No Manches - 2019 Spanish log

[MamaPata]

Where did you get the scripts for El Ministerio? I think that would be a great thing for me to work with.
Excited to see your progress!

[NoManches]

Where did you get the scripts for El Ministerio? I think that would be a great thing for me to work with.
Excited to see your progress!

I had to ask in the Official Telenovela thread because I couldn't find the link. Thanks to Cavesa for mentioning this a while back.

Does anybody know of any that are available?

Cavesa posted some time ago the link to the scripts for El Ministerio del Tiempo.

This is exactly what I was looking for! Seems like I mixed up the titles though.

The other day I took the transcript for a RadioAmbulante podcast and sent it to my kindle (try to make sure it is not in pdf format or it'll be hard to read). I listened to the podcasts twice during the day, and read the transcript from my kindle later that night. The next day I listened again. My comprehension for the podcasts was already at about 98.5%, but reading on the kindle helped clear up a few words and things said that I couldn't make out (mostly things from Nicolás Maduro.....man I hate the way he gives speeches). The next day I listened tot he podcast again and I could tell that reading the transcript and having an easy way to look up words was a good idea....but I needed something a little harder.

Hope this pays off big with El Ministerio del Tiempo!

Excited to see your progress!

Thank you so much! I know that even if I don't pass this exam, if I keep doing what I'm doing right now I will reach a level that I can finally be happy with....which means that I wouldn't even care about having the certificate

[NoManches]

I have been so busy studying Spanish that I forgot to update my log last week.

Preparing for this exam has only reminded me of how little time I really have for dedicated Spanish study. I've been doing pretty good squeezing Spanish into my day whenever I can, but that usually makes up passive use of the language (i.e. passively listening to a podcast when you do the dishes). I really love those periods of time (1-2 hours) when I can just sit down and study, read, listen, etc. I miss my college days when I could spend hours each day studying Spanish.

For the time being I've been rotating between 4 different DELE preparation books. Two are for the B2 level, and the other two are for the C1 level. I'm saving those ones (the C1 books) for about 4-5 months out from the exam. The first time I worked with those books it was a pretty awful experience. I did HORRIBLE on the B2 listening AND reading portions of the exam. The bad part is that I thought I did excellent. What I soon realized is that this exam (and the practice exams in the books) are not like anything I've done before. My biggest lesson so far: almost every question will have an answer that is meant to throw you off. It will seem so obvious but if you select that answer without carefully reading the question over again or rereading the text you will probably get it wrong. After going back and doing the test again a few days later I got a perfect score. If you are planning on taking this exam I promise you that it is something you need to prepare for. Being fluent isn't enough. You have to specifically prepare for this very exam. I think a native speaker who just walked in to take the exam would probably find it difficult (partly because of time restraints) and because they would answer questions with what they thought were the "obvious answers" only to find out that they should have carefully reread the question or text from the reading. The only part of this exam that I HATE so far is the part where you have to fill in the blanks of a text with fragments that were removed. I have no problems with the other parts of the test (after I realized that there was more to taking the test than answering with what seemed like the obvious answer ). If anybody knows a way I can practice for this part of the exam I am all ears...because as of now it is the only portion I'm truly having problems with. Fortunately I still have a bunch of practice exams to do involving this fun little activity.

As a confidence boost I took the "Prueba de Nivel" from Institute Cervantes and got a C1.3-C1.4

I don't think this was very accurate since it wasn't a good reflection of the exam (no writing or speaking portion) but it did test reading/listening comprehension and asked a bunch of grammar questions.

I have about 40 weeks until the exam. I have a bad habit of procrastinating or picking telenovelas over grammar study so I've had to come up with the following checklist of things I do daily/weekly to keep me in line:

Daily:
-Read 5 newspaper articles (preferably from El Pais, El Mundo, or something similar).
-Study vocab with anki. Almost any new word in a newspaper article or from my DELE prep books gets added.
-Listen intensively to 10 minutes of Spanish podcasts (trying to make this so I do a listening exercise daily from my preparation books).

