Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
Online
User avatar
philomath
Blue Belt
Posts: 741
Joined: Wed May 11, 2016 2:57 pm
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Languages: English (Native), Spanish (Intermediate/Advanced), French (Intermediate/Advanced), German (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 13#p235313
x 3039

Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Wed May 09, 2018 1:10 am

Hello! I’ve been reading this forum (and before that, the HTLAL forum) for a while, and I decided it’s time to become more active on here and make a language log as well. I hope it’s all right that this first post is going to be rather long—I wanted to give a little bit of an introduction on my past language studies and my current study plan.

Background on my language studies
I began learning Spanish in school around ten years ago. I took Spanish classes for five years, during which time I did not get much speaking practice at all but did learn a decent amount of grammar and vocabulary—enough to be able to read a couple of young adult novels in Spanish, as well as a very abridged version of Don Quixote.

However, after those five years I began university, and I no longer had much time for Spanish. I also got distracted by Latin, Italian, and Mandarin Chinese. I occasionally listened to podcasts, watched TV shows, and read in Spanish, so my passive skills stayed at the same level but my active skills deteriorated.

Finally, I finished the majority of my university studies and decided to study Spanish consistently again. I would like to reach C1 someday, if possible in the next year or so.

Current level in Spanish
I’m not very good at estimating my Spanish level, but I’d say my active skills are around B1, while my passive skills are B1/B2. I can comfortably watch TV shows, although sometimes I need Spanish subtitles in order to understand the dialogue. And I haven’t done a lot of reading in Spanish lately, but I imagine I can still read fiction books, albeit rather slowly.

Speaking and writing are the main areas in which I need to improve. For a long time, I was too nervous to talk to native speakers, so I would practice talking to myself in Spanish, discussing my day, how I felt, etc. I can speak relatively fluently on these topics, but that’s about it. Lately I’ve been doing one-hour iTalki lessons once a week, and I’ve found that when I have to talk about other topics, I struggle to remember verb conjugations and vocabulary. I have less trouble when I write, as I have plenty of time to remember things, but I still need to improve my vocabulary.

Spanish plan
At this point in my Spanish studies, I think I mostly need to do as much listening, speaking, reading, and writing as possible. I also need to learn a lot more vocabulary.

For the next two weeks, I will be taking ~20 hours per week of Spanish courses in Madrid, Spain. Hopefully I’ll get a lot of speaking practice there, both during class and outside of class (as I’ll be staying in an apartment building with other students.) I really like making specific goals for myself, so I’ve set the following goals for May:

[X] Do 8 hours of listening practice, not including listening during conversations. I’ll probably watch part of a TV show such as Las chicas del cable or La casa de papel.
[ ] Do 5 hours of speaking, not including during the Spanish classes I’ll be taking.
[ ] Spend 5 hours reviewing grammar. I want to practice conjugating verbs in different tenses and also review the following topics: the passive voice, prepositions, imperatives, uses of the subjunctive, relative clauses, etc.
[X] Learn 600 new words.
[ ] Read all of El tiempo entre costuras (624 pages).
[ ] Write 4,650 words (and post the sentences that I have trouble with on iTalki for corrections).

I had trouble deciding on these goals. I’ll be traveling for two weeks this month, and I’m not sure if I’ll have access to internet or a TV. For this reason I plan to do most of my listening and speaking practice while I’m still at home. Of course, I’ll also be listening and speaking a lot while I’m in Spain, but I think it’s hard to quantify how much speaking you did during class time, so I’m not including it in my goals.

I usually make vocabulary flash cards with Anki, but I won’t have my computer with me during my trip. Instead I think I’ll try Iversen’s word list method or something similar.

My reading goal is also extremely high given that I only read 4 pages in Spanish last month (mostly due to lack of motivation!). But I’m a fast reader in English, and I’d like to encourage myself to read more in Spanish. I think I can get a lot of reading done at the airport, during mealtimes, etc.

Other languages: Ancient Greek and Chinese
I know I should stick to Spanish in order to make the most progress, but I’ve been wanting to learn Ancient Greek for years, and I finally have time to work on it. I already have a textbook and some other resources, and I’m planning to study it from June of this year to July 2019. Hopefully by June 2019 I’ll have reached a decent level in Spanish, so I can just focus on maintaining it. Then I want to study Mandarin Chinese again.

