Spanish Group

An area with study groups for various languages. Group members help each other, share resources and experience. Study groups are permanent but the members rotate and change.
Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4960
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Cavesa » Thu Dec 08, 2016 4:55 pm

I have already started this post a few times, right before forums went down, then right before having to restart the computer, and so on. You get the idea.Let's see whether I can actually post it now.

Iguanamnon: Thanks for starting the group!
...............................
Now, Spanish and I.

I've recently realized it has been ten years since I started learning Spanish for the first time. Should I leave this sentence here alone, it really looks like I have very little to show for it :-D
But back then, it was a non-obligatory small class (4 students) on top of other highschool stuff. Not only more pressing stuff and my laziness played part. But as usual, it was easy to do well without putting in any work. I profited a lot from French (around B1 back then), while the other three students had German as their second foreign langauge, and I think relying too much on it was my mistake. The teacher was one of the rare good ones, especially by his personal example: the first polyglot I've ever met in person. But I am simply not made for the class approach, it seems. However, having finished the classes (they didin't continue as the others were finishing their studies), I let those basics rot completely. A mistake.

A few years later, I found HTLAL, and my first log was about improving French and Spanish. But still, my Spanish progress was nearly non-existent for months or perhaps a year. I'd say this phase of my learning and forum history was a lot about learning how to learn, about reorienting myself, about wanderlust (which I think was actually beneficial to me in the end).

The breaking point came before my one month long stay in Spain as an exchange student. In something like six weeks before the journey, I had gone through basic grammar and vocab again, and watched several tv series. This completely changed my direction. In Spain, I was a bad speaker (enough to be part of a conversation, but full of mistakes and with vocab limiting me. Curiously, I was the best speaking foreigner of the group. And my level was still considered useful and people did't switch on me) , but I understood most Spaniards almost perfectly (quite everyone except a few southerners and one northern girl that was really not sympathic in general). This improved my lab and stay experience by several hundred %! Really, don't ever trust people telling you "but they speak English, you don't need the langauge!".

After that, I continued with lots of input. And it showed even during my rare opportunities to actively use the language, but it wasn't enough. Last year, I returned to systematic studying, which I have sticked to, even though less diligently than I'd love to. The Course Completion Challenge has been a salvation, as it makes me focus more and trully get through resources to the end.

My level:
a test on a cervantes website selling online courses recommended me C1.3 or C1.4 courses. They don't offer C2 ones. But I know limitations of such tests well. Passively, I am quite safely at or beyond C1, even though I should definitely work on non-mexican LA variants. Actively, I have no clue and don't wanna waste time self-assessing myself ad nauseam . I am now working with intermediate resources, and I am getting value from them, that's what counts.

My plans, which lead me to joining the group:
autumn 2017 DELE C1.
Finishing the Super Challenge. Listening is easy-binge watching tv series. Reading is not hard, I am just considering reading more on readlang, to get flashcards for active learning, as comprehension doesn't pose much of a problem.
Courses:
-I am using Gramatica de Uso del Espanol B (the awesome blue book), looking forward to the C level (the awesome green book)
-From the series by Anaya: Gramatica B2, perhaps I should borrow and use the Fonetica and Escritura books.
-looking for more resources on writing. I have recently found a few links, I'll let you know, if they prove useful.
-I want to go through a few intermediate-advanced courses. One classroom aimed B2 and one C1 course (it looks like En Acción 3 and 4 will win the competition), Fiesta 2 and 3 (Czech based courses of high quality and not that usual approach. 2 should be B1-B2, 3 should cover some C stuff and details, and so on), Učebnice současné Španělštiny 2 (B2-C2 course with good exercises, and good explanations of stuff that may be troublesome due to my native langauge), Cvičebnice současné španělštiny (a huge exercise book with over 8000 sentences, most exercises are translation). I am considering a French based resource (no idea which one) to compare the grammar and get rid of mistakes coming from French being my strongest romance language.
-DELE exam preparatory books. I will certainly use the Cervates library to borrow them all and buy the one I'll find the most useful. It seems that Cronometro should be the best (I've recently found a few nice reddit thread on the exam)
-I need to finish edthird's awesome conjugation courses on Memrise. Drilling them makes a difference for me, especially as I am leaving the safe shores of extremely common stuff.
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jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3135
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:52 pm
Languages: sv, en
de, es
ga, eo
---
fi, yue, ro, tp, cy, kw, pt, sk
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2773
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu Dec 08, 2016 10:52 pm

