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.
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Jaleel10
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Spanish (Advanced-B2)
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Jaleel10 » Tue Oct 23, 2018 6:59 am

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Jaleel10
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Spanish (Advanced-B2)
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Jaleel10 » Tue Oct 23, 2018 11:01 am

How did some of you more advanced learners work on your writing skills?

I am trying to make writing a part of my daily schedule but I don't know what to do, what to write about or how much time to dedicate to it :( Is it something I should only be worried about at a more advanced level?

Any advice would be gladly appreciated!
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arthaey
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Location: Seattle, WA, USA
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EN (native);
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3864&view=unread#unread
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby arthaey » Tue Oct 23, 2018 2:06 pm

Jaleel10 wrote:How did some of you more advanced learners work on your writing skills?

I am trying to make writing a part of my daily schedule but I don't know what to do, what to write about or how much time to dedicate to it :( Is it something I should only be worried about at a more advanced level?

Any advice would be gladly appreciated!

November and thus NaNoWriMo. You could join us writing every day for a month; that will surely help! :) Make a goal of 3000 words as a beginner — that's 100 words a day, a challenge but doable!

Honestly though, the way to practice writing is to write. Don't worry about "what to write about", even simple diary entries about what you did during your day, or what you want to do, or explaining how to do something, or commenting on current events, or whatever — any of that helps.

Writing is good practice even at a beginner level. Obviously you won't be writing things that are as complicated as an advanced student would... but you won't become advanced unless you practice being a beginner first. :)
Last edited by arthaey on Tue Oct 23, 2018 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Posts in: FrenchGermanHungarianSpanish
NaNoWriMo: 10,000 words
Corrections welcome in any language; I prefer an informal register.

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tiia
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby tiia » Tue Oct 23, 2018 3:02 pm

You could also just look around what people write about in their logs. Some people write it in their target language.
Personally, I recently wrote job applications in a TL after having no need to write longer texts for quite some time.
Or get yourself a pen pal and write personal emails.
You could also think of some news topic and write your own article about it. Or write a summary about the last book you read. (Maybe it was in your TL?)
Or try to write your own (ficitonal) short stories.
There was also a writing thread somewhere in the multilingual room, which unfortunately somehow stopped... Or look for ideas brought up for some output challenges.
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Corrections for entries written in Finnish, Spanish or Swedish are welcome.
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coldrainwater
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Location: Magnolia, TX
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Writing practice

Postby coldrainwater » Tue Oct 23, 2018 11:22 pm

What has been most practical and consistent for me is incorporating the writing into my daily work, and to a lesser extent, my personal life. Long story short, if I write it at work, it is in ES 90% of the time. I switched my work computer (Windows) to Spanish and write emails and IM's in Spanish whenever possible. That way you get the same sort of autocorrection with Outlook that you would get writing in and L1. Find out who likes reading/writing in ES at work and send business IM's all in ES. All personal notes/meeting notes are currently in Spanish. What I like about it is that my writing matches what I will actually be doing day to day in the future. It is not terribly different than mindfully making sure you can put your current thoughts and surroundings in ES. I am not at a point where I want to focus strongly on writing until I am more advanced, but log + all personal writing is enough for me for the moment. My intercambio partner writes using Twitter (and he also mentioned that they would correct his English, which I found interesting but have not tested in reverse).

My future plan: participate in forums just like this and become heavily involved in writing and expressing thoughts via Vbulletin.
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Kraut
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Kraut » Tue Oct 23, 2018 11:34 pm

I'm not advanced in Spanish.
I would practice bi-directional translation for a while in different registers (film reviews, book reviews ... ) from good sources. It avoids you the trial and error phase: you don't need a corrector.
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Chmury
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Chmury » Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:31 am

Jaleel10 wrote:How did some of you more advanced learners work on your writing skills?

I am trying to make writing a part of my daily schedule but I don't know what to do, what to write about or how much time to dedicate to it :( Is it something I should only be worried about at a more advanced level?

Any advice would be gladly appreciated!


As soon as I was able to string together enough words to make a basic sentence, I was writing in Spanish and Dutch. It’s something I’ve always done from back in the days of HTLAL when I first began studying languages. I’d simply write in my target languages in my log a few times a week, and in the earlier stages when I was unsure about whether or not people would understand what I had written, I’d write what I’d meant to say in Spanish and Dutch in English too, so if a native speaker or someone advanced stopped by, they might be able to see and correct some of the mistakes I was making.

