SPANISH MISTAKES MADE

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
 - Albert Einstein

Monday's Spanish lesson with the song went great. It was fun and I got some new (at this point it is all new) phrases and words from it. Now I've put it aside knowing that I am supposed to do long time periods between study sessions. Originally I was going to wait until Monday to revisit it, but I noticed a word today I should have known from the song but couldn't recall. So I'll be working on it again today.

And then I screwed up. For Tuesday and Wednesday I had decided to work on a tv show. I tried a few on tv including a show where a dog was a cop. Not just a cop, but apparently a brilliant cop. He found a gun in a tv, a way into a room and knew to drop tiles on the bad guys head while he (the bad guy) was shooting a gun and so forth. It was a little silly. Although, perhaps my dog is just holding back on me and all dogs can do such things. Anyway, I also tried an entertainment show, a kid's show and another more reasonable cop drama. Couldn't follow any of them even with captions on.

I needed something I could watch over and over again until I got it and that wasn't too difficult to start with. So I hopped over to YouTube and found Extr@. Now it isn't actually a tv show, but I don't know enough Spanish for any regular shows. It's a fake show for learning Spanish. And it seems to be at the right level for me.

On Tuesday I watched it repeatedly, first without captions, then with English captions and then Spanish ones. Unfortunately, the Spanish captions do not have the accent marks which saddens me. I tried speaking along with the Spanish (I skipped where Sam was speaking as I don't want to pick up bad habits) as I rewatched the show. I actually didn't make any flashcards or pick up any vocab on Tuesday, both things were probably a mistake on my part.

On Wednesday, I found the complete transcript with accent marks here. I decided that I should write down the transcript and translate each line underneath it. Then I could make flashcards from that. In my mind this was a great plan, in reality it was boring. Boring actually doesn't even do it justice. It was watching paint dry level of excitement. Only with work. Now this may be ok for some people, but it just doesn't appeal to me. I'm lazy and easily distracted. And even breaking my work up into small groups of time didn't actually help. I just dreaded going back to work on the transcript. Additionally, it was taking a long time to do all that writing.

I feel like I made no progress on those 2 days and I don't have enough days that I can afford to waste any much less two. I need to refocus and get back on track. So today I picked a new song to work on - De Qué Me Sirve La Vida by Camila and I'll review my previous song. This should get me back into enjoying learning and hopefully get me some new vocab. Friday I will return to Extr@ and skip writing up the transcript and go straight for flashcards.

PARA TU AMOR

Those who endure, conquer.
- Anonymous

Today is day 1 of my attempt to conquer Spanish. That's right Spanish, I'm coming for you. Arrrrrr.

Music is a great way to learn. Thanks to the musical School House Rock, I can still sing the preamble to the Constitution oh so many years after learning it. And whenever someone tells me they have a terrible memory, I work them around to the fact they probably know hundreds of song lyrics. Bad memory? I don’t think so.

Anyway for learning a foreign language, some people will tell you to begin with children’s songs. That is probably a good idea. Unfortunately they are annoying – the songs not the people giving advice. I just couldn’t find songs I enjoyed or could tolerate long enough. Learning should be enjoyable. Barney is not enjoyable. The Spanish equivalent even less so.

To find a song to begin with I made a general list of requirements:

• A song I liked
• Clear lyrics
• Some words/phrases that I didn’t know
• Useable words/phrases
• Not too advanced or difficult

Then I started my search. As part of my fauxmersion plan, I’ve been looking for Spanish radio stations for when I begin. Checking out one (search Mana) on Pandora I heard a song by Juanes that I enjoyed. So I went on YouTube and checked out a few of his songs before finally settling on Para Tu Amor. I chose this one as it seemed simple enough (a good amount of repetition of words) yet chock full of words I didn’t know. Plus I liked it.

