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

[Bex]

Friday Update.

Reading Target: 100 pages. This week = 111 (took 146 minutes/2h 26mins) .
Writing Target: 1000 words. This week = 262
Listening Target: 120 minutes. This week = 217 (3h 37mins)
Speaking Target: 60 minutes. This week = 60 minutes.

Notes on progress/activities.
Reading target was easily met, I am finding it comfortable to read for 30 minutes a day and I am enjoying reading way more than I thought I would. I am looking up between 2-6 words per page at the moment, I think it’s a little too easy but I wanted to start with an easy beginners book whilst I got used to reading in Spanish.

Failed to meet my writing target. Not a great week, for some reason I can’t seem to get back into it. I did however try and use the past tenses as much as possible when I did write and I wrote a small journal entry in the past tense which I posted onto Lang-8 for correction.

Listening target smashed. This was slightly easier to squeeze into my routine than I had anticipated and I listened to 12 Notes in Spanish podcasts (beginners and intermediate) over 4 days. The podcasts are very easy at the NIS beginners level and so I am not reading transcripts or looking up anything, I’m just ploughing through them and leaving my brain to soak it all up. I will increase the difficulty as listening becomes more of a habit.

Speaking: 45 minute iTalki lesson today and also 15 minutes shadowing Assimil lessons. Skype lesson went well and I think I can just about manage 1 lesson a week without it becoming a chore. Assimil is an interesting choice of material to shadow, as I already know the content quite well but I haven’t touched for almost a year. I started at lesson 15, as this is where Assimil starts with past tenses and that is my grammar focus at the moment. Shadowing 10 lessons takes around 15 minutes, which is perfect to meet my weekly speaking target of 1 hour when combined with my 45 minute iTalki session. And if I manage any more then that's just a bonus!

All in all not a bad week considering it's my first week attempting my new routine, writing needs to be increased but at the moment none of my targets seem totally overwhelming and I haven't dreaded doing any of them...although I'm sure that will change

[Bex]

I have decided to give myself some mini-goals. These will be added to the reserved post at the beginning of my log with progress bars. I will update with a completion date, as/when/if they are completed…. I have decided to do this because it makes me happy when I add completed goals/resources to my list, it gives me a sense of moving forward and also it helps when I am lacking motivation to be to remind myself of what I have achieved already. Basically I just like to give myself as many gold stars as possible

Mini Goals
Mini-goal 1. I have 14 beginners NIS podcasts left and 29 intermediate (43 in total). I would like to have listened to them all by the end of February….yay first new mini challenge!
Mini-goal 2. I would also like to set myself a mini-challenge of finishing my first book in Spanish - no deadline. I am currently 68% of the way through it.

[AndyMeg]

Failed to meet my writing target. Not a great week, for some reason I can’t seem to get back into it. I did however try and use the past tenses as much as possible when I did write and I wrote a small journal entry in the past tense which I posted onto Lang-8 for correction.

Could it be because you have narrowed it too much? Before, you were free to write about anything you wanted and in any way you wanted, but now you are forcing yourself to focus on something too specific (past tenses for this week, for example).

I have decided to give myself some mini-goals. These will be added to the reserved post at the beginning of my log with progress bars. I will update with a completion date, as/when/if they are completed…. I have decided to do this because it makes me happy when I add completed goals/resources to my list, it gives me a sense of moving forward and also it helps when I am lacking motivation to be to remind myself of what I have achieved already. Basically I just like to give myself as many gold stars as possible

I'm doing something similar in my log (not the mini-goals but listing my achievements)

[Bex]

Could it be because you have narrowed it too much? Before, you were free to write about anything you wanted and in any way you wanted, but now you are forcing yourself to focus on something too specific (past tenses for this week, for example).

Yes quite possibly... easy way to kill any enthusiasm is to add grammar

I think I'll remove the grammar aspect and see if I can get back to writing for the fun of it next week.

I'm doing something similar in my log (not the mini-goals but listing my achievements)

Cool, we can have a list-off

I think listing achievements is the best bit about having a log, apart from maybe progress bars... and all the lovely, encouraging people on here of course!

[AndyMeg]

I'm doing something similar in my log (not the mini-goals but listing my achievements)

Cool, we can have a list-off

I think listing achievements is the best bit about having a log, apart from maybe progress bars... and all the lovely, encouraging people on here of course!

hahahaha...
Yes! Listing achievments is a great motivational tool!

Yes, the interaction with the people on this forum is also a big part of the fun!

[Bex]

I have finished making my new Anki deck for the "Top 50 verbs" and so I will be moving onto the second grammar point on my list today.

I will particularly focus on stem changing and irregular and irregular first person. I have suspended the future tense for now and so it contains the following forms of 50 common verbs:

-Infinitive - all 50
-Present - all 50
-Future - all 50 but suspended for now.
-Gerund - all 50
-Preterite - all 50
-Imperfect - the 3 irregular in all 6 conjugations (ir, ser & ver) and a few examples of the less known verbs in my weaker conjugation forms (ie. vosotros, nosotros, ellos etc) but not all conjugations and only a few of the 50 verbs. I may add more later but Preterite is pretty regular and so it seemed unnecessary to add them all.

There are 1054 cards in total. 251 suspended (at the moment) and 803 to learn. Some of the cards will be very easy, ie. present tense regular and most of the infinitive verbs, I will suspend these really easy cards as I encounter them.

Anyway this deck should keep me busy for a while

I am not sure what I'll do with my old "past tense" deck that I cobbled together from Glossika level 1. I have mastered 50% of it already, I may keep reviewing until I get over 90% mastered and delete any annoying/non-useful sentences along the way. Once at 90% I think I'll delete it as I already have all the cards in my Glossika level 1 deck.

I hate Anki, I am never sure how to organise my decks or even if I should have one big deck

[Bex]

First ever Spanish book read on kindle 285 pages...finished today.

Woop! Woop !

[AndyMeg]

First ever Spanish book read on kindle 285 pages...finished today.

Woop! Woop !

Awesome!

By the way, which book did you read?

[Bex]

First ever Spanish book read on kindle 285 pages...finished today.

Woop! Woop !

Awesome!

By the way, which book did you read?

It wasn't very interesting, a beginner's reader by Olly Richards. I thought I would start with readers so I could get used to reading in Spanish and then move onto Spanish novels once I'd read 2 or 3. I'm trying an intermediate reader next... we'll see how that goes!

[AndyMeg]

First ever Spanish book read on kindle 285 pages...finished today.

Woop! Woop !

Awesome!

By the way, which book did you read?

It wasn't very interesting, a beginner's reader by Olly Richards. I thought I would start with readers so I could get used to reading in Spanish and then move onto Spanish novels once I'd read 2 or 3. I'm trying an intermediate reader next... we'll see how that goes!

Keep at it!