3 Month Plan - Writing (thoughts welcomed)

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the1whoknocks
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3 Month Plan - Writing (thoughts welcomed)

Postby the1whoknocks » Thu May 04, 2017 4:01 pm

I’m compelled to meet a completely arbitrary and self imposed deadline, and I’d appreciate your help. I’ll explain: this September, I will have been studying Spanish for three years and I'd like to make it as good as I can by then. There's really no telling if anything I do between now and then will have a real impact on my Spanish. Still, I’d like to push the envelop as much as possible, and do something that at least has a strong possibility of improving my overall level. Writing seems like a prime candidate since, unsurprisingly, it appears to be my weakest skill. I’ve never been one to write much in Spanish. Right now, I’d say I’m a very confident B1 level learner who occasionally knocks on B2’s door.

The Plan: Improve my level by focusing on writing argumentative pieces for three months.

-1. Each week, choose a topic of interest. This could be inspired by whatever I have going on in life, a developing current event, or topics that I would generally like to be able to express myself better on. Some examples might be: tax policy; should the international community intervene in Venezuela; my thoughts on Plato’s allegory of the cave; the global rise of Nationalism (Populism?); immigration and the U.S.; God; feminism; gun control; homosexuality, abortion; the death penalty; Denmark. The idea is to really push myself by writing on some really touchy topics while maintaining a degree of tact and substance.

-2. Spend 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week, reading narrowly on said topic; new article each day. This will be intensive in nature.

-3. Spend another 20 minutes, 5 days a week, listening narrowly on said topic; new video or podcast, each day.

-4. Spend 20 minutes, 5 days a week, writing on whatever I read and listened to and possibly post to Lang-8. Here, word count isn’t important, just frequency. I estimate this being somewhere between 50 - 100 words.

In addition:

Month 1: Once a week, write a 250 word essay on chosen topic.
Month 2: Once a week, write a 500 word essay on chosen topic.
Month 3: Twice a week, write a 500 word essay on chosen topic.

Ideally, these would be written in one sitting.

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Questions:
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-1. Would you change anything?
-2. Do you know of a log/ post where someone has detailed trying something similar?
-3. How often would you decide to meet with a tutor to work on this type of writing?
-4. Anything you’d like to add, or think I should keep in mind while trying this? Any comments are welcome.

Thanks for your time!
Last edited by the1whoknocks on Thu May 25, 2017 4:24 am, edited 3 times in total.
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the1whoknocks
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Re: 3 Month Plan (please advise)

Postby the1whoknocks » Thu May 04, 2017 4:15 pm

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No need to read ... but in case you’re wondering:
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-- As things stand, I will have written only 13,000 words, or 26 pages of 12 pt, single spaced text. However, I’m hoping that the narrow reading and listening will add to the overall progress.

-- The biggest risk to my success is giving up; that's why I’m only starting with a 250 word essay per week for the first month.
As part of my commitment to a couple other challenges, I’ll be working through FSI Spanish and Gramatica de Uso del Español C1-C2. I’m also trying to complete my own version of the Super Challenge, so watching TV and reading will still be part of the mix.

-- Given the nature of the topics I plan to write about, there will be a lot of room for misunderstanding. I’ve concluded it would be best to work with a professional tutor who already knows me fairly well. Also, finding someone on Lang-8 who is willing to correct a page of text, with the exacting detail I’m hoping for, might be a challenge.

-- I chose argumentative pieces because they’re more likely to involve topics I’d like to be able to discuss, and I’m like to have to make repeated use of certain structures (I’m thinking subjunctive, here). Since I care about these topics, I’m more likely to remember the associated vocabulary I’ll need to learn. This post from Tarvos helped lead me to this conclusion.

-- At 20 minutes to read, 20 minutes to listen, 20 minutes to write, 30 minutes for a course, 30 minutes to read (Super Challenge book) and possibly 40 minutes for whatever series I’m working through, I’m looking at a solid 2.5-3 hours a day. Not including music, random videos/articles and time with my tutor.

-- I never saw myself taking an exam, and will avoid doing so if practical, but sitting the DELE in 2018 may be a real possibility. This might be good preparation for that exam if I decide to move ahead with that.
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Re: 3 Month Plan - Writing (please advise)

Postby DaveBee » Thu May 04, 2017 5:27 pm

the1whoknocks wrote:I’m compelled to meet a completely arbitrary and self imposed deadline, and I’d appreciate your help. I’ll explain: this September, I will have been studying Spanish for three years and I'd like to make it as good as I can by then. There's really no telling if anything I do between now and then will have a real impact on my Spanish. Still, I’d like to push the envelop as much as possible, and do something that at least has a strong possibility of improving my overall level. Writing seems like a prime candidate since, unsurprisingly, it appears to be my weakest skill. I’ve never been one to write much in Spanish. Right now, I’d say I’m a very confident B1 level learner who occasionally knocks on B2’s door.

