#200daysofspanish

[linguastic]

May Review

I accomplished a lot with Spanish in May!

I did 9 hours 10 minutes of listening practice, mostly while watching Las chicas del cable and La casa de papel with Spanish subtitles.

I did 3 hours 50 minutes of speaking practice. This included two iTalki lessons and the rest was just by myself.

I reviewed grammar for 3 hours 40 minutes. I studied direct and indirect object pronouns, the use of the preterite vs. the imperfect, the use of the subjunctive, etc.

I learned 643 new words. For most of the month, I wrote the words in my notebook and then made Anki flashcards for them as well. However I got tired of making so many flashcards, so eventually I decided that I’ll only make flashcards for words that I really have trouble remembering. I also write down example sentences so that I know how to use each word.

I read 256 pages of El tiempo entre costuras. I wanted to read the whole book, but this goal was too unrealistic.

I wrote 2,940 words. I posted some of my writing on iTalki to receive corrections.

This month was a really good month for studying Spanish. I’m going to think of some goals for next month and post them soon. :)

[linguastic]

I haven’t been making a detailed study schedule lately. Instead, I use the little sticky note feature on my laptop to write notes for myself about what I should do during the next study session. Then I just pick one or two things to work on. As you can see, right now I’m really focused on increasing my vocabulary in Spanish. :)

[linguastic]

I’ve been feeling lazy about learning Spanish lately, but having a Skype conversation made me so motivated! Even though the conversation was kind of embarrassing because I couldn’t speak Spanish well, afterward I was like, “Wow I could’ve spoken much better if I’d studied more,” so I scheduled an hour-long lesson for a few days later. And after that I scheduled another one! Now I have a whole list of grammar and words that I want to review. I also added some pages to my bullet journal to help me track my Spanish goals, and I bought a whole new notebook to write my notes in. So it’s been a good language week!

[linguastic]

I’ve been trying to do a lot of speaking practice lately, both with iTalki tutors and by myself. During April I spoke in Spanish for a total of 4 hours, and in the first 11 days of May I have already spoken for over 3 hours.

However, I don’t think I’m doing the right kind of speaking practice. Especially when I practice speaking to myself, I tend to stick to topics that are very easy for me to talk about, such as how my day went or how my language studies are going. I need to force myself to speak about different topics. 

Aside from a limited vocabulary, my biggest problem is that I have trouble conjugating verbs when I speak, especially verbs in the past tense or the subjunctive. It just takes me too long to think of the right form when I’m speaking. Or sometimes I have to think about what tense the verb should be in or whether it needs to be in the subjunctive or not.

Here’s what I’m going to do to fix these problems:

I’m going to go through my grammar books and write down all of the topics that I want to review. Then I’m going to pick the one that I have the most trouble with.

For that topic, I’m going to take some quick notes in my notebook. If it’s related to verb conjugations then I’ll do some conjugation exercises in my notebook as well. And then I’m going to make a bunch of different example sentences and post them on iTalki for corrections. Once they’re corrected I’m going to make them into Anki flashcards.

Now here’s the important part: I’m going to practice speaking using that grammatical concept. I’ll start with simple sentences and then try to make them more complex and maybe tell some sort of story. 

To solve my vocabulary problem, I’m going to make lists of vocabulary before I practice speaking. For example I might go to this list and decide that today’s topic is going to be gardening. So first I’ll look up some words related to gardening like dirt, plant, pots, soil, seeds, to plant, to water, etc. Then I will practice talking about gardening.

I wonder if it would be helpful to write a script in English and practice translating it while speaking Spanish. I might try to do that as well.

[linguastic]

Guys I am drowning in flash cards though, like I have 100 to review on Anki tonight and I have a few pages in my notebook of words to make flash cards for.

Plus, I’ve been trying to think in Spanish more often, and whenever I don’t know something I type a note in my phone about it. So I need to make all of those things into flash cards too.

It’s 8:22PM in Spain right now. I’m going to start catching up with my flash cards now and we’ll see how long it takes! (I’m going to take a break in the middle to eat ravioli with a friend though.)

[linguastic]

Spanish Update

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been learning Spanish for too long and I want to move onto another language, and other times I feel like I need to learn it for a bajillion more years because there’s still so much I don’t know.

To keep myself motivated, I’ve been making short-term goals for myself. The last set of goals was for April 4 until today, April 21. I think setting goals of 2–3 weeks works for me because that amount of time is short enough that I stay motivated, but long enough that if I fall behind, I can catch up instead of getting discouraged and giving up.

These were my goals and the results:

Goal #1: Do 90 minutes of speaking practice. 

Result: I did almost double the amount of speaking practice I planned, speaking for 165 minutes! 150 of those minutes were during iTalki lessons with tutors. After having lessons with a few different people, I finally found a tutor that I really like, and I’m looking forward to having more lessons with her.

