Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

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philomath
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Re: Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Mon Dec 03, 2018 6:11 pm

Hi everyone! I ended up taking a two-month hiatus and barely studied Spanish at all. Most of my time was spent planning and writing the first draft of a novel for National Novel Writing Month. Anyway, now the draft is done and I'd like to go back to language-learning for a bit before making an outline for draft #2 of my novel. In the past I've had a lot of trouble focusing on one project at a time, but I think I finally have the patience to do it. I really do make more progress when I just work on one task for a few months.

I'm still not satisfied with my Spanish skills. Or more specifically, I'm not satisfied with my speaking skills--I want to improve my listening, reading, and writing skills, but my lack of speaking proficiency is what really bothers me. So I'm going to continue to work on improving my Spanish for the next few months, even though I'm itching to start a new language. I probably will do a little bit of Ancient Greek, just to keep things interesting.

My plan for Spanish is essentially: carry a notebook with me at all times, try to think in Spanish as often as I can, and write down whatever I have trouble thinking, so I can look it up later. Also, practice speaking to myself about topics that would come up in every day life and with tutors. Eventually I want to try some iTalki tutors again, but first I want to do a lot of speaking practice by myself, as I've had trouble getting the most out of tutoring sessions in the past. And of course, I plan to do as much listening, reading, and writing as I can, and make Anki flashcards for whatever I need help remembering.

I'll probably post more measurable goals soon, but for now I'm just going to aim for 1 hour of Spanish each day. Hopefully I can do two or three times that on the weekends though!
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Re: Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Sun Dec 09, 2018 9:53 pm

All right, it's time for me to come up with some language goals, otherwise I'll never progress in Spanish. First, a recap of what I've done in December so far:
- Did 4 hours of listening practice, a mix of listening to the first Harry Potter audiobook in Spanish and watching Netflix shows.
- Practiced speaking by myself for 5 minutes.
- Made 4 Anki flashcards for words that I picked up during listening practice.
- Read 5 pages of El tiempo entre costuras.

So, I haven't done much so far except for listening.

Anyway, now onto my goals! I'm going to make my goals on a weekly basis, so here are the goals for the week of December 10 to December 16:
- Do 6 hours of listening practice.
- Do 1 hour of speaking practice.
- Make a list of grammar topics to review, based on what concepts are tricky during speaking and writing practice.
- Make and review Anki flashcards for at least 35 words. (These will be words that I encountered during listening or reading, or words that I had to look up while speaking or writing--so, words that I'm learning in context.)
- Read 50 pages.
- Write 1,000 words. Get some sentences corrected on iTalki.

We'll see how I do!
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Re: Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby MamaPata » Mon Dec 10, 2018 2:54 pm

I've now got a copy of El Tiempo Entre Costuras. How are you finding it? Would you recommend it?
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Re: Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Mon Dec 10, 2018 10:08 pm

MamaPata wrote:I've now got a copy of El Tiempo Entre Costuras. How are you finding it? Would you recommend it?


I really like it! I’d also recommend the TV show that’s based on it.
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Re: Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Thu Dec 13, 2018 1:27 pm

Observation: I hardly ever learn vocab from listening, but it helps reinforce words I’ve learned from looking them up during speaking/writing practice or from reading.
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Re: Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Mon Dec 17, 2018 5:06 am

Review of the week of December 10:
- Did 3 hours of listening practice. It was a mixture of listening to the audiobook for Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal and watching Las chicas del cable on Netflix, without subtitles. I also watched three episodes of Made in Mexico, but I didn't count this in my listening time because I used Spanish subtitles. However, it did teach me some new phrases! Like the word platicar, which means "to chat", but in Mexico can also be used as "to tell".
- Did 20 minutes of speaking practice, by myself.
- Made 9 Anki flashcards.
- Read 17 pages of El tiempo entre costuras.
- Wrote 205 words, but have not posted them on iTalki for corrections yet.

Some thoughts:
I've realized that I need a subject when I practice speaking or writing. If I don't have a subject, I end up rambling about something silly, like introducing myself to an imaginary stranger or talking about my day. And that's easy, so aside from building my confidence speaking, it doesn't help me improve my Spanish. From now on, I'm going to try speaking about specific topics. I've found some lists to start with:
https://www.eslconversationquestions.co ... ns/topics/
https://dailypost.files.wordpress.com/2 ... 477491.pdf

This is a new plan that I'm going to follow for speaking and writing practice:
- Choose a prompt from one of the links above, or another topic that I've thought of.
- Make a list of relevant phrases/vocab words that I might need to know.
- Practice speaking about that topic.
- Then, write about the topic and get some of the sentences corrected on iTalki.

Goals for the week of December 17:
- Do 4 hours of listening practice.
- Do 1 hour of speaking practice.
- Make a list of grammar topics to review, based on what concepts are tricky during speaking and writing practice.
- Make and review Anki flashcards for at least 35 words.
- Read 50 pages.
- Post last week's writing on iTalki.
- Write 1,000 words, following the plan outlined above.
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Re: Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Tue Dec 18, 2018 8:14 pm

Decidí que sería buena práctica si escribo una entrada aquí en español. Desadfortunadamente, ayer no tuve tiempo para estudiar español. Sin embargo, hoy cumplí uno de mis metas para esta semana: publiqué mi escritura de la semana pasada en iTalki. Ya he recibido cinco comentarios, pero no hay muchas correcciones. ¿Es porque mi escritura fue muy bien, o porque los usuarios de iTalki no quieren corregirme tanto? Si no quiero encontrar una maestra que pueda corregir todas mis escrituras, creo que lo unico que puedo hacer es escribir mucho, leer mucho, y esperar mejorar al final.
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Re: Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby Chmury » Wed Dec 19, 2018 1:56 am

philomath wrote:Si no quiero encontrar una maestra que pueda corregir todas mis escrituras, creo que lo unico que puedo hacer es escribir mucho, leer mucho, y esperar mejorar al final.