-2. Do you know of a log/ post where someone has detailed trying something similar?
Forum member 'whatiftheblog' outlined her (successful) push to perfect her french.

Specifically for writing, she has said:
1.
My Twittering has actually turned out to be super helpful to pick up more informal, but also professional, speech and practice it reflexively. I now feel perfectly comfortable entering into Twitter discussions with random French people, and I even got retweeted by a top campaign activist and liked by a sitting Cabinet member. I'd highly recommend this as a fun supplementary activity - create an account, follow accounts in your TL related to whatever you like, and start tweeting yourself.

2.
I've decided to embark on a French writing project of sorts. I have many feelings and points of analysis to share regarding the election and just the general state of things worldwide. Unlike when it comes to domestic politics, where I have a large group of friends to talk to, I don't have anyone who'll really be willing to entertain me on the topic of French politics for longer than a few minutes, though I have gotten a few to where they're at least curious about it. So instead, I'll be trying to write out what I hope will be a very long essay (or a collection of essays, I guess) on all the sociopolitical/philosophical/historical things I want to discuss. This gives me a continuous project to work through, which I've noticed is very helpful in getting me motivated to write.

3.
On the writing front, I think I've officially gotten to the point where I can just sit down and spit out 1,000 words on a pretty serious (though well known to me) topic in about 40 minutes with 1-2 lookups max. It's actually ridiculous - today I had opinions about things I'd seen on TV, so I just sat down and wrote them out, only getting stuck once on the word "paresse" of all things. So at the end of it all I sit back, check the time, check the word count, and think to myself, "alright, yeah, that was fine, I can definitely talk about this intelligently". And then, quite literally the very next thing in my mind is "but this probably wouldn't be sufficient to pass C1 writing...", even though I rationally understand that it absolutely would. It just stunned me that I'm still subconsciously thinking in terms of my skills at the beginning of this cycle. Ugh.


EDIT
Scotroyenne, another successful french learner, said of writing:
Writing
For a while I had a great regular writing habit. The whole dialectic writing structure has been and still is a mystery to me. I practiced it casually by writing down some of La Rochefoucauld's Maximes in a small notebook as prompts which made it really easy to jot something down during 15 to 20 minute breaks. The Maximes are short, thought-provoking statements about human behavior that often contain an internal contradiction or something going against "common sense" that are perfect for exercising dialectical reasoning.
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Re: 3 Month Plan - Writing (please advise)

Postby the1whoknocks » Sat May 06, 2017 7:04 am

Thanks a lot, DaveBee.

Those are two solid logs that I’m going to take some time to comb through. I’ve been by whatiftheblog’s log before, but hadn’t noticed the binder idea or the other links you provided, until now. That’s giving me a good amount of food for thought. Sctroyenne’s log is new to me, but seems very informative.

Thanks again.
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Forums

Postby coldrainwater » Sat May 20, 2017 2:56 am

I might have a means of complementing your plan. As one aspect of my future approach, I plan to rack up notable writing practice using vbulletin message forums similar to this very forum. For myself, and I suspect others reading this, forum participation is one of those things that is so obvious, you might miss it. Forums also do a good job of keeping historical data on your behalf, so you can measure progress over time.

Specifically, I'll seek forums that have good quality writing so that what I might read and emulate is not likely to be of low quality. With forums, I can do deep dives into as many specialized areas of interest as I have time for or can optionally pick more general interest forums. Given that it would be my TL, I will care a boatload about doing my level best to communicate effectively. Here there is also a big 'fun and profit' aspect. There isn't likely to be professional feedback (but then again you have that covered already), but there are detailed and engaging conversations to be had as well as simple feedback mechanisms such as 'likes' that can be used to measure [among other things] impact/contribution/etc.

As a highly introverted person, I need somewhere that I feel comfortable writing for hours on end without stress. The forum posts can also then be fed to professional instructors for more detailed correction and feedback. I'd imagine the history trail of your own writing as you move from B1 to C1 for example would be quite pleasant to look back on.
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Re: 3 Month Plan - Writing (please advise)

Postby zenmonkey » Sat May 20, 2017 4:43 pm

Initially it seemed quite the load, so don't knock having 'only' outputted 26 pages - for someone who started at a confident B1 going to B2 that's a pretty good production level.
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the1whoknocks
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Re: Forums

Postby the1whoknocks » Mon May 22, 2017 10:59 pm

coldrainwater wrote:I might have a means of complementing your plan. As one aspect of my future approach, I plan to rack up notable writing practice using vbulletin message forums similar to this very forum. For myself, and I suspect others reading this, forum participation is one of those things that is so obvious, you might miss it. [...]


Absolutely true in my case, and I’m still a bit surprised I hadn’t considered that more seriously until reading your post. For all the benefits you mentioned, I’m going to keep searching for possible candidates. I hope you’ll share any forum that meets your criteria … I’d be really interested to check it out. Of course, I’ll let you know if I find one. Signing up for twitter is another thing on my ‘to-do’ list.