I think writing in your target language is one of the best things you can do, at all stages of your learning, and especially when you don’t have people with whom you can speak your target language(s), as writing is then the only way you can actively use and produce in your target language. I’d say most of the time people use to study a language, especially in the beginner and intermediate stages, they’re mostly engaging the passive skills, namely reading and listening, so simply by introducing writing into your learning, you now have an outlet through which to produce. Also writing allows you to see holes in your target languages, for example, I might want to write about cooking, and I realise I want to express ‘cook at a low heat’ in my target language, but have no idea how to do so. Or perhaps I want to say, yesterday ‘I hung out with my friends’. Now I’ve identified two expressions I don’t know in my target language and now I can go off and figure out how they’re expressed. For years (and still nowadays too), every time I wrote I’d be discovering gaps in my knowledge, then looking up how they’re expressed in Spanish, then adding example sentences to Anki with the correct way of expressing it, and then next time I wrote that gap wouldn’t be there any longer. I honestly can’t say enough about the benefits of writing.

In terms of what to write about, anything and everything! Wherever your mind takes you at that point of time. Write about the comics you love to read, what your neighbourhood’s like, what it’s like living in your part of the world, that weird dream you had, what you’d like to be doing in 3 years from now, anything at all. If you really do struggle for something to write about though, there are lots of websites out there which will provide you with a list of topics, like this one 400 Writing Topics. Also another way is to write in Spanish with other forum members in their logs. Maybe you’ll get a little back-and-forth going which is always nice, and also this way they provide the topic, you just have to engage with and respond to it.

Hope all that helps you Jaleel10!
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Hindernisse und Schwierigkeiten sind Stufen, auf denen wir in die Höhe steigen

Kraut
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Kraut » Wed Oct 24, 2018 8:06 pm

A Spanish version of SKAM

http://www.movistarplus.es/ficha/skam-t ... id=1518757




SKAM es el retrato de una generación, la de los chicos y chicas nacidos a partir del año 2000. Sus dudas, sus problemas, sus sentimientos, lo que piensan, lo que quieren y, sobre todo, lo que callan.

La primera temporada de SKAM se centra en Eva. Durante el verano ha vivido su amor con su novio Jorge a solas, pero llega el primer día de clase y Eva tiene que enfrentarse al rechazo de las que eran sus amigas de toda la vida. No sabe dónde encontrar un grupo donde se sienta integrada.

Con la excusa del viaje de fin de curso que la delegada de clase, Viri, quiere organizar, Eva conoce a otras chicas muy distintas a ella y con un solo punto en común: son las perdedoras de clase. Este grupo, dispar a más no poder, va estrechando lazos, aunque Eva siempre mantiene la distancia, teme que se enteren de su gran secreto: el motivo por el que sus amigas de antes la desprecian.

Eva se vuelca en la única certeza de su vida: su novio. Pero la vuelta a la rutina implica que Jorge vea a sus amigos y que pase menos tiempo con ella. Eva empieza a desconfiar de Jorge, sospecha que le miente, que algo le oculta¿


http://www.movistarplus.es/ficha/skam-t ... id=1518757
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skam_(ser ... isi%C3%B3n)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skam_(TV_series)




Despite no promotion ahead of its 2015 launch, Skam broke viewership records. Its premiere episode is among the most-watched episodes in NRK's history, and by the middle of season two, it was responsible for half of NRK's traffic. With season three, it broke all streaming records in Norway, along with viewership records in neighbouring countries Denmark and Sweden, and attracted an active international fanbase on social media, where fans promoted translations to aid in understanding. The show repeatedly made international headlines for its popularity surge across the world, and the show's actors became famous worldwide. However, the international popularity was not expected, with the music industry requiring geoblocking of NRK's website due to music license contracts only supporting the Norwegian public. The series ended after its fourth season in 2017, reportedly due to high production stress.
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Jaleel10
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Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2017 6:44 am
Location: Springbok, South Africa
Languages: Afrikaans (N), English (N)
Spanish (Advanced-B2)
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Contact:

Re: Spanish Group

Postby Jaleel10 » Mon Oct 29, 2018 9:18 am

1 x

Kraut
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2599
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:37 pm
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Re: Spanish Group

Postby Kraut » Wed Oct 31, 2018 11:34 pm

Jaleel10
How did some of you more advanced learners work on your writing skills?

I am trying to make writing a part of my daily schedule but I don't know what to do, what to write about or how much time to dedicate to it :( Is it something I should only be worried about at a more advanced level?

Any advice would be gladly appreciated!


This site looks very useful for learning/practising directed writing

Textos descriptivos cortos para niños
https://www.aboutespanol.com/textos-des ... os-4018775
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