Short summary of my Spanish activities:
I took Spanish for three years in high school (a LONG time ago) - what that means in terms of CEFR, I have no idea. Whenever there was an upcoming test, I went through all the grammar the night before. It took an hour at most, a couple of times per semester. We learned most of the tenses (probably similar to what is covered in a whole Duolingo tree). I used the language occasionally at work that summer (1994!).

Fast forward some twelve years. I found HTLAL in December 2005 (and became an aspiring polyglot!), listened to the Michel Thomas CDs, got the Assimil New Spanish with Ease course... took some Skype lessons through LingQ and listened-read two Dan Brown novels some years later.

Eventually I went on a mini-vacation to Barcelona in August 2013. I've used the language at work now and then (just short two-minute conversations) and I've spoken it at the Polyglot Gatherings in Berlin. Based on how seldom I actually speak Spanish, it still feels that it "works". I attribute that to the solid basics I got in school. I finished the Duolingo tree earlier this year.

I'll follow this topic with great interest.

More ramblings in my log.
4 x
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Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

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Ogrim
Brown Belt
Posts: 1009
Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 10:29 am
Location: Alsace, France
Languages: Norwegian (N) English (C2), French (C2), Spanish (C2), German (B2), Romansh (B2), Italian (B2), Catalan (B2), Russian (B1), Latin (B2), Dutch (B1), Croatian (A2), Arabic (on hold), Ancient Greek (learning), Romanian (on hold)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=873
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Ogrim » Fri Dec 09, 2016 8:59 am

A great initiative by Iguanamon starting this group. You almost wonder why nobody thought of it before. :)

I do not study Spanish any longer, but as Spanish has been an essential part of my life for well over 30 years now, I thought I would share my story as well.

I started learning Spanish more or less by accident. In school I could "only" study English, German and French, and at the age of 17 I wanted to start a fourth language. I firstly thought about Italian, but by chance I discovered that the Argentinian Embassy in Oslo offered free Spanish lessons for beginners, so I signed up, thinking I had nothing to lose if I did not like it. Actually I loved it! The teacher was a nice lady from Argentina who, if I remember correctly, worked in the cultural section of the Embassy, and she gave us an inspiring introduction to the language of Cervantes and Borges. When the course ended, I continued on my own, doing a "correspondence course". (This was pre-internet days, a correspondence course meant that you would do your exercises on a piece of paper, send them in the post to the company running the course, and maybe a week later get them back with corrections and a comment from a teacher plus the next assignment to be done.) I started buying El País (the only available Spanish newspaper in Norway at the time) every weekend, and I looked out for any Spanish film being shown in the cinema or on TV. I went on a monthly intensive course in Spain, it was my first visit to the country, and I fell in love with the people and the culture.

I was now hooked on language learning, and fast forward to university, I decided to do a Master in comparative Romance philology, with my main focus on Spanish. I spent a year in Salamanca, Spain, writing a thesis on a minute detail in Spanish grammar, and there I also met my Spanish wife-to-be.

To make a long story short, over the years I have read hundreds of novels and non-fiction works in Spanish and watched hundreds of hours of Spanish TV. I speak Spanish every day at home, and I probably know as much, if not more, of Spanish politics, history, culture and geography than I know of my own native country. Now I don't claim to speak as a native, I sometimes make silly mistakes, especially when I am tired, and I still discover new words I didn't know on a regular basis. That is the beauty of languages, even if you are at C2, there is always more to discover.

