Hedgehogs: Creatures of the Night (ES)

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coldrainwater
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2 de mayo

Postby coldrainwater » Wed May 03, 2017 2:20 am

Time summary:
Podcasts: 2 hours
Telenovela: 45 minutes
Yabla: 1 hour
Grammar: 1 hour

I clocked about 35 hours across seven days or so when I timed it in April and five hours tends to be my best effort so far (I am not counting passive music listening and am referring to a weekday). I have about an hour left as I write this line so I will likely break past that today without burnout.

Groove
As the new month dawns, I am mindful of adding some efficiencies to my language program. It is one thing to intentionally study language within your limits (leaving one in the tank) and quite another to waste useful learning hours in sloppy fashion.

Telenovela Improvements
My hunch was right and after about 10 minutes of searching, I was able to discontinue use of the Telemundo site in favor of a site that shows full telenovela episodes. It looks like Telemundo was literally showing 16 minutes of a 45-minute episode (if it wasn't challenging enough already without them skipping 2/3 of the show). Eighteen years may have passed since I watched dedicated TV, but little has changed. With the full show and negligible breakpoints, today was better. I made the mistake of eating during the show however and often couldn't hear over my own chewing. One 45 minute episode was plenty and avoided the normal physical torpor that would surround watching several back to back. I'll make some adjustments next go round to compensate. I understood normal conversation (not fully) without too much trouble, but when they dove into tactical plans involving country maps and toponyms, I didn't follow it well. That seems about right for level A2. The acting and character cast were again quite acceptable in El Chema.

Podcasts
I listened to about 115 minutes of podcasts today. The first part was at lunch and I listened to a series on mind mapping while running stairs. This was somewhat above my skill level and I was able to get the gist of it but had significant gaps in understanding. The second podcast featured serial assassins who chose beggars as clients. This was pretty easy to follow. The final was about a WWII battle in Europe. My mind drifted more than usual toward the end but it wasn't too hard to follow. Last night I invested two late hours in loading my smartphone with about 30 podcasts from IVOOX. This time I took my time and made sure to pick options that were rated highly and had a significant following.

Music
Work was collaborative and busy today so I may only have one hour of latin music listening. By night's end I'll probably end up with about 2 hours music listening in total.

Yabla
The Yabla habit flowed smoothly tonight and I hit about an hour of listening with plenty of time to spare. At the intermediate level, we have a puppet cartoon geared towards the environment, a couple of Telenovelas, some music and a few cultural videos. I think one aspect that works so well for Yabla is they keep it interesting by offering constant variety. I think many people watch each type of video serially, but I don't. I do it by difficulty, but beyond that, the order is not easily predictable. That is especially true on a given page when I can point and click and have no clue what I am going to get. In another life, I did this often at restaurants and it was typically my preferred way of ordering. I am making a mindful effort to focus on the voice aspects so I hear what is happening.

Grammar

With the extra time I made, I had about an hour's worth of grammar reading. I am skipping some of the English and am focusing on their specific examples, making sure that what I am read is really what they are saying. If anything, the grammar studying tends to create too much desire to read novels in Spanish. Making sure that I don't devolve into too much reading at the expense of listening is one of my toughest areas to maintain discipline since I am strongly inclined toward reading and writing naturally. My grammar text presented several quotes from Márquez that I am familiar with and I recalled it as though it were yesterday that I read it (it was likely last August or September or some such). I read one sentence and they definitely wouldn't have needed to cite it. Reading is definitely an area of wanderlust for me especially in my L2. My current lust is to exchange one hour of grammar for one hour of reading, but I may not invoke that desire until the grammar becomes boring.
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Postby coldrainwater » Thu May 04, 2017 2:44 am

Time summary (WIP):
Podcasts: 125 minutes
El Chema: 45 minutes
Completely Passive Music Listening: 3 hours
Intercambio: Treinta minutos con mi compañero salvadoreño. Era una mezcla entre el ingles y el español.
Yabla: 45 minutes, short shrift I gave as I started late, but vale la pena.