Goal #2: Do 180 minutes of grammar review  (reading grammar notes, practicing conjugations, etc.).

Result: I only did 60 minutes of grammar review, but the day isn’t over yet! Maybe I can make up for some of it later.

Goal #3: Write 1,800 words.

Result: I only wrote 1,000 words, most of which were in my diary. When I was confused about a grammatical feature or the use of a specific word, I used it in another sentence and posted that sentence on iTalki for corrections. Then I wrote down the corrected versions in my notebook.

I think at this point in the learning process, it’s all about quantity. I’ve learned most of the basics, so in order to learn to rest of what I want to know, I think I need to do a huge amount of speaking practice, vocabulary review, and writing. Today I’m going to make goals for myself for the next three weeks, and after that I’m leaving for Spain! I’m super excited. :)

[linguastic]

Trip to Spain Day 4

I’ve gotten a little bit better at Spanish since arriving in Spain, I think. It’s definitely helpful to hear Spanish being spoken all the time. (Except that a lot of the other students here switch to English outside of class.)

Yesterday I met up with a friend from university and his friend who is fluent in Spanish. We practiced speaking Spanish together while we walked through El Paraque del Buen Retiro. I felt like I was speaking a lot better! My accent definitely gives me away as an American but I don’t mind so much. Once or twice people have heard my accent and switched to English, but I just kept replying in Spanish and they switched back.

My first day in Spain, I went to a restaurant by myself and had some trouble ordering food. I got what I wanted to order but I stumbled over some words and just felt a little bit embarrassed. But today I went to a restaurant and was able to speak to the waiters much better! Now I know what to expect them to say and how to reply.

[linguastic]

Ugh I tried to do some Spanish speaking practice but I was too tired! I’m going to speak more tomorrow.

Goal: Do speaking practice every day this week! It’s good to be consistent. :)

[linguastic]

Mexican Spanish Pronunciation

So far I’ve been using these resources to study Mexican Spanish pronunciation:

IPA/Spanish, Spanish phonology, and Mexican Spanish - I know Wikipedia isn’t always accurate, so I’ve been combining these three pages with other resources.

Spanish language, alphabet, and pronunciation - I’ve been scrolling down to the section on Spanish pronunciation in Latin America. As with Wikipedia, I’m not sure how much I should trust this site, but it seems pretty thorough.

Interactive IPA chart - For when I want to compare an unfamiliar sound in Spanish to sounds in English.

Forvo - When I read about a sound that I’m not sure if I pronounce correctly, I use one of the resources above to find examples the sound in different words. Then I listen to native speakers pronounce the words on Forvo and I try to imitate their pronunciation.

I wish I had better resources to use, but when I Googled “Mexican Spanish pronunciation”, all I could find were articles from people trying to teach me Mexican slang, or poorly designed websites with no sources listed. I also tried searching for linguistics papers, but the ones I found were from unrelated studies or were published decades ago. I’ll keep looking and will write an update if I find a useful resource!

[linguastic]

I’m gonna regret this... but I really have not been reviewing my Anki flashcards as much as I should.

[linguastic]

Yesterday I had another iTalki lesson so I could practice speaking Spanish. It was a little bit disappointing because I felt like I was really struggling to speak well—I kept having to pause to recall conjugations and vocabulary words.

But today I practiced speaking by myself and it seemed like I spoke really well! I’m sure I still made some errors, but I was able to talk much more quickly and I could remember a lot more words. Maybe I was just nervous or tired yesterday, or maybe I talk about easier topics when I practice speaking by myself... I’m not sure. Either way, I need to find a list of speaking prompts so I can practice more.

[linguastic]

Improving Your Listening Comprehension

Summary

It’s important to improve your listening comprehension so you can talk to native speakers and understand them. One mistake that many people (including myself) make is that they don’t practice active listening. In order to do so, you need to find audio resources that 1) are representative of how native speakers normally talk, 2) are the right level for you, and 3) preferably include subtitles or a transcript.

Active listening practice is all about forcing yourself to pay close attention to what you’re listening to. To do that, you can try 1) doing listening exercises that quiz you on an audio clip, 2) summarizing what you’re listening to, or 3) transcribing what you’re listening to and checking your work afterward.

For more details, read the full post below!

I never really considered the importance of developing good listening skills when learning a foreign language. I always thought, “What’s the big deal? As long as I keep listening to podcasts and watching TV shows, I’ll get better at listening eventually. And until then, I can always read the subtitles.” I realized my mistake when I finally had a conversation with a native speaker and struggled to understand each sentence.

My mistake was twofold:

I didn’t realize the importance of listening, figuring that I would still be able to understand native speakers in conversations even though I had trouble understanding them in TV shows. I thought native speakers would be easier to understand in person because they would speak more clearly to me, an obvious learner of their language.

