Michelle's 2018 Spanish and French Log

[brokenrecord]

I've been lurking on and off here and at HTLAL for years, so I figured I should finally start a log. My biggest challenge when it comes to language learning is that I tend to get very focused on one thing and want to do nothing else for a month or two, then I burn out and find something else I am interested in and abandon the previous thing for months, so my language learning tends to be a month or two of very focused study, then 3-6 months of absolutely nothing, then back to language learning for a few months. I'm hoping starting a log will help me get in the habit of at least doing something every week.

My language learning history:

French: My mom had taken French in high school and wanted to brush up on it when I was 6, so I joined her when she'd watch French in Action VHS tapes, and we took a 6 week class for parents and kids together. Obviously the class didn't go far in depth, but from it I did manage to learn and retain things like the numbers from 1-100, colors, days of the week, etc. In 8th grade we were given the option to start a foreign language, and I chose French because of that background and continued through high school to AP French. I always really enjoyed French, but I had one French teacher who taught me for 3 of those 5 years who was terrible (she was a native speaker so she was obviously fluent, but she was terrible at actually teaching and gave grades based on who her favorite students were. And I was one of her favorites, so I'm not being biased in saying that!), so my last couple years of French classes weren't super helpful. I'm not sure where I ended up at the end of high school — I got a 4 on the AP French exam, but I don't think that translates well to CEFR. My guess is I was somewhere around A2-B1? After that I basically let my French languish for years. I discovered Duolingo in 2013 and used it to brush up on my French a bit before a trip to Paris in 2014 (and then barely used it on that trip), but otherwise I've barely looked at it at all in the past 11 years, so I have some massive holes.

German: I started German my sophomore year of college because I realized I missed language learning, and I continued with it for 3 years. My German professors were much better than my high school French teacher, and the classes were much smaller so we got more individualized attention and much more practice speaking, so I ended college with a much better handle on German than I ever had on French. I think I was around B1-B2 (but that's just a guess). I did let my German lapse some after college, but I've tried to review it from time to time, including going through the Duolingo German tree. Last year I also took a trip to Berlin for a week, so in the months leading up to that, I read 3 books in German (all translations from English: the first Harry Potter book, and the first two books in the Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvater) and watched the first half of Avatar: the Last Airbender season 1 in German. I didn't have much opportunity to speak German on my trip, but I was able to understand others speaking in German without much problem.

Italian: This was the first language I really ever tried to teach myself, around 2013-2014. I basically just worked through Duolingo, probably getting around halfway through the tree? I abandoned Italian when I started on Spanish, though, because I was too worried about interference and was more interested in Spanish at the time. Now that my Spanish is much stronger, I'm starting to think about going back to Italian, although this is probably still a ways off.

Spanish: This has been my primary focus for the past 4 years. I grew up in southern California, and so most people I knew in high school would always question why I was taking French instead of Spanish and tell me it was useless to take French, and because of that, I developed a weird grudge against Spanish. However, in 2015, I was between my first and second year of getting my Masters (in a non-language-related field) and looking at jobs, and a lot of them mentioned Spanish-speakers were preferred, so I decided to start learning Spanish. And, strangely enough, I ended up discovering that I love Spanish and that having a weird grudge against it for years was really stupid! I ended up getting a job that requires no Spanish, but I was hooked on learning Spanish, so I continued with it. I started off with Duolingo and then discovered Language Transfer. Language Transfer is what I feel really helped me the most in my early Spanish-learning days — it helped a lot of things click that I was struggling with on Duolingo.

The first year and a half, I focused on finishing the Duolingo tree, Language Transfer, a 5000 most common words course on Memrise, and reading the first Harry Potter book in Spanish. In the summer of 2016 I read 33 Razones para volver a verte, which is a romance novel originally written in Spanish by Alice Kellen. It was the first non-translated work of Spanish I had read, and also the first Spanish book that I hadn't previously read in English first. I got really sucked into the story, and that pushed me to make my way through the novel quickly. I noticed a fairly big leap in my Spanish reading ability after finishing it, I think because I was making such a great effort to pick up my reading speed because I was eager to see what would happen next, which wasn't the case with Harry Potter, since I already know the story. I read another Alice Kellen romance novel right after that, Sigue lloviendo, which I didn't like nearly as much, but it still helped to improve my reading comprehension.