A few quick notes for tonight. I took a power nap for about an hour after work and listened to a podcast during that time. That time is working very well for dedicated listening. Half awake, half asleep, but ears are wide open. The first part of that podcast was over Novas and I had trouble following, but the second was over mortality and cancer and I followed it with ease. This time I downloaded whole telenovela episodes in advance of watching. This is much better than any streaming option since I have total control now over the pace of the episode. There were a few short parts of today's episode that I invoked the fast forward feature (no dialogue) and that probably saved about 5 minutes of time. Listening to these without subtitles extensively seems fine and is likely something I'll continue. I also went through the telenovela without eating and thus avoided the mess I made of things yesterday evening. I don't harbor brain fog at the moment, which is a good thing. Probably the most instructive lesson I learned today is to make sure I don't focus on any aspects of the drama or action in the telenovelas as those might arouse small bits of anxiety. In a sense, that should be good practice for me making future listening practice more feasible. 45 minutes was again about the right timeframe as I didn't develop the torpor one feels after hours of movie watching or video game playing for example.

Last night I read a bit and ended up going to bed too late and waking up even later. Así es la vida.

-Erizo
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Re: Hedgehogs: Creatures of the Night (ES)

Postby coldrainwater » Sat May 06, 2017 12:52 am

Time Summary (4 of May):
110 minutes listening (running stairs and jogging outside)
45 minutes El Chema telenovela
20 minutes Yabla

Had a tough time focusing on listening in any capacity yesterday. Didn't follow much of the podcasts I listened to nor did I do particularly well the telenovela.

Time Summary (5 of May):
110 minutes listening (running stairs and jogging outside)
45 minutes El Chema
45 minutes Yabla
90 minutes Grammar
The rest: the night is young (tbd)

Today has been much better. Followed the podcasts pretty easily when my mind didn't drift (one on AI, part of an Edad Media podcast as well as one on Bushido). In order to help build the telenovela watching habit, I added a few simple tricks. One of the most important is to close my eyes and simply listen closely from time to time. I find that this tends to reduce the drama and generally repulsive parts of watching what is effectively a soap. So far I have done a good job of sticking to a single telenovela as has been suggested to get used to the voices, but I am not above trying 2-3 at the same time if variety is needed. The important thing is to cultivate a habit until watching them becomes partially automatic. I occasionally am also able to take ten-second jumps forward when there is no dialogue but fortunately, almost all the 45 minutes have noticeable and meaningful dialogue so the listening practice is relatively pure form. I finished the seventh episode today, so I am one week into the habit acquisition. Another tactical trick I thought up was to focus on the cinematic elements of the telenovela as an interesting way to create interest. I haven't had to invoke that idea yet.

My podcast listening habit is now pretty solidified since it is glued to a multi-year (multi-decade really) daily exercise habit. Yabla will be my intensive part and I may alternate that occasionally with Veintemundos or some other intensive listening party (like studying music lyrics for example).

For this coming weekend, I have it in my mind that I will do my three hours of extensive listening practice daily, the rest can be mostly free-form and natural as long as I focus on Spanish which currently isn't tough (I am slowly developing a modest aversion to my native English).

Edit: Quick note to do shallow/deep dives into specific domains. I don't know how to cook and some Spanish cooking shows offer really fast speech along with good review of cooking terminology. The same can be said abstractly for many disciplines.
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RTVE (abre las puertas de hierro)

Postby coldrainwater » Sat May 06, 2017 7:36 pm

¡Después de algunas reflexiones, decidí trasladar mi sobremesa ordenador a España ('Hola mundo' me lo escribe desde una tierra lejana). Cuando jugué el videojuego World of Warcraft, era un brujo y podíamos conjurar portales. Pasé cuatro horas evocando tal portal anoche y esta mañana con una sola intención. Es decir, quería RTVE y creo que ahora lo tengo. Anteriormente, la mayoría de lo que quería ver estaba bloqueado. En su formulación actual, las puertas están abiertas. La noticia fue bastante emocionante que me sentí impulsado a escribir en español. Añadir a la lista de cosas que desearía haber hecho hace 12 meses.
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Postby coldrainwater » Sat May 06, 2017 9:48 pm