We’ll see how this plan goes! And now I’m going to stop writing this post and continue reading El tiempo entre costuras. :)
Last edited by philomath on Mon Dec 03, 2018 4:25 pm, edited 6 times in total.
13 x

Online
User avatar
philomath
Blue Belt
Posts: 741
Joined: Wed May 11, 2016 2:57 pm
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Languages: English (Native), Spanish (Intermediate/Advanced), French (Intermediate/Advanced), German (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 13#p235313
x 3039

Re: Amanda's Language Log

Postby philomath » Fri May 11, 2018 4:08 am

Today I had my last iTalki lesson before I leave for Spain (in less than two days!). I always leave these lessons feeling slightly disappointed and embarrassed by my speaking ability in Spanish. I can hear myself making all sorts of grammatical mistakes when I speak. Even when I know what the correct sentence is, the wrong one slips out of my mouth (like today I frequently said ‘los’ when I meant ‘las’ or vice versa.) Or sometimes I just cannot conjugate the verbs (especially in the subjunctive) or formulate the rest of the sentence fast enough, and then I need to pause to think about it.

I’ve always heard that having conversations with native speakers is the best way to improve speaking, but I feel like practicing speaking by myself might be more helpful right now. I just need to practice recalling the verb endings, etc. fast enough. I also need to expand my vocabulary, which I can work on without a tutor. However, the iTalki lessons keep me motivated, so I think I’ll still have them occasionally.

Speaking of vocabulary: in my first post I mentioned that I’m not going to use Anki for now, since I won’t have my computer in Spain and I can’t edit my flashcards without the app. Well, I lasted around one day without Anki, and then I gave in and purchased the app. I’ve never been super in love with Anki, but I like being able to keep all of my vocabulary words in there instead of in my messy notebook. And it’s searchable, so if I learn something new about a word that I’ve already added, I can find the flashcard in a second and add the new information.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t been staying on top of Anki. For a while, I’d been adding dozens of flashcards a day while only reviewing Anki’s default number of 20, so new flashcards kept piling up. Today I reviewed all of the remaining new cards. There were around 800. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t fall behind like that again!
2 x

Online
User avatar
philomath
Blue Belt
Posts: 741
Joined: Wed May 11, 2016 2:57 pm
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Languages: English (Native), Spanish (Intermediate/Advanced), French (Intermediate/Advanced), German (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 13#p235313
x 3039

Re: Amanda's Spanish Language Log

Postby philomath » Mon May 21, 2018 2:44 pm

A few updates from Spain:

I arrived here a week ago, and I have another week to go. Before I arrived, I took an online placement test that covered listening, grammar, and vocabulary. On my first day I also had a brief conversation with one of the teachers so he could assess my speaking ability. I was placed in the B1 class, which is what I expected.

I completed my goal of 8 hours of listening practice. I mostly watched the shows Las chicas del cable and La casa de papel with Spanish subtitles. I'd like to rely less on subtitles, but it's no fun watching TV when I feel like I'm missing things. I think I'll try the listening exercise described in this thread to improve my listening comprehension, using short YouTube videos.

Unfortunately, even though I'm in Spain, I haven't been speaking Spanish as much as I hoped I would. I'm living with other students, but they all prefer to speak English. I have been speaking Spanish a little bit during class and with waiters in restaurants, but not for extended periods of time. However, I still feel that my speaking ability has improved since I arrived in Spain. Knowing that I should be speaking Spanish here has caused me to start thinking in Spanish more often. Whenever I don't know how to say (or think) something, I make a note of it in my phone and look it up later. I want to continue doing this when I return home because I think it's really helping me learn more grammar and vocabulary.

Vocabulary continues to be a big problem for me. I have learned 450 new words this month, but by "learned" I mean that I made Anki flashcards for them. I'm not sure how well I actually know how to use them in sentences. So while reviewing my flashcards, I've been starring the ones that I'm unsure about, mostly verbs. Next I'm going to write a few example sentences for each word and get them corrected on iTalki. Then I'll make an Anki flash card for each sentence. Hopefully this will help me learn the words better.
1 x

Online
User avatar
philomath
Blue Belt
Posts: 741
Joined: Wed May 11, 2016 2:57 pm
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Languages: English (Native), Spanish (Intermediate/Advanced), French (Intermediate/Advanced), German (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 13#p235313
x 3039

Re: Amanda's Spanish Language Log

Postby philomath » Fri May 25, 2018 9:14 am

I’m leaving Spain on Sunday, and I’ve started thinking about a question that comes up now and then: what dialect of Spanish am I trying to learn?