In the fall of 2016, I started watching El tiempo entre costuras on Netflix (with English subtitles) and really loved it. After that, I started on Gran hotel (still with English subtitles), and fell even more in love with that. However, at some point in the middle of season 2, Gran hotel was removed from Netflix. I was completely caught up in the story and was desperate to finish the show, and the only way I could find to watch the rest was to buy the DVDs from Spain, which only had Spanish subtitles. I figured it'd be a good way to try to move my Spanish forward, so I ordered them. While I was waiting for them to arrive, I started El ministerio del tiempo with Spanish subtitles in preparation. The first episode was a bit of a struggle — I had a hard time at first comprehending the meaning of a full sentence before the next subtitle would appear, so I'd keep falling behind and needing to pause to read the subtitles more slowly. But after finishing the two seasons, I had gotten to a point where I could read the Spanish subtitles without having to pause and without needing to look up many words. Then my Gran hotel DVDs arrived, and I finished the series with the Spanish subtitles. At some point in this span, I also read El tiempo entre costuras, another Alice Kellen book (23 Otoños antes de ti), the 2nd Harry Potter book, and the last two books in the Raven Cycle series.

At this point, my Spanish reading comprehension was pretty decent, but I realized that I had a lot of holes in my grammar knowledge. Language Transfer was a great intro to all the grammar basics, but it didn't give me enough practice with a lot of the later grammar concepts (and neither did Duolingo). I saw Grammar de Uso de Español recommended here a bunch, so I got the A1-A2 workbook. I've been doing lessons from there on and off since then, and I've completed 86 of 107, so I'm getting close to moving on to the B1-B2 book. I decided I also wanted to advance my listening comprehension, so in the summer of 2017 I spent a day figuring out how to get generate subs2srs decks from my Gran hotel DVDs and then started working through the subs2srs decks I had created for the first 4 episodes, which helped my listening comprehension immensely.

Once I had gone through the 4 decks enough times for all the cards to be labeled mature, I decided I was a little tired of subs2srs and wanted to try watching Gran Hotel without any subtitles. The first four episodes were not too difficult, but once I got to the episodes that I hadn't made subs2srs decks for, my comprehension took a big dip. However, I continued on with it, and after awhile, it definitely became much easier to understand. I always kind of doubted when I'd see people say that you just need to keep listening and your comprehension will improve, but that definitely turned out to be true for me. It's hard to estimate how much I understood at that point, but maybe around 60-70%?

Once I finished Gran Hotel, I decided to watch El tiempo entre costuras without subtitles. I struggled a little bit more with it, probably more around 50-60% comprehension. I think it was more challenging just because there are fewer episodes, the episodes are shorter, and most characters aren't in every episode, so I didn't have as much of an opportunity to get used to different actors' accents. From there, I decided I'd try to tackle a new-to-me Spanish show, so I started Velvet. I got through about 8 episodes, but I didn't love the show as much as I loved Gran hotel, and it was a bit more challenging not knowing the plot already. There were a few times where I'd have to go back and rewatch a scene with Spanish subtitles to understand what had been said. That was last November, and I basically put a pause in my Spanish-learning from then until a couple weeks ago. I started back with Velvet where I had left off, and the first episode or two was a huge challenge — I felt like I was only getting maybe 30-40% of the plot. But after that, it came much easier, and now I'm back around 70% and only rarely feel the need to rewatch any scenes with subtitles. I've been trying to watch at least 1 episode a day, but I just went 3 days without watching any, and the first one I watched after that break felt harder than it had before the break, so I'm at a point where I feel like I still just need massive amounts of input to firm up those skills.