Weekly:
-Complete 3 written essays in Spanish (all essay prompts taken from DELE prep books).
-Review essays with tutor once each week. After, rewrite corrected sentences into notebook.
-Complete the Comprensión Auditiva section from my DELE books. This is 5 "tareas". I make sure later in the week I go over everything so I understand why I got an answer wrong and why the right answer makes sense.
-Complete the Comprensión de Lectura section from DELE prep books. Later in the week I go over this section again in order to understand why I got some answers wrong and why the correct answers are the better choice.
-Study grammar 3 times each week for a minimum of 30 minutes. The goal is to keep this up until November so when I go to take the exam I feel confident and don't make B1 grammar mistakes at a C1 test.

I make everything I have mentioned above a priority. Throughout my day I squeeze in as much podcasts, pleasure reading, and Spanish music as I can. Also, I'm managing anywhere from 3-4 hours of conversation practice each week on Skype (a mix of tutors and conversation partners).

If I can keep this up for 39 more weeks I think I'll have a decent shot at comping close to passing the exam .

[NoManches]

A quick update:

Since my last update:

I've been sticking with my "40 week plan" to prepare for the DELE exam. Each week I complete a new practice exam, doing the reading, listening, and writing portions on my own. At the end of the week I send my essay to a tutor. We then do the oral portion and at the end, go over my essay. This week I started to actually hand write the essays, since it has to be done this way on the test. Surprisingly, I've been doing really good on the listening portions of the exam, and "decent" on the reading portion. I thought listening would be my weakest skill, but this only seems to be the case some of the time. For example, there is a portion where I have to listen to conversations between people and answer questions. I almost never have problems with this portion of the test, unless they are using modismos that are unique to Spain (which is the case 99% of the time). Fortunately, I have been working on my Spanish idioms and frases and have seen huge improvements. I'm making it a point to understand the Spanish idioms, but not use them in conversation. On the other hand, I continue to use, and learn, Mexican idioms all the time. There are some listening parts of the exam that are a little trickier though. I find that if it is on a topic that interests me I tend to do really good, but there are some topics that are really boring. I find it harder to concentrate during these exercises. The reading comprehension portion of the test seems a bit tougher, probably because I'm not used to reading material at this level. I've said it before, but reading literature to prepare for this exam will not be nearly as useful as reading newspaper articles and other academic level materials.

During the week as I do my practice exams, I go back and do an intensive review of the prior weeks exam. This usually includes doing 1 listening/reading "tarea" each day, and looking up/adding all unknown words to Anki. I make sure I redo each portion of the test as well, with the final goal of being able to answer everything correctly and understand why I answered wrong in the first place.

There have been a few exceptions, but I have been reading at least 5 newspaper articles every day from el País. I started off reading from my computer, but decided to pay the outrageous price of $15 a month to get the newspaper on my Kindle. It is a lot easier reading the newspaper before I go to bed or upon waking up, than sitting in front of a computer doing it. The only limitation is that it is harder to add words to Anki from my Kindle....but.....I have been adding quite a few words from my DELE preparation books and that will keep me busy for a while. It is amazing to see how many news words I am adding to Anki only to come across the next day in a newspaper article or in my DELE prep books. I think it's because I'm not used to reading Spanish at this level...but it is getting easier and easier every day.

I just finished watching the first season of La Casa de Papel. I plan on watching the second season in the next week or two. I have noticed that my time to pleasure read in Spanish and watch TV shows has decreased significantly. I usually save pleasure reading before I go to bed, but I usually end up following asleep right away. I have been experimenting with watching a TV show in Spanish from a Kindle Fire before I go to bed (with headphones on) and think this is a better way to end my night (since I don't fall asleep right away like I would with reading). Although I wanted to finish the Double Super Challenge before I test in November, I will make it a priority to finish the Spanish Movies portion first. Reading novels is fun, but for this test I need to spend more time reading newspapers, magazine articles, technical materials, etc.