Obviously just listening to Spanish isn’t enough to learn Spanish. Although it would be amazing if it did. But it doesn’t. So now I need to bring on the work I need to do with this song. First, I figure I’d get used to the song by listening to it a few times. Perhaps even singing along a bit. I found a YouTube version with the lyrics just for this.

Para Tu Amor by Juanes

Then I looked for the translated version. Found this. You have to be careful as not all translations are created equal so some translations may contain some errors. Adjust them as needed. I used SpanishDict to work on some of the words and figure out which words were which.

This allowed me to create some flashcards with words and phrases from the song. I made about 28 cards with a few just containing a word or two but most containing longer phrases. Knowing that sleeping after learning something new increases retention, I'll work with the flashcards right before I go to bed.

I also found a site, Lyrics Training, which has this song and allows you to try to fill in the lyrics as the song plays. That should help with learning the song in Spanish so I'll be working on that this afternoon.

My overall goal with the song, is to learn it in Spanish and be able to translate it into English. This will teach me some vocabulary and help with pronunciation. All of this in a way that is more fun than just memorizing a list of words in Spanish. But this will still require me to put in some effort today. Because tomorrow I move onto something else.

EXPERIMENT 5: LEARNING SPANISH

Start Date:  December 10, 2012

End Date:  March 17, 2012

Experiment Duration:  90 Days

Daily Activity:  This will change as I see what works for me and what doesn't. I'll post detail posts which will include my current plans.

Notes: I currently know the same amount of Spanish as a really stupid 3 year old. Maybe less. Maybe a lot less. I want to see if it is possible to become somewhat fluent in 3 months. I am not going to design my own program for learning Spanish as I go using fauxmersion and attempting to keep the learning fun and relevant.

EXPERIMENT UPDATES

Having been working on my first 4 experiments for a week I figure it was time for an update. Although, not much has really happened.

Experiment 1:  Daily Affirmations
I have managed to croak out my affirmation both morning and night without fail. Sadly, no change in my attitude. I am starting to wonder if I chose the wrong affirmation for me. It just doesn't sound like me and isn't really forceful - "I choose to make positive, healthy choices for myself." Maybe I should have gone with something like "I'm going to kick life's butt today!"

Experiment 2: Drinking Water for Complexion
Drinking the water has actually been easy. It helped with the walking even as it made frequent bathroom trips necessary especially in the beginning. Oddly that has tapered off even though I'm still drinking the water. I don't want to give that much thought. No complexion change though.

Experiment 3:  10,000 Steps
This has been a pain - literally. After the first day, I suffered through several days of soreness. Every step made my leg muscles scream at me (although after a bit they would stop until I rested and then tried to move again). I was barely getting to my 10,000 steps despite the fact my day seemed to be all about the steps. They were my obsession.

Sadly, towards the end of the week my right ankle decided it would no longer be participating in this death march. It began to hurt. Even when I tried to do 2 smaller walker days it let me know that any walking was going to be met with resistance. So I've decided to temporarily shelf this experiment. I'll give my ankle a bit off then I'll redesign this experiment so I don't just jump from 1,000 steps a day to 10,000. That way my ankle will never figure what is going on. It's not that bright as far as ankles go.

Experiment 4:  Reading
The only experiment I have enjoyed. Don't know why I wasn't doing this before. Probably because I was too lazy to even figure out which books to read. I'll give more details in a later Reading post.

HOLA PART 2

I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. 

 - Abraham Lincoln

When I was a kid I watched an old, old movie about an efficiency expert with a lot of children called Cheaper by the Dozen. This wasn’t the Steve Martin remake, but the original which would now be old, old, old, old. Like me. Anyway, the husband would run experiments to find out the most efficient way to do something. I found it fascinating especially that some people could even be resistant to doing something easier and faster even if they achieved the same result. Maybe it is the lazy in me talking, but I’ll always sign up for easier and faster.

Let’s look at exercise, say you wanted to build up strength. There is plenty of information available on how to optimize your training – weights to use, number of reps/sets, time to rest between sets, time to rest between workouts, amount of weight to use, what to eat before or after, etc. There are plans you can follow to make your workout as effective and efficient as possible.

