[Bex]

Pair some daily listening (to get used to deciphering spoken Spanish) with some reading (to keep building vocabulary), and I think you'll see some huge improvements in comprehension!

Thanks Stelle. I will take a look at the podcasts you suggested, I definitely need to add more listening into to my day somehow.

My output heavy plan is not even gonna last 2 weeks, still it has uncovered some interesting problems already