I thought it was okay to do passive listening practice rather than active listening practice, and I expected to get the same results.

Note: Passive listening — just listening to audio or watching a TV show as you normally would, perhaps while doing something else at the same time — is still good practice. Doing a lot of passive listening can really help get your mind used to the sounds of your target language, which might improve your pronunciation. But it doesn’t improve your listening comprehension much compared to active listening, which is when you really make an effort to decipher what you’re hearing.

Realizing my mistakes regarding listening practice, I researched what methods actually improve listening comprehension, and this is what I learned.

The first thing you need to do is to find the right audio resource:

Audio from courses or textbooks is generally too easy. It’s good for when you’re a beginner, learning the pronunciation and the meaning of different words, but the people in these clips tend to speak much clearer and slower than normal. To improve your listening comprehension, you should find audio of native speakers talking naturally, at a natural pace and using the phrases or slang they would typically use.

Make sure the audio is at the right level of difficulty. Listening to an audio clip that you can understand perfectly will not help you improve your listening comprehension. But at the same time, you shouldn’t force yourself to listen to audio clips that are way too difficult for you. If you’re at a beginner or lower intermediate level, a lot of audio resources might be too difficult simply because of the advanced vocabulary used. (See the 5th method below.)

Most importantly, try to find audio resources with transcripts. You can also look for resources with subtitles in the target language that you can turn on and off, as they’re basically the same thing as a transcript.

Once you have some resources, here are a few methods for improving your listening comprehension:

Do listening exercises that give you an audio clip and ask you questions at the end. I Googled “Spanish listening exercises” and found a few different ones that looked promising.

If you can’t find listening exercises, you can make up your own by listening to one of the resources you found and trying to write a summary of it at the end. You could also try to transcribe it if it’s not too long.

Repeat short clips of audio multiple times. You’ll probably be able to understand more with each repetition.

If you were able to find a resource with subtitles or a transcript, try this: Listen to the audio and try to transcribe what you hear. Keep listening again and again until you’ve transcribed as much as you can, and then check your work by turning on the subtitles or looking at the transcript to see what you missed. Listen again and try to understand why you missed what you missed. Did the speaker slur their words in a way you didn’t understand? Did they use a phrase that you simply hadn’t heard before? Take note of what went wrong. Try listening to the audio again a few days later to test yourself.

Learn more vocabulary! You might be having problems understanding speech in your target language because you simply don’t know all of the words you hear.

Does anyone else have a favorite method for improving your listening comprehension? Feel free to reblog this post and write about it! 

Further reading: x, x, x.

[linguastic]

Despite enjoying learning languages for over six years now, I’ve never actually done a language exchange with someone. In fact, outside of school I’ve never spoken to someone in one of my target languages. But that’s changing tonight! In 30 minutes I’m doing a language exchange with someone via Skype. I’m really looking forward to improving my Spanish, but I’m also super nervous. Wish me luck!

[linguastic]

Spanish Goals for January

Listening: Do 6 hours of listening practice.

Speaking: Do 2 hours of pronunciation practice. Do 3 hours of speaking practice. Do a language exchange or paid lesson at least once a week.

Grammar: Review the preterite and imperfect tenses (Basic Spanish Units 17-18). Finish reviewing the subjunctive (Intermediate Spanish Units 9-14). 

Vocabulary: Learn/review 500 words.

Reading: Read 60 pages.

Writing: Write 1,000 words.

[linguastic]

Days 24 and 25

Day 24 of my 200 Days of Spanish project, which was yesterday, was super productive! Here’s what I did:

15 minutes of active listening practice. I listened to three audio clips and tried to transcribe the dialogue. Then I checked my work against the actual transcripts.

30 minutes of pronunciation practice. First I repeated individual words, and then I tried repeating whole sentences from a video.

A one-hour language exchange over Skype! This was my second time ever doing a language exchange, and it went pretty well. We’re going to talk again tomorrow night.

Studied the present subjunctive. However, I didn’t finish the unit in my grammar book because I didn’t feel like reviewing irregular forms. I’ll do that today.

Read 6 pages in El tiempo entre costuras. 

Wrote 300 words. First I wrote an entry in my diary, and then I wrote a paragraph about getting over my fear of speaking, which I posted on iTalki. I got some really nice responses. :)

I hope today will be a productive day too! I want to review verb conjugations and do some more listening and reading practice. And tonight I have a 30-minute lesson with an iTalki tutor via Skype.

[linguastic]

I’ve been in school for almost four years now and I still haven’t figured out how to balance work with the rest of my life.

My new Spanish study plan was going great for a few days, but then midterm exams and problem sets piled up... now it’s been at least a week since I did anything related to learning Spanish. Or did anything related to my other hobbies.

I have to figure out how to make time for more things. I like what I’m studying in school, but without languages and writing it feels like there’s nothing to look forward to every week.