On one hand, I live in the United States, so almost everyone I meet who speaks Spanish speaks some kind of Latin American dialect. The iTalki tutors who I’ve had lessons with were also from Latin America (although I’m thinking of switching tutors, so I do have the opportunity to switch to one from Spain).

On the other hand, the books and TV shows that I enjoy are all from Spain, for whatever reason. So I wonder if this is influencing my accent, and how many of the phrases and words I’m picking up are specific to Spain.

I wonder about this because it seems that even if I reach a point where I can express myself and understand native materials very well, I still won’t be C1 if I’m mixing accents and words from different variants of Spanish. And C1 is my ultimate goal; I feel like I’ve been studying Spanish for far too long to want to stop at anything less.

Has anyone reading this been in a similar situation with Spanish? Or with another language that has many variants?
2 x

User avatar
Jaleel10
Blue Belt
Posts: 534
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2017 6:44 am
Location: Springbok, South Africa
Languages: Afrikaans (N), English (N)
Spanish (Advanced-B2)
x 963
Contact:

Re: Amanda's Spanish Language Log

Postby Jaleel10 » Fri May 25, 2018 10:55 am

Hi, Amanda.

Fellow student of the cruel mistress that is the Spanish language so I will be following your log closely :)

It's awesome that you are in Spain. What do you think of the accent/variant compared to that what you usually hear in the states ? Slower, faster, more idioms, etc.

It's awesome that you have such comfortable listening abilities for an intermediate student. Are there any accents you have an easier time dealing with ? and what was a huge breakthrough for you with getting good/better at listening ?

About the accents. Interesting question. As a black guy from Africa learning Spain Spanish and trying to adopt a (neutral) Spanish accent people always ask my why ?? :D You know what ? I am sticking to it !! I just like it /shrug. But I assume for most learners it will be more suitable to adopt an accent that is closer to their circle of friends or people with whom you speak to mostly. I'll let some of the more experienced people answer that.

Good luck with the studies !
0 x

Online
User avatar
philomath
Blue Belt
Posts: 741
Joined: Wed May 11, 2016 2:57 pm
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Languages: English (Native), Spanish (Intermediate/Advanced), French (Intermediate/Advanced), German (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 13#p235313
x 3039

Re: Amanda's Spanish Language Log

Postby philomath » Fri May 25, 2018 6:11 pm

Jaleel10 wrote:It's awesome that you are in Spain. What do you think of the accent/variant compared to that what you usually hear in the states ? Slower, faster, more idioms, etc.

I’ve been finding the Spanish in Spain to be much easier to understand, but I’m not sure if this is because A) most of the listening practice I do is with material from Spain, so I’m particularly good at understanding this variant or B) the listening practice I’ve done recently has improved my comprehension all around, and I’ll find people easier to understand when I go back to the States as well.

Of course it’s hard to really say because most of my listening practice here has been:
- with teachers, who probably speak a lot more clearly so us students can understand
- with shop employees and waiters, who always say predictable things (“¿Tarjeta o efectivo?”, “¿Para llevar o para aquí?”, etc.) so it’s not too hard to understand them.

Jaleel10 wrote:It’s awesome that you have such comfortable listening abilities for an intermediate student. Are there any accents you have an easier time dealing with ? and what was a huge breakthrough for you with getting good/better at listening ?

I definitely have an easier time understanding Mexican, Colombian, and Peruvian accents, and a much harder time understanding Argentinian and Chilean accents, for example.