After the past 4 years of studying Spanish on my own, I've read about 3000 pages in Spanish and watched roughly 130 hours of Spanish TV without subtitles. I feel like my listening comprehension has gotten pretty decent, but I've only really focused on shows set in Spain, so I do want to start watching some shows from other countries soon. My reading comprehension is pretty decent — Harry Potter is pretty easy for me to read now, and I don't run across too many words I don't know per page. My speaking is definitely my weakest ability. There's a chance I might be visiting a Spanish-speaking country in the fall, so I'm thinking about working on this more in the near future, but otherwise I don't have much use for speaking Spanish in my daily life, so I'm perfectly happy with having much stronger passive skills than active skills for now. Writing is probably on par with speaking. I definitely feel like my Spanish is the strongest of my languages currently, except in terms of speaking, which comes more easily to me with German.

Sorry for all that detail! It might not be very interesting to anyone else, but I wanted to summarize what I've already done in Spanish since I haven't been keeping a log for the past 4 years, and maybe some of my path in learning Spanish will be useful for others. I always like reading about the different materials people have used in their logs and their paths to learning languages, personally! My immediate goals are to continue to focusing primarily on Spanish and ease my way back into French. Once I start feeling more comfortable with French, I want to add in German again, and then from there, maybe Italian. But those are very long-term goals, so I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, because I always make big plans for all the things that I want to do and then never am able to follow through on all of them! I've also dabbled in a ton of languages in the past (Korean, Russian, Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, and more I'm forgetting), and I do find it fun to learn the very basics of a language to get the flavor of it, so I'll probably do more dabbling from time to time just for fun.

My current plans:

Spanish:
-Finish GdUdE A1-A2 (~1 lesson per day)
-Finish Velvet (5 episodes left!) and then watch Velvet colección (~1 episode per day)
-Read the 3rd Harry Potter book (at least 1 chapter per week; currently on 6 of 22)
-Anki (I have two decks: a pre-created 5000 most common Spanish words deck, and one I've created for vocab I come across in books that either I have come across multiple times and keep having to look up, or words that I just find interesting and want to retain.)
-Memrise Spanish conjugation courses (doing this -AR verb course right now, then I'll move on to -IR and -ER verbs)
-Duolingo
-Clozemaster

French:
-Anki (pre-created deck of 5000 most common French words)
-Language Transfer Intro to French (~1 lesson per day)
-Duolingo
-Clozemaster

At some point, I want to add in FSI Basic Spanish to help with pronunciation and speaking more automatically, but I don't want to take on too much, so we'll see. I will also add some sort of grammar workbook for French (maybe Grammaire Progressive?), probably after I've finished Language Transfer. The Duolingo, Clozemaster, and Memrise goals aren't ones I'm going to make a lot of effort towards, they're more just ways I can get a little French/Spanish in if I have 5-10 minutes to kill or on my commute. Duolingo especially is more helpful for French than Spanish right now, but the extra practice never hurts, and it bugs me that my trees don't look complete anymore now that they've switched to the crown system, so I want to try to finish them.

Anyways, I hope to update this at least once a week — hopefully I can keep this up!

[James29]

Great post. I enjoyed reading your recent history with languages. It sounds like you are well on your way to success and you are using great resources. FSI would be great for what you are looking for... but it can wait. If you do it when you already have an extensive vocabulary and have studied all the grammar it will be much easier and faster to get through. I chuckled when reading all the shows you watch in Spanish. I try consciously to try to watch things in Latin American Spanish but sometimes it is tough because I seem drawn to the shows from Spain. Good luck with your journey.

[iguanamon]

I'll second James29, well done! Many beginners just don't persevere with listening because it's relatively more difficult than reading is for most people. It's that perseverance and daily listening that take the learner from not understanding to understanding. A lot of folks simply give up because it is frustrating. I can't emphasize enough how important not giving up is in language-learning.

You're on the right track in your Spanish-learning. Keep reading, listening and working through your grammar and try to speak as often as you can. Writing can also help with speaking. All the skills tend to reinforce each other. ¡Bienvenida al foro, Michelle!