Conversation practice each week has been around 2-3 hours. Not where I would like it, but considering the improvements I am seeing in other areas, I can live with only 2-3 hours of conversation practice each week.

I haven't studied grammar in a few weeks, which is something I really need to focus on.

Here is an example of my day when I am busy and don't have time to do a practice "prueba" from my DELE prep books:

-Wake up. Read articles from El Pais on my Kindle (while still in bed )
-Make coffee/breakfast while listening to a podcast in Spanish.
-Drink lot's of coffee and study vocab with anki. 20-40 new cards each day (all of my cards are English-Spanish and Spanish to English, so 20 cards might only be 10 new words).
-Sit down and complete an intensive, 10 minute listening exercise. 99% of the time I am working with a "listening prueba" from the previous weeks practice exam.
-Go to work. Listen to podcasts all day whenever I can/am allowed to. This is mainly passive listening but at my level, even passive listening is very helpful.
-Come home. Watch a TV show in Spanish or listen to podcasts while I do chores/make dinner.
-Try to complete a reading comprehension "tarea" from the previous weeks practice exam.
-Watch TV show or pleasure read before going to bed.

I actually really enjoy how I'm practicing right now. It reminds me a lot of how I would study for Spanish while I was in college. The great benefit from this schedule is that it is measurable, meaning if I skip a day I see it and can't deny it (since I keep track of my schedule in paper format with a checklist). Before doing it this way, there were many days when I thought I was doing a lot of Spanish but I wasn't. Also, this forces me to work on writing and other things that I don't like to do. Since January, I have written something like 15 essays (200-250 words), which is more writing than I've done in any language in the last 3 years!

[lingua]

I enjoyed reading your most recent update and now find myself wondering if I need to read more Italian news articles for the CILS exam. I currently split my reading between fiction and non-fiction but is that enough? Even when I do read La Stampa I usually stick to the food section. I'll have to think about that some more.

[NoManches]

I enjoyed reading your most recent update and now find myself wondering if I need to read more Italian news articles for the CILS exam. I currently split my reading between fiction and non-fiction but is that enough? Even when I do read La Stampa I usually stick to the food section. I'll have to think about that some more.

Something you might find incredibly useful (if you haven't already come across it yet):

http://brianjx.altervista.org/

Even though this is for the Italian C2 exam, I find a lot of his methods and advice very useful. The link looks kind of sketchy but I promise you it is a very legit website. Copy and paste this into Google and it will come right up:

"How I Passed the Demanding, 5-Part, 5 1/2 Hour, Oral, Paper and Pen, Highest Level (C2), Italian Language Exam Without Going to Italy"


As far as reading goes, I'm really not sure about the test you are taking. I do think that reading non-fiction could be helpful, but most fiction just won't cut it for me on the exam. For example, on one of the practice exams I did from the Institutos Cervantes website, I had to read a lease agreement and answer questions on it. In one of my prep books I had to read another contract about internet/phone services. I don't think I could ever read enough books in a year to accumulate the right kind of vocab for this test, but on the other hand, it seems like the vocabulary I find in newspapers is more along the lines of what I need. Of course I have 5 DELE preparation books at my disposal, so I have a TON of articles, contracts, and other reading exercises to work with before I take my test.

Also, I've been told that to prepare for the exam I should read as many articles as I can about as many different topics as I can...even the ones I don't want to read. You never know what you'll be forced to read on the exam, so getting used to the "boring" stuff now might be a good idea.

Good luck on your exam!

[iguanamon]

... I had to read a lease agreement and answer questions on it. In one of my prep books I had to read another contract about internet/phone services. I don't think I could ever read enough books in a year to accumulate the right kind of vocab for this test, but on the other hand, it seems like the vocabulary I find in newspapers is more along the lines of what I need. ...