I really appreciate this suggestion, thanks a lot!

zenmonkey wrote:Initially it seemed quite the load, so don't knock having 'only' outputted 26 pages - for someone who started at a confident B1 going to B2 that's a pretty good production level.


Thanks!

You're right, and at least it would be more than I was writing last year. I think I was looking at it from the perspective that, in the long term, it will just be a drop in the bucket towards the work I’ll need to put in to reach a higher level.
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Re: Forums

Postby coldrainwater » Tue May 23, 2017 12:06 am

the1whoknocks wrote:Absolutely true in my case, and I’m still a bit surprised I hadn’t considered that more seriously until reading your post. For all the benefits you mentioned, I’m going to keep searching for possible candidates. I hope you’ll share any forum that meets your criteria … I’d be really interested to check it out.

I'll be glad to share what I find. If you let me know what types of forums interest you, I can keep those in mind when I make a more concerted search effort. As one example, I find the quality of English content on Quora to be superbly high. It is amazing, in my opinion, that you can get giants in so many fields posting in one place. You can tell that some put hours into their posts.

It is nascent, but I noted some time ago that they now support Quora in Spanish. I post it mostly as an example of what will meet my criteria, but it could be of interest to you also.

https://es.quora.com/

Edit: I use many strategies to find forums, but just to share one or two simple ideas. For google-fu, I almost always do some searches with vbulletin in the search tag. I use google to limit searches only to pages in español. I use country codes (.cl, .mx, .es etc) and other extensions that are common for forums (.org). I also use similar site searches to pull up boards that are similar to ones I have found prior (alexa, similarsites etc). There is a site called bigboards also that will look at most forums worldwide and find the largest. You easily wind up with taringa, forocoches and several of the other Spanish language giants almost immediately. From there you can often find tons of links. I like to also search by discipline and fight my way back to niche forums. Some will be a bit hidden even though I am sure many are actually trying to be seen (but fail).
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Re: Forums

Postby the1whoknocks » Thu May 25, 2017 4:23 am

coldrainwater wrote:
the1whoknocks wrote:Absolutely true in my case, and I’m still a bit surprised I hadn’t considered that more seriously until reading your post. For all the benefits you mentioned, I’m going to keep searching for possible candidates. I hope you’ll share any forum that meets your criteria … I’d be really interested to check it out.

I'll be glad to share what I find. If you let me know what types of forums interest you, I can keep those in mind when I make a more concerted search effort. As one example, I find the quality of English content on Quora to be superbly high. It is amazing, in my opinion, that you can get giants in so many fields posting in one place. You can tell that some put hours into their posts.

It is nascent, but I noted some time ago that they now support Quora in Spanish. I post it mostly as an example of what will meet my criteria, but it could be of interest to you also.

https://es.quora.com/

Edit: I use many strategies to find forums, but just to share one or two simple ideas. For google-fu, I almost always do some searches with vbulletin in the search tag. I use google to limit searches only to pages in español. I use country codes (.cl, .mx, .es etc) and other extensions that are common for forums (.org). I also use similar site searches to pull up boards that are similar to ones I have found prior (alexa, similarsites etc). There is a site called bigboards also that will look at most forums worldwide and find the largest. You easily wind up with taringa, forocoches and several of the other Spanish language giants almost immediately. From there you can often find tons of links. I like to also search by discipline and fight my way back to niche forums. Some will be a bit hidden even though I am sure many are actually trying to be seen (but fail).



In terms of types of forums I’d be interested in, I’d say they would involve: business, politics/ current events, economics, health & wellness, philosophy, gaming, travel, language learning, literature or anywhere one could learn and talk about random things. Really, I’d be interested to see any forum that meets your criteria, and that you like.

For much of this stuff, I think Quora might be a fantastic option.

Also, I had to chuckle to myself after learning that ‘google-fu’ is not a site used to search for forums. Thanks a lot for those search tips!
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Re: 3 Month Plan - Writing (thoughts welcomed)

Postby Stelle » Thu May 25, 2017 11:34 am

Although not exactly the same, I did something similar during a week-long intensive Spanish class in Guatemala. I was working one-on-one with a teacher for four hours a day, and I was interested in both improving my Spanish and learning more about Guatemalan culture. Every day I chose a local newspaper article and read it intensively, pulling out new vocabulary and noticing grammar points that I needed to work on. From there, I wrote an opinion piece and a list of 8-10 questions based on (or inspired by) the article.

A good chunk of my class time the following day focused on the article. We edited my writing together, my teacher gave me tips to improve, and then we spent upwards of an hour discussing the questions that I had prepared. The time passed quickly and it was both challenging and enjoyable. I saw a definite improvement in my writing over the course of only a week.

I've thought about doing something similar once a week with my current tutor, an italki tutor from Spain. Right now I'm focusing on Italian for the six-week challenge, but once July comes, I'll have a lot more time for languages.

I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with this! I may even join you come July.
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