Now look at learning. That information simply isn’t as common. I remember from a young age getting spelling lists of words to memorize, but no instruction in how to memorize them. So what is the best way to memorize a list? There are tidbits of info here and there but nothing like there is for strength training. Granted, learning is more complicated, but it’s also a larger part of most people’s lives.

Since I’m going to be doing multiple experiments to learn things, starting with Spanish, I’ve been researching some of the best methods or ideas to learn efficiently.  I’m still researching. I’m slow and there is a lot to look up and read. But I figured I would go ahead and start posting some of what I’m finding. 

Testing is better than studying.
American PsychologicalAssociation

Basically, they discovered that once you have learned something (got it right on a test) that testing, rather than studying, will help you remember the information better over time. In fact, subjects who dropped studying what they already got right, got just as many answers correct as those who continued to study those items as long as they continued to get tested on those items. And those who didn’t get tested on things they had previously gotten right, quickly forgot those things even though they continued to study them. So study what you don’t know, test on what you do. 

The longer you want to retain information, the longer the time between your study sessions should be.
Science Daily

"If you want to remember information for just a week, it is probably best if study sessions are spaced out over a day or two. On the other hand, if you want to remember information for a year, it is best for learning to be spaced out over about a month.

"Extrapolating from the results, he added, "it seems plausible that whenever the goal is for someone to remember information over a lifetime, it is probably best for them to be re-exposed to it over a number of years."

Of course, if we are testing instead of studying, I’ll assume those tests should be spaced out as well. I actually am most nervous about this one, as I intended to study the same thing day after day until I got it. But now I'm thinking I need to try spacing those lessons out and obviously, due to my time crunch, inserting other lessons. 

Memories can be activated and strengthened while sleeping.
Science Daily

"The critical difference is that our research shows that memory is strengthened for something you've already learned," Reber said. "Rather than learning something new in your sleep, we're talking about enhancing an existing memory by re-activating information recently acquired."
…
"If you were learning how to speak in a foreign language during the day, for example, and then tried to reactivate those memories during sleep, perhaps you might enhance your learning."

So after studying some new vocabulary words before bed, listening to them on tape while you sleep could help you remember them better in the morning. It’s important to note, there was another study on that site, where sleep seemed to only impact memory for those things that reached a “threshold acquisition level.” In other words, you need to know the information before sleep. 

Sleeping soon after learning something new helps memory.
Science Daily
 Originally, my plan was going to be to study my new Spanish words in the morning. Clearly that would have been a mistake. Now I’ll do new words in the evening. There was another study where a shot burst of moderate exercise after learning also helps. So if you can’t sleep, maybe a few minutes of exercise will help you out. I’d rather sleep. 

Generating answers improves performance over multiple choice.
I’m a great guesser so I try to avoid multiple choice anyway. But it’s good to know that fill in the blank tests will actually help you more in the long term. Yes they are harder, but you’ll thank yourself later. 

Mastery of a topic before moving on increases overall performance.
In other words, kind of knowing your current lesson isn’t good enough to move onto the next. Kind of what schools do to students.  So keep a good vocab list and don’t move on from any word you miss on a test.

Now I just need to take all of this and the things we already know about learning a foreign language and come up with a winning strategy. More on that later.

 

AND SO IT BEGINS

Ouch. That is the word of the day, the day after the first day of my experiments. Mostly it went smoothly, as expected. Drinking water, reading and the affirmations were all easy to do and not really a bother. I read Snatched by Karin Slaughter, which is a novella (didn't seem that long) about a possible child kidnapping at an airport. It was entertaining enough and just the perfect length to read start to finish before bed.