I could not imagine life today without Spanish. It has become part of my identity and personality, and although I have lived much longer in French-speaking countries, I feel a very strong affinity to Spain and everything Spanish.

I wish everyone good luck in their endeavours to learn this beautiful language, and I will be following this group with great interest.
7 x
Ich grolle nicht

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MamaPata
Brown Belt
Posts: 1019
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 9:25 am
Location: London
Languages: English (N), French (C1*), Russian (B1), Spanish (B1).

Long lost: Arabic and Latin.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3004
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby MamaPata » Fri Dec 09, 2016 9:39 am

I started Spanish just over ten years ago, as my school offered French and Spanish. I then continued to do Spanish until I left school, so had about 6 years of regular, concerted study. I was incredibly lucky, in that I had a few Spanish speaking friends and wonderful teachers. For the final two years of school, I had a wonderful Spanish teacher who simply talked to us loads, and so I got lots of speaking practice (also a very small class!). She was a brilliant teacher and gave us song lyrics, poems, book recommendations, films, so we all got a real sense of Spanish beyond a textbook.

Since then, I have basically done no Spanish for 5 years. :oops: As a result, I have forgotten a lot. And when I try to speak Spanish now, a lot of Russians words come out! However, I love Spanish and I really want to pull that back and get to where I used to be. I'd like to get to the point where Spanish is just part of my life again? So it will be great to be a part of this group and see what you are all doing.
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Corrections appreciated.

Spoonary
Blue Belt
Posts: 876
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 3:45 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Español (Adv), Italiano (Int), Esperanto (I try)
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Spoonary » Fri Dec 09, 2016 11:38 am

schneibler wrote:Thanks Spoonary, much appreciated! It sounds like you and I are using similar methods to learn. Do you have any recommendations of specific media I could check out?

It looks like you're already well stocked up with series to watch, and if not, that link that iguanamon left should give you plenty of ideas. :)

That said, one Spanish TV series I really enjoyed was Vis a vis, a drama set in a women's prison á la Orange is the new black. I recommend that to everyone!
3 x

NoManches
Blue Belt
Posts: 654
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2016 2:21 pm
Location: Estados Unidos (near the Mexican border)
Languages: English - (N)
Spanish - B2 +
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7942
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby NoManches » Fri Dec 09, 2016 3:07 pm

Attention all Spanish learners:

The second season of Club de Cuervos is now available on Netflix!!!!!!

If you haven't seen the first season, I highly recommend watching this show. Originally I thought that they only put up one episode at a time, but it turns out they put up the entire season!

Way back during the first season I did one intensive viewing of an episode which helped with the rest of the season. I will most likely do the same with the second season. I'll probably go back and rewatch some of season 1 as well 8-)


**UPDATE**

So I watched the first episode this morning....and it was amazing (as expected). I watched the entire show without subtitles, but decided to do something I often talk about but never do: I watched the show over again with subtitles....stopping....rewinding...looking up words...etc.

I still have about 12 minutes left (which I will finish later) but here is a list of all unknown words that I came across:

Transcendental
Anular
Bélgica
Faul (foul)
El arbitraje
Nos ponemos a perder
Legítimo
Expulsar
Por decir
Sacar adelante
Criterio
Venderse – te vendiste
vetar

Since I am a native English speaker, some of these words are just very obvious to me (such as expulsar & legítimo). Others might not jump out at me by themselves, but in context they are easy to figure out (vetar, criterio, sacar adelante, por decir, etc.).

While I'm excited that I am familiar with most of the vocabulary in the show, my overall comprehension needs to be improved. The thing that I found helpful was when I watched the show the second time, I would rewind for any part I didn't understand and would try to listen a few times to see if I could make the words out. If I couldn't make out what they were saying, I'd look at the subtitles and replay once or twice while reading along. Then, I'd rewind again and watch without subtitles. Usually by this time I can understand everything they are saying.