[NoManches]

Interesting, because I'm from Southern California as well and for the longest time I avoided anything with Spanish from Spain. Almost any time I used Spanish when I lived there it was with somebody from Mexico (plus I traveled to Mexico a lot) and I always thought Spanish from Spain wouldn't be as useful. It seems very clear though that some of the best TV shows in Spanish are from Spain.

As far as getting interested and then leaving the language for a long period of time: I think getting into a habit where Spanish (or any language you are learning) , is a part of your daily life can be very helpful with that. Even if you only read for 30 minutes each day in a foreign language, it can help you out tremendously compared to doing nothing for months at a time.

I also found it interesting to read the summary of your language learning journey. Thanks for sharing!

[brokenrecord]

I chuckled when reading all the shows you watch in Spanish. I try consciously to try to watch things in Latin American Spanish but sometimes it is tough because I seem drawn to the shows from Spain. Good luck with your journey.

Thanks, James! Your log has been a great source for alerting me to Spanish shows -- I definitely want to get to La casa de papel soon. I don't know why I've been drawn to shows from Spain. Despite wanting to watch more Latin American shows, the next few series I plan on watching are all from Spain, so I guess it's not going to happen in the near future, but I do have La niña on my list, so that's something, I guess!

You're on the right track in your Spanish-learning. Keep reading, listening and working through your grammar and try to speak as often as you can. Writing can also help with speaking. All the skills tend to reinforce each other. ¡Bienvenida al foro, Michelle!

Thank you as well, iguanamon! I agree that writing would help with my speaking as well. I had already been thinking I should make more of an effort to write, and a trip to a Spanish-speaking country in the near future is looking even more likely for me now, so I'm going to try to start incorporating some writing in Spanish into my log.

Interesting, because I'm from Southern California as well and for the longest time I avoided anything with Spanish from Spain. Almost any time I used Spanish when I lived there it was with somebody from Mexico (plus I traveled to Mexico a lot) and I always thought Spanish from Spain wouldn't be as useful. It seems very clear though that some of the best TV shows in Spanish are from Spain.

That's funny that you avoided Spanish things from Spain! I didn't start learning Spanish until after I moved to Michigan for grad school, so I wasn't too concerned with learning Latin American Spanish vs. Spanish from Spain, especially since by the time I started watching Spanish series, I was just learning Spanish for fun and not with any intention of needing to use it. If I had still been living in southern CA, I might've made more of an effort to expose myself to Latin American Spanish.

[brokenrecord]

I mentioned in my first post that I might be going to a Spanish-speaking country in the fall, and it's become even more likely! My mom had informed me a few weeks ago that she and my dad were planning on taking some sort of trip in the fall and wanted to see if I wanted to come along, which of course I do since I love traveling. Plus, I hate having to plan things, so if she can plan everything and I can tag along with them, it works out well for me! And since my parents live about 1000 miles from me at the moment, it's nice to get extra opportunities to see them. She had mentioned South America as a possibility, which was why I was vague about where exactly I might be traveling because I wasn't really sure. As it turns out, they've decided on Spain instead, probably Barcelona, Bilbao, and Madrid, so it'll still give me an opportunity to use Spanish. I'm not treating it as 100% sure yet just because there are no reservations made yet, and I still have to make sure I can get the time approved off work, but I'm very excited about it! I've never been to Spain before. And it is giving me an itch to see how much Catalan I can learn in the next 5 months… Kidding. (Mostly.)

Anyways, since the likelihood of me going to Spain just increased, it's probably a good idea for me to focus more on speaking for the next few months. To be honest, when I travel, I like knowing the language more just so I can absorb my surroundings and understand others. I'm pretty shy and introverted, so I'm not the sort of person who would be inclined to try to have long conversations with strangers in a foreign country. And since we'll be visiting large cities and touristy areas, my guess is we would be able to get by without speaking much Spanish. But it's probably still a good idea to practice so I can speak in Spanish if the opportunity presents itself, and I'd feel pretty silly if I was in Spain for 2 weeks and spoke no Spanish. So I'm planning on adding a few things to my Spanish plan to help with speaking. First, iguanamon's suggestion of doing more writing. I'm going to try to write a short paragraph in Spanish once a week here for starters. Second, FSI Spanish Basic. And third, practice using Speechling, which I just started playing around with, and/or simply talking to myself out loud in Spanish.

I can't remember if I heard about Speechling here or elsewhere, but it's a site where you can get feedback on your speaking. There are options to repeat exactly what is said in a recording, respond to a question, or describe a picture. Once you save the recording, your coach (a native speaker) will listen and give you feedback within 24 hours. The coach will either say it was good and give no corrections, or he or she will record a brief correction where he/she will repeat the word you mispronounced twice, then repeat it the way you said it (to illustrate the difference), and then repeat it again correctly. At least, that's my experience so far — it's probably different if you aren't just repeating a sentence and possibly have more to correct.

So far, I've recorded 5 short sentences, 3 of which my coach said were great. For the other two, he illustrated that I sometimes pronounce "d" when it comes between two vowels like it's a tapped "r," so I'm trying to work on that now. I rerecorded the two sentences he had corrected, and he said they sounded great after that, so it seems like it's just something I'm going to have to be conscious of so it doesn't keep happening. One of the sentences I recorded had a trilled "r," which I've worked a lot on, and I can kind of do it, but not always? It doesn't come naturally to me, and a lot of the time I overthink it and end up emphasizing it way too much, or, alternatively, it doesn't come out at all. I wasn't even really confident I was pronouncing it correctly. But my coach had no corrections for the recording with the trilled "r," so that makes me feel more confident that I'm on the right track with it. I think I just need to keep practicing it but also not worry about it so much in order for it to start coming out more naturally. And it does seem to be coming out more easily/naturally than it used to.

Anyways, the downside with Speechling is you only get 10 free recordings a month (and unfortunately if you rerecord a sentence that your coach gave corrections for, it counts against those 10, so I've already used 7 of my 10 for the month); after that, you need to pay for a subscription, which is fairly expensive ($20/month if you get a year's subscription, $30/month if you do month by month). That's more than I'm willing to pay at the moment, but the 10 free recordings a month isn't bad. It looks like you can practice sentences an unlimited amount, though, which is kind of nice — it lets you record what you said and then hear it immediately after the recording, which I think makes it easier to pinpoint errors. Sometimes I find it hard to notice when I've mispronounced something while I'm speaking, but being able to record it and then compare it to a native speaker saying it back to back makes it much easier to pinpoint mistakes. So I'll probably just do the 10 free ones a month and then use the site to practice otherwise. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to work it in and may end up abandoning it.

[eido]

I've used Speechling before. Back then it was a small site so they let you record an unlimited number of times. They gave me three months of premium before they switched to a freemium model, but I still didn't use it. Whatever I was doing, the coaches didn't like my pronunciation, and my listening was pretty poor (not that it's improved) so when they gave me feedback I couldn't understand about half of what they were trying to tell me. It's probably not necessary since you can just copy what they're saying to you, but it'd be nice to understand them. I think I just got frustrated my pronunciation wasn't stellar when I'd been told (and maybe assumed myself) it was pretty good. I think they need a different model for pricing. Maybe I'd go back.

[garyb]

Thanks for mentioning Speechling! I wasn't aware of it, and it sounds right up my street, although I'll bear in mind Eido's negative experiences too. Shame it doesn't have Italian yet, but it could certainly be useful for Spanish.

[brokenrecord]

I've used Speechling before. Back then it was a small site so they let you record an unlimited number of times. They gave me three months of premium before they switched to a freemium model, but I still didn't use it. Whatever I was doing, the coaches didn't like my pronunciation, and my listening was pretty poor (not that it's improved) so when they gave me feedback I couldn't understand about half of what they were trying to tell me. It's probably not necessary since you can just copy what they're saying to you, but it'd be nice to understand them. I think I just got frustrated my pronunciation wasn't stellar when I'd been told (and maybe assumed myself) it was pretty good. I think they need a different model for pricing. Maybe I'd go back.

Ah yeah, that sounds annoying. I wonder if it depends on who your coach is? Or maybe they've changed it to make the corrections easier to understand? My coach really barely said anything; for example, for one of the corrections, he said (incredibly slowly): "Nublado. Nublado. Tú dices: nublaro. Correcto: nublado." So there wasn't much opportunity for me to misunderstand him! I assume the corrections for recordings where you're responding to a question rather than just repeating a sentence may be more involved; I haven't felt courageous enough to do more than just repeat sentences, so I'm not sure what they entail. I do agree they need a different model for pricing. I'd be much more inclined to get a paid account if it were more around $5/month, but $20/month is just too much, and even that is only if you're willing to pay for an entire year up front. If I somehow manage to triple my salary or become a billionaire, then maybe I'll reconsider!

Thanks for mentioning Speechling! I wasn't aware of it, and it sounds right up my street, although I'll bear in mind Eido's negative experiences too. Shame it doesn't have Italian yet, but it could certainly be useful for Spanish.

No problem! I hope you find it useful. It's definitely not perfect, I think it's worth playing around with it a little, at least. I don't think it's worth paying for at the current price, though.

[brokenrecord]

I took a Dialang test this week to get an idea of where I am in Spanish:

Results:
Listening: A2
Writing: B1
Reading: A2
Structures: A2
Vocab: A2

Being at around A2 overall seems pretty accurate to me. I do think it's funny that these results are basically the opposite of where I said I was in my first post, in terms of listening/reading being better for me than writing. I still think that's true, despite these results. I mean, it's not like you're asked to write an essay in the writing portion of the Dialang test — it's more identifying errors that someone else made in a text, or knowing the proper thing to say when writing a formal letter, whereas my issue writing is more with constructing sentences and being able to express myself easily and naturally. And for the listening, I struggle a bit when I'm only listening and don't have anything visual to focus on. I have this problem in English, too. I'm very much a visual learner, and it's too easy for me to unintentionally start tuning out what I'm listening to and then miss the one or two words that are needed to answer the Dialang question correctly. Watching Spanish shows is much easier for me because I can focus my attention on the screen, and I'm less likely to suddenly stop listening and miss key details. But regardless, this is probably still a good measure of where I am at the moment, or at least as good as I can get from an unofficial test online.

Anyways, it's been about a week since I started this log! Here's what I've done in the past week:

Spanish
-13 Locuras que regalarte: page 0->177
-Velvet: episode 51->55 (finished!)
-Velvet colección: episode 1->8
-FSI Basic Spanish: Unit 1->7
-Anki: 7/7 days
-GdUdE A1-A2: Lesson 87->97
-Duolingo: 7/7 days

French
-Language Transfer: Lesson 13->20
-Anki: 7/7 days
-Duolingo: 7/7 days

Pretty productive overall, but the question is if I can keep up this productivity after a month or two. I'll probably dial back some, but hopefully I can keep doing at least something every day. I started a new book, 13 Locuras que regalarte, because I just noticed it came out, I enjoyed some of the Alice Kellen books I read in the past, and I wanted a bit of a break from Harry Potter (which I do love, but I've just read it so many times in my life that I don't always feel the same urge to read it quickly because I know everything that happens), so I'm putting Harry Potter on hold until I finish that. It's all right so far. I'll probably have more detailed thoughts when I finish it.

FSI has been going pretty well. I've actually kind of been enjoying the FSI drills (some I like more than others — translation drills are my favorite, but I kind of hate response drills. In questions like, "¿Es un lápiz o una pluma?" I get tripped up because, well, I don't know if it's a pencil or a pen! It's an audio course!), but they can also be super draining. I've been trying to do 1 unit a day, but it's gotten more difficult as the units get harder and longer. Trying to do 1 per day can also be bad because I'll just want to continue with the unit rather than repeating a drill that I struggled with just so that I can finish and move on to something else. I'm thinking of setting a goal for 30-60 min per day and just doing whatever I can in that time span. That should be more manageable. There are 55 units and I've done 7, and I have roughly 20 weeks left until Spain, so I want to get through approximately 2.5 units per week, which is much less than I did this week. But even if I don't finish FSI before the trip then I won't be too bothered. I'm just going to try to get as far as I can without burning out. I do think it's been helping me speak a little faster and more easily so far.