I don’t know if I‘ve had a breakthrough with listening yet, honestly! I can listen to podcasts without reading along, but when I watch TV in Spanish I still use Spanish subtitles. I think what has improved my listening practice the most is just doing a lot of it (well, not a lot, maybe around 2 hours a week? or more, when I find something I really like). I would listen to podcasts like Nómadas and repeat the same episode a few times, trying to understand more and more each time. And I think learning more vocabulary words has helped a lot.
1 x

User avatar
iguanamon
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2354
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 11:14 am
Location: Virgin Islands
Languages: Speaks: English (Native); Spanish (C2); Portuguese (C2); Haitian Creole (C1); Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol (C1); Lesser Antilles French Creole (B2)
Studies: Catalan
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=797
x 14196

Re: Amanda's Spanish Language Log

Postby iguanamon » Fri May 25, 2018 6:55 pm

At this point in your learning, you just need to learn Spanish. Your accent and usage will sort themselves out over time. You don't say where you're from in the US, so I don't know what variety of Spanish you are most accustomed to hearing around you. So, I can't suggest any media for you to emulate accent and usage. As you move deeper into intermediate territory, the more you speak with people, the more media you consume and the more effort you make will take care of most inconsistencies. The rest you can sort out by actively working on it if you want.

My Spanish was a mix of Mexican, Cuban and Puerto Rican varieties for a long time. I still say "¿mande?" when I want somebody to repeat what they've said to me. Since I lived in PR for six months several years ago and now live just 70 miles away, I have much more of a PR accent and usage in conversational Spanish, but no one will ever mistake me for a Puerto Rican even when wearing guayaberas everyday, eating tostones and drinking Presidente and Medalla... and that's ok. I worked hard as a gringo to get to where I've gotten in the language and I wouldn't want to be mistaken for a native-speaker. I like the recognition I get for having made the effort.

Yes, there's some great tv series coming out of Spain these days. I love reading El País and Spanish authors. I adore Spain, but I only ever talk to Spaniards in Spain. My everyday interaction with the language is here. You'll be fine. No te preocupes.
4 x

Online
User avatar
philomath
Blue Belt
Posts: 741
Joined: Wed May 11, 2016 2:57 pm
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Languages: English (Native), Spanish (Intermediate/Advanced), French (Intermediate/Advanced), German (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 13#p235313
x 3039

Re: Amanda's Spanish Language Log

Postby philomath » Sat May 26, 2018 12:44 pm

iguanamon wrote:At this point in your learning, you just need to learn Spanish. Your accent and usage will sort themselves out over time. You don't say where you're from in the US, so I don't know what variety of Spanish you are most accustomed to hearing around you. So, I can't suggest any media for you to emulate accent and usage. As you move deeper into intermediate territory, the more you speak with people, the more media you consume and the more effort you make will take care of most inconsistencies. The rest you can sort out by actively working on it if you want.


This is good to hear. At this point in my studies, I just want to focus on learning more Spanish without worrying about mixing different varieties.

And I currently attend a university in Boston. According to Wikipedia the largest percentage of Spanish speakers here are Puerto Rican? But there seems to be quite a mix of Spanish varieties spoken here.
1 x

User avatar
Stelle
Blue Belt
Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English (N1), French (N2), Spanish (advanced), Tagalog (basic), Russian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=13312
x 1527
Contact:

Re: Amanda's Language Log

Postby Stelle » Sat May 26, 2018 3:55 pm

philomath wrote:I’ve always heard that having conversations with native speakers is the best way to improve speaking, but I feel like practicing speaking by myself might be more helpful right now. I just need to practice recalling the verb endings, etc. fast enough.
I found that doing the drills from FSI basic really helped me with this. When I was around B1, I did the drills as an audio-only course. I think I spent about 40 minutes per day, walking the dog and doing the drills out loud. I never quite finished the course, but it was excellent for solidifying oral verb conjugation.
2 x

Online
User avatar
philomath
Blue Belt
Posts: 741
Joined: Wed May 11, 2016 2:57 pm
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Languages: English (Native), Spanish (Intermediate/Advanced), French (Intermediate/Advanced), German (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 13#p235313
x 3039

Re: Amanda's Language Log

Postby philomath » Sat May 26, 2018 6:47 pm

Stelle wrote:I found that doing the drills from FSI basic really helped me with this. When I was around B1, I did the drills as an audio-only course. I think I spent about 40 minutes per day, walking the dog and doing the drills out loud. I never quite finished the course, but it was excellent for solidifying oral verb conjugation.
I think I’ll try this; I’ve heard several people recommend FSI for the grammar drills. Does it cover more advanced grammar topics like the subjunctive as well?
0 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests