CarlyD's Spanish and German Log

[CarlyD]

First weeks progress report:

Textbook--just finishing the 2nd chapter of the 8, going well
Duolingo--every day. I'm liking it less and less.
Memrise--6 courses every day, anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes each. Makes me crazy occasionally--when they have the exact same English word for two similar Spanish words so I keep getting it wrong because I'm choosing the wrong response. But overall, it's workable.
Vocabulary--in notebook, reviewing pages every day. Trying to get used to Anki.
Fiction books, both bilingual readers and short fiction/mystery books--busy with other things all week and didn't set aside time for them.

Book Review:

The Big Red Book of Spanish Vocabulary. Came across this used and thought it would be the same as other vocabulary list books, but for the price I decided to give it a try. It does have the lists, but there's also huge lists of:
* Cognates, arranged by theme
* Suffixes with examples
* Root dictionary, which is interesting
* Frequency Table--5,000 words. The first 1,000 words have an example sentence and are cross-referenced to the Root Dictionary.
672 pages long and seems to be a great easy-to-grab reference. $18 new from Amazon, as low as $2 plus shipping used.

For Friday night fun, I intend to start at the beginning of the frequency table to see how far I can get before I hit a word I don't know.

Week 2 Goals:

Textbook--2 chapters
Duolingo/Memrise--every day
Fiction books/bilingual readers--at least 30 minutes a day, at least 3 days

[CarlyD]

Weirdness with Memrise yesterday. Part way through my courses (at 5pm) it changed to the next day and I lost my streak on half of them. Fixed now, but I did end up doing twice as much to meet my goals for yesterday--not a bad thing at all.

I found several Lola Lago books on eBay and Amazon for cheap--I have two on the way to me now. Good series, probably at an A2 or B1 level.

[CarlyD]

I had a moment.

I sat down last night to read a book I'd struggled to read some time ago. It could best be described as a "chapter book" for around age 8-12. I'd previously put 4x6 PostIt pages filled with words I'd had to look up--nearly every page had a PostIt stuck on it, totally full of words and phrases.

I removed all the PostIts and started from the beginning.

I ended up looking at the PostIts for maybe one word per page. I did go much slower than I would normally read, and read aloud for pronunciation practice, but for a change I could actually see the progress I've made.

[Cavesa]

Your post-it technique sounds much better than my chaotic mass of tiny papers of all shapes and colours. I think I should start using it too. It would spare me lots of the usual troubles with trully looking up the words and writing them down somewhere else, as the tiny papers get lost so easily. Thanks!

And congratulations to your progress, one word per page is a really nice achievement!

[CarlyD]

I've put a ton of time into Spanish over the rainy weekend and today--it will be much less towards the end of the week when things are busier, but for now I'm just doing everything I can.

Ok, I've let go of Duolingo. The sentences were making me crazy and there was no way to know which sections I'd done a 2nd or 3rd time. Maybe I'll go back later, but I'm seeing more progress in the 8 Memrise courses I'm currently doing than I've seen in Duolingo.

I did a fairly large exercise this morning--English to Spanish sentences. I consistently made the same errors--de and en. So I've pulled out various books and am going through everything again. I know I'm half-way there because when I looked up the correct translations I'd immediately realize why mine was wrong. So keep plugging away.

Cavesa--don't get the "Super Sticky PostIts"--they left a residue in my book.

[CarlyD]

Thursday and Friday are my "minimum" days--I'm just trying to keep my Memrise streak going, then I'll start catching up Saturday morning. Right now the church a block away is having their spring carnival--loud but happy. The live bands will be starting soon--loud and occasionally good. But the house behind me is also having some kind of party that mostly involves a bunch of adults yelling really loud. And my dog is barking at them. And I'm trying to finish my Memrise. sigh.

Goals for the coming week:
1. Chapter 9 of the textbook--huge chapter
2. Memrise every day
3. Vocabulary notebook--review at least 5 pages a day
4. Reading

I always make progress during the 6 Week Challenges--but I want magic.

[CarlyD]

Why does Memrise put me to sleep? Granted, I'm doing 8 different Spanish courses right now, running a bit over an hour a day, but it's guaranteed that I'll start to drift off every single time. Nothing like snapping your head up to see you timed out again and whatever the word was will go into your Difficult stack forever. (Which is why I'm still trying to get "él" out of my stack from Day One.

Textbook is going good, I plan to read way more than I end up reading, but I'm making progress.

My computer router is near death--I can just list my time on a paper and then add it to Twitter once the new router arrives and is running, but I will lose a ton of Memrise time if this one totally fails between now and then--and I'll have like 9000 words in my Review. Oh, well.

[CarlyD]

Watched Primer Impacto tonight. I think I'm going to stick with this for awhile. There's just a couple of main presenters of the segments and the woman tends to speak a tiny bit slower and more clearly than others I've heard. Plus the guy did a segment involving how many tweets had been received, and he showed them on the screen while he read them.

Still looking for a music video show. There used to be a great one on Saturday morning, but it's long gone. There must be one somewhere.

[CarlyD]

Computer issues resolved and reliably back online. For some reason I didn't lose my Memrise streak, which was nice.

I'm still working on prepositions, with review of adverbs from the last chapter. I'm still going slowly through Chapter 9 in the textbook, plus the book Pocket Por and Para, and Practice Makes Perfect Pronouns and Prepositions. I want to finish the chapters about prepositions in the PMP book, plus read the whole Por and Para book before moving on.

I'm close to finishing 2 of my Memrise courses--100 most common verbs and 101 Spanish Phrases, so will look around for something to take their place. The Easy Grammar course is totally not easy--maybe B1 or B2 level--but it goes really slowly so I'm sticking with it.

I'm already getting that antsy-ness to switch back to German, but I refuse to change until I'm willing to pay a tutor to resolve my pronunciation issues, since I've given up on finding a local class.

[CarlyD]

I've signed up for the Super Challenge for Spanish (and German, but I doubt that will happen.) The Double Challenge. Am I crazy? Probably.

I spent all last evening listing every book that would qualify and figuring pages for the 250 words equals a normal page as a lot of my book are for a lower level. Bad news it took all evening--good news is I will get credit for reading my Scooby Doo and Berenstein Bears books. Not a lot of credit--some of the lower level books ended up totaling 3 or 4 "normal pages" for the entire book. But they count. And reading is reading. And I'd rather read Scooby Doo than the classics anyway.

So far I've identified about 5,500 pages that I can read, some easier than others. Probably at least 1,000 pages of that is above my current level, but hopefully won't be later this year.

I'm setting up the DVR for the tv shows today. I'm going--so far--with Comisario Rex, the telenovela about the hotel, and I'm not sure what else yet. I'll check the latest issue of TV y telenovelas to see what shows are good.