I know of no easy way of doing it, but something that would benefit me (and many other learners) would be something like this:

You watch a TV show and anytime you come across a line being said that you can't comprehend, you extract the audio along with the transcript. Then later on, you can review the audio over and over again while checking what you heard with the transcript. This is basically doing the subs2srs thing that I have seen people post about, but from my understanding that is only good for the entire show...not individual parts. For me, this one episode would only require me to "extract" 20 lines of dialog.


I'm hoping that some other Spanish learners reading this will use some of my ideas (or share their opinions on this method). I know Iguanamon has some good posts on intensively watching shows in Portuguese which really helped him. I'll be very honest though: It is super hard to watch the same show twice in a row, especially when the second time around you are constantly pausing and rewinding. I'm afraid that a lot of my Spanish TV viewing has been too passive. I may understand 85% of a show, but I never force myself to pick up on the other 15%. Sure, after many years my listening will improve and I'll start to pick up on the other 15% naturally...but I'd rather force myself to understand that other 15% right now.

**Also since I'm new to posting in the Language Team forum, I hope this last post follows the guidelines of what we are supposed to post about. If not I can bring this over to my language log.
3 x
DOUBLE Super Challenge
Spanish Movies
: 10795 / 18000

Spanish Books
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Hundetier
Yellow Belt
Posts: 88
Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2016 2:12 pm
Languages: Deutsch, English, Español
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4873
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Hundetier » Sat Dec 10, 2016 8:29 pm

Spoonary wrote:I think it would be a good idea to introduce ourselves and our 'relationship' with Spanish in these first few posts, but feel free to ignore this.

Now I want to make up for my first stumpling into this thread.

I started to learn Spanish in march (mainly to avoid learning for a non-language-related exam) with a self-learning-course (book with audio). This language fascinated me, and so I continued to spend my free time with it. My next step was "The complete grammar" and "Spanish Verb Tenses" of the Practise makes Perfect series combined with some beginners-podcasts. In summer I had a break of six weeks and then I started over, complete grammar revision with student repetition books and listening exercises (mainly podcasts aimed for beginners). In october I joined a conversation course meeting once a week with the goal to reach the level B1 (but at the moment we only have completed 1/3 of the accompanying book), but I get a bit of speaking time every week. Then I started Rocket Spanish with the goal to practise my pronunciation; and also Glossika to "learn" the structures of Spanish. Last week I had my first skype-conversation-lesson.

In the near future I want to continue pronunciation-practise, the conversation-course, the grammar-exercises, watching youtube-videos and listening to intermediate podcasts. And also do one to two skype lessons a week and read a real spanish books. My goal is being able to comunicate in a sufficient and effort-less way with native spanish-speakers. And I don't want to repeat all the negative experiences I had with my previous language-learning-episodes.
4 x

Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4960
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Cavesa » Sat Dec 10, 2016 9:00 pm

Hundetier wrote:I started to learn Spanish in march (mainly to avoid learning for a non-language-related exam)


You look like my kind of person :-D

....................
It may be just my impression, but there are more people preparing for DELE on this forum now. Are you? It might be interesting to know who my brothers and sisters in arms are.
1 x

Tomás
Blue Belt
Posts: 554
Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2015 9:48 pm
Languages: English (N). Currently studying Spanish (intermediate), French (false beginner).
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Re: Spanish Group (free audio!)

Postby Tomás » Sat Dec 10, 2016 11:48 pm

This page has 29 freely (legal) downloadable mp3 files associated with a college-level Spanish reader comprised of selections from Spanish literature:

http://college.cengage.com/languages/sp ... nts/audio/
5 x

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Hundetier
Yellow Belt
Posts: 88
Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2016 2:12 pm
Languages: Deutsch, English, Español
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4873
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Hundetier » Sun Dec 11, 2016 7:24 am

Cavesa wrote:It may be just my impression, but there are more people preparing for DELE on this forum now. Are you?

At the moment: no, but I'm interested in it. Some day I'll get my knowledge tested, but before that I want to reach a decent level.
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