I finished Velvet this week, and for my first writing practice, I'm going to try to discuss my thoughts about the show in Spanish (corrections welcome and appreciated but don't feel obligated):

Al principio, no me gustó mucho Velvet. La relación entre Ana y Alberto me molestó porque no eran atento con Cristina, aunque después de la segunda temporada se convertió Cristina en una mala persona, así que ya no sentía simpatía por ella. Pero me gustaron los otros personajes, especialmente Raúl, Mateo, Clara, y Rita. Todas las canciones en la serie eran en inglés y me distrajeron porque solo pude concentrarme en la letra inglesa y no en el diálogo español. Al fin de la serie me gustó más. La cuarta temporada era mi favorita porque me gustó que Ana no sabía que Alberto estaba aún vivo y también me gustó la relación entre Raúl y Humberto. La serie no es malo pero me gusta Gran hotel y El tiempo entre costuras mucho mejor.

Translation for what I was attempting to say: At the beginning, I didn't like Velvet a lot. The relationship between Ana and Alberto annoyed me because they weren't considerate of Cristina, although after the second season Cristina became a terrible person, so I didn't feel sympathy for her any longer. But I liked the other characters, especially Raúl, Mateo, Clara, and Rita. All the songs in the show were in English, and I found it distracting because I could only focus on the English lyrics and not the Spanish dialogue. The fourth season was my favorite because I liked that Ana didn't know that Alberto was still alive, and I liked the relationship between Raúl and Humberto. The show isn't bad, but I like Gran hotel and El tiempo entre costuras much better.

That was hard and probably filled with errors! I spent SO long debating pretérito vs. imperfecto for basically every single verb, and I still feel like I got them all wrong! I understand the difference between the two tenses in general and in grammar drills where there's almost always some clue, like "todas las mañanas" or "ayer" to indicate which one to use, but in practice things aren't always that straightforward. Maybe this is a sign that I should pay closer attention to how/when they're used when I'm reading. Anyways, this definitely didn't make me feel like I'm a B1 in writing! I'm sure it'll get better the more I do it — I just have to make the effort to do it and not be too embarrassed about making a lot of mistakes because that's how you learn, right? My goal to start off is to write at least 100 words per week, which really isn't much, but the idea is that once that becomes easier for me, I can bump up the number of words gradually. The above Spanish paragraph is actually 133 words, so I'm already exceeding my goal!

Anyways, I'm only 2 episodes away from being done with Velvet: colección (it's only 10 episodes and they're shorter than Velvet episodes, about 50 minutes each), so I'll be finishing that this week (today, even). The next show on my list is El ministerio del tiempo. I did already watch the first 2 seasons, but it was a year and a half ago and it was with subtitles, so I'm going to rewatch the first 2 seasons without subtitles and then go on to season 3, which I'll be watching for the first time.

In terms of French, I think I'm going to keep the amount of practice I do fairly light until after the trip to Spain. I want to focus most of my attention on improving my Spanish as much as possible before the trip. But Anki, Language Transfer, and Duolingo don't take too much time/effort, so I'll keep those for now. If I feel like it starts taking too much time away from Spanish, then I'll drop French until after my trip, but I don't think those things should be too time consuming. It only takes me about 20 min per day to get through them all, which isn't too bad. I said I'd pick up a French grammar book after I finished Language Transfer, but I'll probably put that off until after my trip and just do Anki/Duolingo until then.

That being said… I did start the Catalan course on Duolingo. In my defense, they don't offer it from an English base, so I've been doing Spanish->Catalan, so I can at least pretend like I'm working on my Spanish while I'm learning Catalan. I've only been doing a lesson or two a day. I have no intention of trying to learn all the Catalan I can before I go to Barcelona, but it'd be nice to know some very basic sentences.