But the 10,000 steps is another story. I got off to what I thought was a decent start on the steps but by about halfway through my day I was only a quarter of the way through my steps. I knew that would be a problem. Then I soon started to feel a tightness in my calves. Another problem. I spent a large portion of my day trying to do or thinking about doing those terrible, terrible steps. They became my enemy. I even considered somehow attaching my pedometer to the dog so he could share my burden.

Eventually, as the day's end drew close, I buckled down and did some stepping. And by 11:30 p.m. I had actually finished. Yeah!!! But if I thought yesterday was hard, today is going to be a bigger test. I'm off to a very slow start (only 474 steps so far) and my calves are so very, very sore. As soon as I post this, I'm going to try and do one of the Leslie Sansone walking videos. I'm torn. I should do the 3 miles one, but I'm unsure I can do that before my calves figure out how to kill me. I should probably try it anyway. Don't tell my calves.

HOLA

Change your language and you change your thoughts.

 - Karl Albrecht

One of the experiments I want to do next year is to attempt to learn a foreign language, specifically Spanish. What that goal lacks in originality it more than makes up with popularity. Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of research lately attempting to come up with a workable plan, aka experiment, to make that happen.  It seems the consensus is that the key to quickly learning a new language is…..

IMMERSION

That’s great. And totally unworkable for me. I can not move to a Spanish speaking country to learn Spanish. So I’m working on a faux immersion plan or fauxmersion.  This will involve me watching Spanish tv, listening to Spanish radio, reading Spanish books, surfing Spanish websites and talking to myself in Spanish.

Normally, I like my experiments simple as in I would break down learning vocabulary to a specific time frame, like 2 weeks. Then check results before moving onto watching tv. That way each method could be judged independently. But because I need the fauxmersion, I’m unsure how much I will be able to break down this plan.  I really need to do everything daily to immerse myself in the language, more so once I get a solid foundation.

I also like my experiments not to be too long. But I think this is going to have to be a little on the longer side. I’m going to go with 3 months. Which, although a long time for an experiment, is an incredibly short time to learn a foreign language. Now I do have the benefit of 2 years of high school Spanish decades ago, although that second year was a waste. I’m not sure that my second year Spanish teacher actually spoke Spanish. So I can say some basic things in present tense only.

LESSONS

Obviously just immersing myself in Spanish doesn’t actually teach me Spanish. I’m going to actually have to push start that especially in the beginning. My first decision on that front, is to skip the grammar lessons. I didn’t like them in school and managed to learn English without them in the beginning. So while they may be necessary at some point, they aren’t going to happen at the start.  Instead I think I’m going to focus on some vocabulary and phrases.  

According to this post this is how many words are in an average vocabulary:

Grade 1 Student = 1,000+ words

Normal Person (Graduate) = 5,000 to 6,000+ words

University Professor = 15,000+ words

Spelling Bee Winners = 30,000+ (as claimed by them)

College Dictionary (Abridged) = 50,000 - 70,000

Total Words in English Language = 250,000+ (Growing)

Dictionary (Un-abridged) with derivatives = 450,000+

 Even if you know 5,000 words, you probably rarely use most of them. In fact, most of us use just a few hundred words regularly. When is the last time you used the word neutron or capacitor? So after much internal debate between pushing myself and practicality, I’ve decided 10 words per day for 90 days would yield a respectable 900 word vocabulary.  

Choosing which words to learn matters. Obviously I need to learn the words most frequently used. Thankfully, the internet is full of just such lists. Here’s a list of the 1,000 most common Spanish words, with pronunciation, from Words Galore. There are plenty of other sites with lists of common Spanish words. The important thing is to learn the words used most frequently.

It’s an intimidating list. But to start, I’m going with a list of the 101 most common Spanish words, also with audio, from Top Choice Reviews. They also have a list of 101most common Spanish phrases. Since I’m not stressing grammar, phrases become even more important. So they need to be learned as well. I’m probably going to try and learn as many of the phrases and vocab as soon as possible in order to make the immersion part work better. But I’ll post more on that, as well as some other ideas and resources, in my next language post.