Bex's Spanish log 2018. Chapter 2: Improbable ambitions

[AndyMeg]

"Mafalda" is also a really interesting comic originally written in spanish. You can buy it at Amazon.es

[Bex]

I have decided to keep track of my Super Challenge progress on a monthly basis, since I don't use Twitter.

Monthly targets:
Reading: 250 pages.
Watching: 450 minutes.

Total for month 1 - May 2018:
Reading: 270
Watching: 218

I am very happy so far with this, as my primary aim is to complete the reading part of the challenge and I didn't think I'd manage it.

[Bex]

Friday update:

Reading: 79 pages.
Speaking: 60 minutes.
Grammar/writing: 2-3 hours.
Clozemaster: 7 hours.

Much better this week. I am now really just concentrating on reading more. I am still really slow but I have managed to read 1 chapter of Harry Potter everyday this week.

Reading is interesting as it shows me where I need to improve and my vocabulary weaknesses but I still don't enjoy reading much, it's just too slow and painful, I am not sure I am at a high enough level to be tackling Harry Potter but I'd like to finish it now I'm 75% of the way through it.

I think I'll finish this Harry Potter book and then move onto something a bit easier.

I spent 2 or 3 hours this week reading about the Past Tenses and writing out hundreds of sentences, my past tense usage when speaking is still poor and I'd like to improve it further so I'm going to continue to focus on this grammar area next week as well. I recognize most of the tenses most of the time now when reading but my own usage is still very poor.

Clozemaster has really been hammering in the Subjunctive from the start and it's now starting to add in a load of past tense Subjunctive, I have noticed recently that I am recognising where the Subjunctive needs to be used instinctively now.

Now that I am starting on the Clozemaster 1000-2000 words level I am starting to learn some new nouns (as opposed to verb conjugations previously); it is good to see these new words popping up all over the place, in my reading and on TV...I actually feel like I'm moving forward and learning again

[Bex]

Friday update:
Clozemaster and a serious grammar week this week!

I have started looking at my more grey areas as they come up on Clozemaster, I like this strategy and this week I have been focusing on really understanding Prounouns.

Pages and pages of sentences were written this week to make sure I was really understanding each area. I did one of the sets of 20 sentences multiple times over 3 days because I kept getting the same things wrong.

Then I realised that whenever a verb directly follows a preposition, it remains in the infinitive form...that made it a lot easier. This kind of thing makes me feel like such a idiot sometimes

Words written this week: 1068! All either past tense or pronoun practice with sentences.

This week I have covered (for my records):
Personal, Prepositional, Possessive, Demonstrative, Pronominal, Reflexive and Reciprocal pronouns.

Also Passive Voice structure, the multiple uses of "SE" such as "one does this", emphasis and generalising. The use of Ello and Lo.

Then I went on to look at Direct and Indirect object pronouns, Pronoun order, gustar, the reduntant use of "LE" and pronoun positioning within sentences.

I am sure there's more (felt like a lot to cover anyway) and I am not very good with grammar terms (I will forever hate my 80's UK schooling for not teaching me grammar terms) so I am sure I am using some terms incorrectly but the list is really for my reference and nothing more.

Next week I am planning to look at Leísmos and then review everything from this week again.

I think I will continue with this strategy of covering grammar as I feel the need to understand more. I much prefer looking at a grammar issue after I have a general idea of it's usage from the thousands of sentences I've already seen.

I shall carry on with reading HP next week but my head was in an "I need to know more about this" place this week and so I decided to just go with it.

I feel better now.

ETA: number of words written this week.

[Bex]

Friday update:

Listening: 140 minutes.
1 hour iTalki lesson.
2.5 hours Clozemaster.
Watched some Spanish YouTube videos: at least an hour.

Pretty crappy week... I'm still flailing around after months now of no proper routine. It's really starting to pee me off.

I am still not reading anything.

Clozemaster was getting too easy and I was just typing in the missing word without even reading the sentence...once I realised what I was doing it seemed pointless, so I stopped for a couple of days and started looking at Memorise and Anki again....but the dread of using Anki again kicked in and I decided that was a bad, bad idea.

Solution: I have gone back to my beloved Clozemaster but I have turned the English translations off and swapped to multiple choice answers...now I have to read the sentences

My studying of pronouns continued this week and my head started to really hurt, what with Leísmos and Accidental reflexive / Voz media....I felt like an idiot...it was too much to take in all at once, I got really confused, cross and frustrated and started getting all the answers wrong in my book, I figured I'm never gonna get it and so I gave up.

Then a strange thing happened about 2 or 3 nights later...I woke up at 3am and I couldn't stop thinking about the accidental reflexive construction or the Leísmos and how they both just break the rules of direct/indirect pronoun placement but somehow at 3am it was OK and it all started to make sense.

At 3am my brain just figured it all out...all by itself. I now think of these things as a kind of nice quirk of the Spanish language and not something that doesn't make sense...I now have a strange fondness for the pronouns

..I think this kind of painful and intense studying of one area seems to be the only way my brain decides that something is important enough to learn. It's almost like the stress of not understanding makes my brain want to work it out despite me.