Creo que la razón por la que no te han corregido la escritura es que depende del capricho, el ánimo, y el tiempo disponible de los usuarios, Y porque lo que has escrito es perfectísimo ;) Creo que cuanto más lees y escribes, mejor entiendes lo que sí suena o parece correcto y lo que no, y poco a poco llegas a poder corregirte a ti misma. Así que ¡que sigas escribiendo en castellano y leyendo un montón! Y si alguna vez tienes algunas preguntas concretas sobre lo que has escrito, puedes publicarlas en el foro Español que tenemos aquí, y claro aquí en tu bitácora también, o en el foro de español de wordreference que recomendaría mucho. Los nativos de español allí siempre responden y ayudan mucho.

Por cierto, ¡eso de haber terminado ya el primer esbozo de tu novela es estupendo! ¡Enhorabuena! ¿Cuánto tiempo te tardó? ¿Nos puedes contar algo sobre tu novela? Siempre estoy escribiendo esbocitos en sucio y apuntando ideas para cuentos a los que nunca vuelvo, y espero muchísimo que tuviera esa disciplina de sentarme cada día y trabajar en una sola idea y llevarlo a cabo y convertirla en un verdadero cuento completo. ¿Tienes algunos consejos?

¡Que tengas un buen día philomath!
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Hindernisse und Schwierigkeiten sind Stufen, auf denen wir in die Höhe steigen

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philomath
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Re: Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Wed Dec 19, 2018 6:37 pm

¡Gracias por las palabras de ánimo! Voy a escribir más en español, y hacerlo en esta bitácora es una buena práctica. También voy a leer más, y no sólo de El tiempo entre costuras… debo leer también artículos sobre temas diferentes. Me gusta mucho leer El País de vez en cuando.

Lo de escribir la novela es una historia muy larga...comencé el año pasada para NaNoWriMo, ¿lo conoces? Es un desafío que consiste en tratar de escribir un borrador de una novela en los 30 días de noviembre. Para “ganar” el desafío tienes que escribir 50.000 palabras de su novela. Bueno, cada año me esfuerzo por hacer esto, y el año pasado tuve una idea sobre una novela de ciencia ficción…¿qué tal si algún día tengamos implantes en el cerebro que nos ayudan a recordar? ¿Haría consecuencias de tener una memoria perfecta, y podría la gente aprovechar de esta tecnología para razones malas? Pues, traté de escribir el primero borrador, y alcancé 50.000 palabras, pero la novela no era la que había intentado escribir porque la ciencia, y por lo tanto la trama, no tenían sentido. Así que dejé de escribir sin alcanzar el final de la novela, pero a veces pensaba sobre el cuento. Este año decidí mejorar los personajes y la trama y escribir la novela de nuevo. Pasaba algunos meses pensando en el nuevo borrador, y entonces lo escribí en noviembre. La novela no es perfecta todavía, pero estoy mucho más satisfecha con la trama. Voy a trabajar en mejorarla más esta primavera. Probablemente escribiré el tercero borrador desde cero.

Si te cuesta mucho elegir una sola idea y terminarla, te recomiendo que trates NaNoWriMo, o en otra manera trates de escribir un borrador lo más rápido posible. Cuando escribes muy rápidamente es más fácil olvidar tus dudas sobre la novela o empezar a pensar en otras ideas. Claro que un borrador que escribes muy rápidamente no sería tan bueno, pero sí puedes mejorarlo después de terminarlo.
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philomath
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Re: Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Mon Dec 24, 2018 4:27 am

philomath wrote:Goals for the week of December 17:
- Do 4 hours of listening practice.
- Do 1 hour of speaking practice.
- Make a list of grammar topics to review, based on what concepts are tricky during speaking and writing practice.
- Make and review Anki flashcards for at least 35 words.
- Read 50 pages.
- Post last week's writing on iTalki.
- Write 1,000 words, following the plan outlined above.

Results:
- Did 2 hours and 30 minutes of listening practice.
- Did 23 minutes of speaking practice.
- Did not notice any grammar topics that I really need to review...though I had to look up a couple of conjugations, mostly for stem changing verbs. There are a lot of verbs where for some reason, I seem to know the preterit and imperfect conjugations better than the present indicative. Like 'cumplir' and 'esforzarse'. I guess I just haven't seen/used those verbs in the present tense as much.
- Made 22 Anki flashcards.
- Read 15 pages.
- Wrote 712 words.

It was a busy week because I finished my internship and had to run lots of errands before the holidays. This upcoming week I'll be busy on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but after that I'll have lots of free time!

Goals for the week of December 24:
- Do 3 hours of listening practice.
- Do 1 hour of speaking practice.
- Make and review Anki flashcards for at least 30 words.
- Read 50 pages.
- Write 1,000 words.
1 x


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