Hoy
Podcasts: 65 minutos (batallas y tales)
Yabla: 90 minutos (gama entera como siempre)
RTVE: 60 minutos, Al filo de la ley (primer episodio, creo)

Notas
Fue un placer escuchar español peninsular. Para la próxima semana, he descargado algunos episodios de Nómadas. Este podcast está altamente recomendado. Admito que estaba un poco sorprendido cuando intenté acceder a Pandora y noté que estaba bloqueado. Mis ensayos de música parece que se quedará en los estados por ahora. jaja.
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Re: Hedgehogs: Creatures of the Night (ES)

Postby coldrainwater » Sun May 07, 2017 5:23 pm

Resumen
Yabla: 80 minutos
Podcast: 60 minutos Tanzania, la tierra del Kilimanjaro (Nómadas)
RTVE: 70 minutos (El Ministerio del Tiempo capítulo 4: Una negociación a tiempo)
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Re: Hedgehogs: Creatures of the Night (ES)

Postby coldrainwater » Tue May 09, 2017 12:28 am

Hoy
Podcasts: 70 minutos (Nómadas: Calcutta y otros)
Yabla: 80 minutos
RTVE: 30 minutos (Documental -> Iber, pasión indómita: Los herederos del Iber)
RTVE: 60 minutos (Documental -> Naachtun la ciudad maya olvidada)

Temprano
Estaba trabajando con dos dispositivos hoy y, por lo tanto, he escuchado de múltiples podcasts. En este momento mi mayor desafío es merendar un tazón enorme de sandía. Luego, me voy a la biblioteca a estudiar (presumiblemente, puedo actualizar este mensaje con más información).

Tarde
Después de estudiar con Yabla, me sentía tranquilo y estaba muy concentrado (en contraste con mi día laboral). La dicotomía entre la práctica intensiva y extensiva del lenguaje, a menudo, es una línea borrosa. Más importante es el acto de percepción y la práctica de la conciencia. Mis pensamientos se remontan a la época del Maltz y su servomecanismo teleológico. Los aspectos meta-cognitivos subsumen mi vida de estudio esta noche.
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Re: Hedgehogs: Creatures of the Night (ES)

Postby coldrainwater » Wed May 10, 2017 2:23 am

Hoy
Podcasts: 75 minutos - Nómadas -> Cerdeña
Yabla: 80 minutos - veinte videos cortos.
Gramática: 60 minutos (B & B)
RTVE: 30 minutos -> Sam El Bombero

Temprano:
Para entrenamiento cardio, corrí las escaleras dos veces hoy (sesiones separadas). Mis tendones de Aquiles me agradecen. Normalmente, corro al atardecer pero necesité una nueva rutina que era más fácil en las articulaciones.

Había un desastre pequeño en el trabajo hoy y me quedé sin crema de café de almendra. Tendría un tiempo más fácil saltar en un lago de hielo que beber café negro. Sólo podía sonreír y aguantarlo. Puedo imaginar a los puristas riéndose de mí ahora. Supongo que debo aprender la palabra blandengue más temprano que tarde.

Mi cena esta noche fue una mezcla de carne, fruta y nueces. La idea de mezclar la fruta con la carne directamente no es la más sabrosa, pero me siento bien después de comerlo. Me recuerda a una dieta antigua llamada 'carne, hojas y bayas'
Last edited by coldrainwater on Thu May 11, 2017 12:24 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Interleaved Practice (and language learning)