Self-language learners can fall into the trap of only reading or listening to things we like. While having fun with the TL is important and is indeed critical to learning a language, so is listening to and reading stuff we may think is "boring". We talk a lot here about reading "extensively" and "intensively" but rarely do we discuss reading widely.

I grew up pre-internet and before media consolidation. Our family subscribed to the daily newspaper. The daily newspaper was an institution. The New York Times motto was "all the news that's fit to print". I once heard the daily newspaper described as "the poor man's university". A good newspaper with high quality journalism can indeed provide a reader with a broad exposure to many topics and can even spur interest in topics readers may not have known they were interested in before reading the article. A lot of my education came from reading our daily newspaper.

Nowadays, our natural tendency is to gravitate towards our own interests. Technology makes it so easy to stay within our comfort zones- to read only what interests us, to listen to and watch only what we know we will enjoy. While this is comfortable, it doesn't help us to broaden our minds and learn more about what we don't know. Staying within the comfort zone in language-learning can hold learners back by not having a wide exposure to the language that educated natives have. Though we may not retain all the words we are exposed to by reading and listening widely, over time, those words repeat.

Think of it this way, in school, our subjects are chosen for us. If it had been up to me, I would have chosen to have recess as my only class! I definitely would have avoided mathematics and all those other "boring" classes. It was precisely those classes that gave me the foundation upon which I built my life. While a subject may be boring, it can give an insight and be a bridge to greater understanding. I'm not advocating consuming boring content to the exclusion of interesting content, but a little bit of "boring" can be good for language-learning especially to get to advanced levels. I once read a book explaining life in the US to Haitian refugees... [sarcasm] riveting stuff [/sarcasm]! Of course I wasn't looking forward to reading that 100+ page book everyday but it certainly was beneficial to me in my learning.

So, well done, NoManches. Keep up the good work!

[adelante]

... I had to read a lease agreement and answer questions on it. In one of my prep books I had to read another contract about internet/phone services. I don't think I could ever read enough books in a year to accumulate the right kind of vocab for this test, but on the other hand, it seems like the vocabulary I find in newspapers is more along the lines of what I need. ...

Self-language learners can fall into the trap of only reading or listening to things we like. While having fun with the TL is important and is indeed critical to learning a language, so is listening to and reading stuff we may think is "boring". We talk a lot here about reading "extensively" and "intensively" but rarely do we discuss reading widely.

I find this to be so true in my own studies. For me, variety is an important aspect of learning, just as it is for diet and investment portfolios. As a complement to depth, I make it a formal part of my target "portfolio" of language learning activities, not only in terms of exercising all four strands but also in genre, register, and dialect, based on what I want to be able to do with the language. Having this principle in mind really helps me when selecting reading/listening content, language partners, writing topics, and even grammar topics. I find that if I keep this bigger picture view in mind when deciding how to spend my precious language learning time, I'm usually able to satisfy my breadth goals through interesting content. There's also something to be said for building tolerance for boredom, though, especially if the goal is to pass a test where absolutely any topic could be thrown at you.

[NoManches]

... I had to read a lease agreement and answer questions on it. In one of my prep books I had to read another contract about internet/phone services. I don't think I could ever read enough books in a year to accumulate the right kind of vocab for this test, but on the other hand, it seems like the vocabulary I find in newspapers is more along the lines of what I need. ...

Self-language learners can fall into the trap of only reading or listening to things we like. While having fun with the TL is important and is indeed critical to learning a language, so is listening to and reading stuff we may think is "boring". We talk a lot here about reading "extensively" and "intensively" but rarely do we discuss reading widely.

I grew up pre-internet and before media consolidation. Our family subscribed to the daily newspaper. The daily newspaper was an institution. The New York Times motto was "all the news that's fit to print". I once heard the daily newspaper described as "the poor man's university". A good newspaper with high quality journalism can indeed provide a reader with a broad exposure to many topics and can even spur interest in topics readers may not have known they were interested in before reading the article. A lot of my education came from reading our daily newspaper.