This would also explain why when reading a book I never remember the unknown words even though I have looked it up 20 or 30 times...my brain has decided it doesn't need to remember it because there's no stress...I can just look it up for the 31st time instead...why bother remembering it?

Now I need to take this realisation and decide what to do about it.

[Andy E]

Clozemaster was getting too easy and I was just typing in the missing word without even reading the sentence...once I realised what I was doing it seemed pointless, so I stopped for a couple of days and started looking at Memorise and Anki again....but the dread of using Anki again kicked in and I decided that was a bad, bad idea.

Solution: I have gone back to my beloved Clozemaster but I have turned the English translations off and swapped to multiple choice answers...now I have to read the sentences

I'm intrigued. Does this mean you've gone through all the sentences (Fluency Fast Track?) to such a degree that they are too familiar?

The reason I'm asking is that I've just gone back to Clozemaster having binned it because I absolutely loathed the Chrome TTS voice and as I was doing it almost exclusively on my phone, I was using Multiple Choice to avoid typing. The problem was I could absolutely nail every multiple choice by process of elimination and I didn't feel I was learning anything.

I went back to it on desktop but started using Microsoft Edge to use the Windows TTS voices I have installed instead of Chrome. I also switched to Text Input and that has been working much better because I have to *know* the answer to type it in. To get round the TTS issue on my phone I bought this last night:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ices.pilar

...and that seem to be working much better. I seem to have gone in the opposite direction to you.

[Bex]

Clozemaster was getting too easy and I was just typing in the missing word without even reading the sentence...once I realised what I was doing it seemed pointless, so I stopped for a couple of days and started looking at Memorise and Anki again....but the dread of using Anki again kicked in and I decided that was a bad, bad idea.

Solution: I have gone back to my beloved Clozemaster but I have turned the English translations off and swapped to multiple choice answers...now I have to read the sentences

I'm intrigued. Does this mean you've gone through all the sentences (Fluency Fast Track?) to such a degree that they are too familiar?

The reason I'm asking is that I've just gone back to Clozemaster having binned it because I absolutely loathed the Chrome TTS voice and as I was doing it almost exclusively on my phone, I was using Multiple Choice to avoid typing. The problem was I could absolutely nail every multiple choice by process of elimination and I didn't feel I was learning anything.

I went back to it on desktop but started using Microsoft Edge to use the Windows TTS voices I have installed instead of Chrome. I also switched to Text Input and that has been working much better because I have to *know* the answer to type it in. To get round the TTS issue on my phone I bought this last night:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ices.pilar

...and that seem to be working much better. I seem to have gone in the opposite direction to you.

I am not doing fast track on Clozemaster... I'm going the long way round

I am currently 71% of the way through the 7000+ 501-1000 level sentences. I have played over 5500 on this level alone and of these I've already mastered over 4000 of them. Basically I have seen the 500 words on this level a LOT of times.

I am slowly going through new words on the next level up (1001-2000) but on this level I know all the words. So this is why I have changed my strategy.

I do think typing the answer on Clozemaster is much more effective for vocabulary acquisition but on this level I am just revising words I already know, so instead of just wasting my time quickly typing in a word and whizzing through the sentences I dicided to make it harder for myself by turning the translations off.

This has actually made this level much more difficult again, and really useful because I am trying to really understand each sentence before answering and moving to the next one. It is not really much different to reading a graded reader.

I would like to be able to turn off the translations when typing the answer but I can't see anyway this would be possible given that the sentences can be about anything... you'd have no chance.

I will probably end up typing again (translations on) as I head further into the next level and if that level ever becomes too easy again...I'll revert to translations off/multiple choice.

Short version: I agree typing is much more effective for learning new vocab but the translations off/multiple choice is great for improving reading ability and reinforcing known vocab.

[Bex]

“insanity” is...
“Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

I am changing direction (again ). I am going to concentrate on what I want to do.

No more reading HP... it's not what I want to do. I am just going to use Clozemaster until (if ever) I want to start reading.

I am going to listen a lot and re-listen a lot to help with my speaking, I am going to look up words and re-listen a lot in order to learn and internalise new vocabulary because I enjoy listening to Spanish.

I am going to look at grammar as I want to and not go through a book learning grammar in any set way.

I am going to watch Spanish TV because I want to.

I am not setting anything in stone, no targets, no goals.

I am going to enjoy spending some time with Spanish over the summer and try to understand more of it, then I will see where I am at in September.

That's it.

[AndyMeg]

I am going to enjoy spending some time with Spanish over the summer and try to understand more of it, then I will see where I am at in September.

Have a great summer with Spanish!!!

[Bex]

Well I'm heading towards September and I've thoroughly enjoyed my much needed break from my language studies.

I have been spending some of my leisure time with Spanish but I have not been actively studying anything over the summer. Despite this I still feel my Spanish is improving.

I watched the VOSE version of the new Mission Impossible film at the cinema...it was fun to see if I correctly understood what was written. I think I spent more time analysing the Subs than watching the film

And I've been listening to a few podcasts and reading a little too, probably around 50 pages over the summer.

I definitely enjoy listening more than reading Spanish and so I am going to try and implement a routine in September that takes this into account.

I just need to come up with some way of reviewing my new vocabulary (and phrases) that doesn't involve Anki.

But I still have a couple of weeks to figure that out.