Postby coldrainwater » Wed May 10, 2017 3:17 am

Source: The Interleaving Effect. Mixing it up Boosts Learning

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -learning/

Foreign language studies however suggest that the effectiveness of interleaving comes with an important caveat. When native English speakers used the technique to learn an entirely unfamiliar language, such as to generate English-to-Swahili translations, the results were better, the same, or worse than after blocking. These mixed results imply that learners should have some familiarity with subject materials before interleaving begins (or, the materials should be quickly or easily understood). Otherwise, as appears to be the case for foreign languages, interleaving can sometimes be more confusing than helpful.
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Re: Hedgehogs: Creatures of the Night (ES)

Postby coldrainwater » Fri May 12, 2017 2:07 am

1 de mayo
Podcasts: 70 minutos
Telenovela: 35 minutos
Yabla: 60 minutos

2 de mayo
Podcasts: 120 minutos
Telenovela: 45 minutos
Yabla: 60 minutos

3 de mayo
Podcasts: 125 minutos
Telenovela: 45 minutos
Yabla: 45 minutos

4 de mayo
Podcasts: 110 minutos
Telenovela: 45 minutos
Yabla: 20 minutos

5 de mayo
Podcasts: 110 minutos
Telenovela: 45 minutos
Yabla: 45 minutos

6 de mayo
Podcasts: 65 minutos (batallas y tales)
Yabla: 90 minutos (gama entera como siempre)
RTVE: 60 minutos, Al filo de la ley (primer episodio, creo)

7 de mayo
Podcast: 60 minutos Tanzania, la tierra del Kilimanjaro (Nómadas)
Yabla: 80 minutos
RTVE: 70 minutos (El Ministerio del Tiempo capítulo 4: Una negociaci

8 de mayo
Podcasts: 70 minutos (Nómadas: Calcutta y otros)
Yabla: 80 minutos
RTVE: 30 minutos (Documental -> Iber, pasión indómita: Los herederos del Iber)
RTVE: 60 minutos (Documental -> Naachtun la ciudad maya olvidada)

9 de mayo
Podcasts: 75 minutos - Nómadas -> Cerdeña
Yabla: 80 minutos - veinte videos cortos.
RTVE: 30 minutos -> Sam El Bombero

10 de mayo
Podcasts: 70 minutos -> Nómadas
Yabla: 80 minutos
RTVE: 45 minutos -> Sam el bombero

11 de mayo
Podcasts: 75 minutos -> Nómadas
Yabla: 65 minutos
RTVE: 20 minutos -> Sam el bombero

Nómadas ha sido interesante. El episodio de hoy contó con voces portuguesas y pude escuchar en sus voces una mezcla de español, italiano y portugués. Cuando escucho a escondidas, noto que puedo descifrar más de lo que se dice. A veces hay un retraso divertido, entonces mi cerebro sigue. Lo comparo con las largas pausas que aparecen entre el momento en que se dice una broma y el tiempo que se entiende.

12 de mayo
Podcasts: 75 minutos -> Nómadas [El Salvador]
Yabla: 40 minutos
RTVE: 20 minutos -> Sam el bombero

13 de mayo
Podcasts: 60 minutos
Yabla: 60 minutos

14 de mayo
Podcasts: 230 minutos

15 de mayo
Podcasts: 140 minutos

16 de mayo
Podcasts: 30 minutos (medio dormido)
Telenovela: 120 minutos (40 minutos contenido)
Yabla: 90 minutos (despierto)

17 de mayo
NHK news: 30 minutos
Podcasts: 40 minutos
Yabla: 35 minutos

18 de mayo
Podcasts: 70 minutos
Yabla: 45 minutos
Telenovelas: 45 minutos

19 de mayo
Podcasts: 40 minutos
RTVE: 60 minutos

20 de mayo
RTVE: 60 minutos (pasivo)

21 de mayo
Podcasts: 310 minutos

22 de mayo
NHK: 15 minutos
Podcasts: 300 minutos

23 de mayo
Podcasts: 450 minutos (en manera de inmersión, mezcla de métodos activos y métodos pasivos)

24 de mayo
Podcasts: 280 minutos
Audiolibros: 90 minutos
FSI: 50 minutos
Last edited by coldrainwater on Thu May 25, 2017 5:07 am, edited 24 times in total.
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