Nowadays, our natural tendency is to gravitate towards our own interests. Technology makes it so easy to stay within our comfort zones- to read only what interests us, to listen to and watch only what we know we will enjoy. While this is comfortable, it doesn't help us to broaden our minds and learn more about what we don't know. Staying within the comfort zone in language-learning can hold learners back by not having a wide exposure to the language that educated natives have. Though we may not retain all the words we are exposed to by reading and listening widely, over time, those words repeat.

Think of it this way, in school, our subjects are chosen for us. If it had been up to me, I would have chosen to have recess as my only class! I definitely would have avoided mathematics and all those other "boring" classes. It was precisely those classes that gave me the foundation upon which I built my life. While a subject may be boring, it can give an insight and be a bridge to greater understanding. I'm not advocating consuming boring content to the exclusion of interesting content, but a little bit of "boring" can be good for language-learning especially to get to advanced levels. I once read a book explaining life in the US to Haitian refugees... [sarcasm] riveting stuff [/sarcasm]! Of course I wasn't looking forward to reading that 100+ page book everyday but it certainly was beneficial to me in my learning.

So, well done, NoManches. Keep up the good work!

Thank you! And I agree with you 100% on the benefits of reading the newspaper. I once made a comment (maybe in my log, or another post in this forum), about how I'm always really impressed by people who speak English as a second language AND have a good understanding of current events in the US. When I was in Colombia, one of my tour guides spoke English very well and was more up to date with current US events than I was. I was really impressed by his command of the English language and his ability to talk about things that any native speaker could talk about and would have knowledge about.

One of the hardest parts so far has been reading about Spanish politics. In English if I heard the term "GOP", "the left" or "electoral college" I would instantly have an understanding of those terms, and what they really mean. When I read/hear an unfamiliar term in Spanish (such as the abbreviation for a political party), not only do I have to understand what the abbreviation means, but I have to understand what that part represents, in order to really comprehend what I'm reading.

It is a bit of a challenge but I really enjoy it, and the more I read the easier it is to understand these terms and I feel like I'm learning more about Spanish culture (something that will surely be helpful on the exam and in the real world).

[NoManches]

Since my last update (one week ago):

Reading:
I have basically stopped all pleasure reading and replaced that with reading articles from El Pais. Fortunately, there are just enough interesting articles in this newspaper that I can consider it pleasure reading. I force myself to read the less interesting stuff as well, even if it is only a 200 word article. I recently purchased a few non-fiction books on my Kindle, and am thinking about reading them but counting it towards my daily reading goal. I don't want to break my habit of reading El Pais, but at the same time there are some interesting books out there that I want to read. Maybe I'll read El Pais 5 days a week and give myself 2 days of pleasure reading each week. The exam is important to me, but I don't want to burn myself out and need to give myself a treat once in a while.

Listening:
I have been doing an intensive listening exercise every day of the week. Whatever it is I do, I make sure I spend at least 10 minutes intensively listening to the audio. This means a lot of repeated listening for short audios. My goal here is 100% comprehension, which I actually find easy to do nowadays. There are enough audio exercises in my prep books that I can complete one practice exam each week, and use the audios from each exam to review intensively the next week. So for example, if I complete Practice Exam 1 on week 1, throughout week 2 I use week 1's audio "tareas" to work intensively with each day of the week.

Vocabulary:
This is a really important part of the C1 level exam. There have been more than a few times when I read an article or listened to an audio with excellent comprehension from my practice exam, only to get a question wrong because they used an unknown word in the question itself (usually a synonym). I'm glad I ditched Anki for most of my time in the intermediate level, but at the advanced level I am finding Anki to be incredibly useful. I study Anki every day, and add almost every unknown word from my practice exams.

Writing:
I am surprised at how quickly I brought my writing back to its former state. I've never been a strong writer, especially in Spanish, but I am able to complete the practice exam writing prompts each week with time left over and a minimal amount of mistakes. The only problem is that I do the writing as if I were taking the exam, so if there is a word I want to use but don't know it, instead of looking it up I just use an alternate that I do know. This limits the amount of words and phrases I learn from trying to write, and finding gaps in my vocabulary. I think I'll start writing these words down separate and looking them up later when I'm done with my writing portion of the exam. So far I have completed 6 writing "pruebas" from the practice exams. Sometimes I only do the mandatory 2 essays, sometimes I do a third one which is an option I can choose from. I typically force myself to do the harder writing prompt, but not always. Each essay is anywhere from 180-250 words (since I do practice exams for the B2 and C1 exam). It's not much yet, but I have probably written somewhere around 3,000 words since January (not counting emails, text messages, or stuff on online forums). I have 35 more weeks before the exam, so still lots of room and time for improvement.

Practice Exams:
I think I've said it before, but even if you don't plan on taking the DELE exam, these practice exam books are great ways of improving your Spanish. When I first started with them, I found the listening to be easier than the reading portion. This week it seemed like the listening was harder than the reading. How could this be? I think it comes down to two things:
1) How I am feeling on the particular day I decide to do the practice exam
2) The topic the material is on

One of the reasons I have decided to do the reading, writing, listening, and speaking on separate days, is so I can give each "prueba" 100% of my focus and energy. As I get closer to the test date, I will sit down and do entire tests in one day. But, I don't see a big advantage in doing that this early on. I don't want to fry my brain doing the reading, only to not be focused fort he listening portion. As of now, I am treating each practice exam as study material, rather than a measurement of my progress. There have been a few times when I've done a practice exam during less than ideal conditions (tired, in between work shifts, while I have other things on my mind, etc.). This directly impacts my performance, so I try to do each exam when I am at my 100%, although this is rarely possible and on the test date it won't be an option.

I find the listening portion of the test to be somewhat challenging, but in a good way. The only really challenging portion is the long, boring, talks about topics that don't interest me. I also find the audio for the writing portion to be rather difficult. In this portion, I listen to a ~4 minute long audio about some topic, and then write a 250 word essay on that topic. I can listen to the audio twice, and take notes...but it is harder than you would think. This might have to do with my lack of practice in this kind of activity, and my habit of not paying attention to things that don't interest me

Television:
La Casa de Papel is by far the greatest show I have ever watched in Spanish. I think I said this once before about Enemigo Intimo, but La Casa de Papel is way better. I will finish the final episodes of season 2 today, and will probably end up watching this show over again in a few months. Maybe when my listening skills for Spanish TV improve. There are still some things I don't hear/understand in the show. I tried to make a goal of watching 5 telenovelas each week, a plan that would allow me to finish the double super challenge before the DELE exam. It has been really hard to squeeze 5 shows into each week though. I think I just need to get better at knocking out my goals earlier in the day before I go to work, so later in the day I can watch a TV show instead of reading newspaper articles, for example.

Conversation Practice:
I'm only averaging about 2 hours of conversation practice each week, both of those hours with tutors online. My speaking is actually my strongest skill, at least in terms of taking this exam. When I am 3 months away from the exam I would like to squeeze 4 hours of conversation practice in each week.

Grammar Study:
My goal was 1.5 hours of grammar study each week (30 minutes 3x's each week). I'm usually able to squeeze 2 days in each week, for 1 hour total. I actually find grammar study to be fun, at least when I am reviewing things that I am a bit rusty on.

Podcasts:
When I am not doing anything mentioned above, and have the opportunity to do so, I listen to podcasts all day every day. I have a few new ones that I'm listening to and will have to share those later on....but right now I have another practice exam to do!


That's all for now. I have 35 more weeks until the exam. Hopefully I can keep this pace up the entire time. I do have some trips planned in a few months, so I will use those as my times to relax.