Well done Stu, we seem to consider the same things tricky - or maybe it’s just that those things are tricky, looking back at my diary I stumbled a fair bit on 11.
12 was a relief. Yes, I did find 13 and 14 hard but I just tried to get through to the end saying as much as I could in the time given… A lot of the time I just joined in with Rosa and Gaby or “echoed” them as quickly as I could. With both of these challenges I felt relief when they were over but also that I’d wasted 2 lots of 30 minutes as was never going to remember any of it but … you’ve guessed it, I’d taken it in despite myself
Also take encouragement that it gets easier believe it or not. Just finished 24 and was a lot easier on the brain than 13 and 14, so don’t worry about them, just get them over with and be amazed further down the line at how much went in.
The best thing about those lessons was that you could look back on them, smile, share a joke with other learners, and then realise how easy they seem now…
Quite looking forwards to them now having just polished off Challenge 12 with little difficulty/
Challenge 12 was finished whilst walking through the local fields and woods on a hazy sunny day. After the difficulties of 11, this was a real joy, with all of the problems I had with the last Challenge pretty much sorted out. Getting my tongue around la senora mayor was a bit tricky, but the hardest thing in the lesson. Some fantastically fun and useful new stuff was also introduced using quisiera and deveria - they are going to prove very useful indeed!
So next its Challenge 13. Not sure I’ll get to do that tomorrow, as it is likely to be a rest day, being my lovely wife’s birthday and all. Now I need to stick the iPod back on and do some work with Listening Exercise 2 whilst I debug this MVC website I’m working on…
PS
Oh, and I am pretty much decided to ditch Babbel going forward. Its pretty good on the whole, but as soon as it started trying to get me to conjugate a verb by rote, I lost interest. That is not what I want to be doing at this stage in my Spanish learning.! I will be moving forwards with Memrise now (but will dip into Babbel on occasion until my subscription expires; I’m not going to renew it).
I started on Challenge 13 this morning on the drive into work. It was going fine until I hit el queria que yo le dijera, which I simply could not get even though Aran repeated it several times. It was dijera I did not hear clearly enough and so I was completely thrown from that point on, as the sentences are quite involved and I was missing a vital word. I could not pause or rewind, and so stopped. Now I have had the chance to listen closely and repeatedly, I will continue with the lesson over lunch and see how it goes…
Well, I made it through Challenge 13. The final quarter of the lesson is really hard - not that the words are hard of themselves, they just seem impossible to actually get out of my mouth at the moment. Memories of ddidodd o and ddidodd hi from the Welsh come flooding back. I am going to have to practice outside of the lesson in order to get my mouth to make those sounds in the right order and with some semblence of fluidity… At the moment, I am trying to concentrate on just saying …que yo le… and …que usted me… as fluid units of speech, and hoping that will help me fit the other words around them.
I really hope that 14 is a bit easier, but I suspect that I am going to be disappointed. Still, “he wanted me to ask you…” isn’t going to be a mainstay of conversation for me at the moment, so time to stop worrying about it and move on.
Challenge 14 done and dusted, and it was nowhere near as bad as expected. Sure, the sentences get pretty hairy towards the end, but I got everything out, however haltingly, within the gap allowed so I was very pleased with myself. So what if sometimes ayer came out as anoche, and brother and sister got liberally swapped about? I am very happy that the hard work I did trying to get the word combinations from lesson 13 sorted and coming out of my mouth in at least a semi-flowing manner, helped so much. Less stumbling over the words then giving up in frustration, and more production of the sentence in the chunks we have been working on since the very first Challenge. Inspiring stuff! I cannot wait to forge ahead with Challenge 15 now.
Listening exercise 2 is coming along nicely, but I am very aware that #3 is fast approaching and I don’t have #2 at a good level yet. Still, no harm in working on both of them. #1 is sounding great to my ears, with the familiar perception of Gaby speaking much slower than he really is kicking in now. These listening segments are really effective.
Yay! well done. Trust me 15 feels like a walk in the park in comparison.
I still say hablar instead of decir and vice versa at times, but probably because I’m trying to say it in the gap allowed - I do know the difference so am confident that in a real conversation I’d use the right word, as will you with ayer/anoche and hermana/hermano
Well, Challenge 15 was a real feel good session, with lots of consolidation that demonstrated to me that all the pain of 13 was worth it. Everything clicked and it was a truly inspiring experience. I actually punched the air on getting to the end. It is day’s like this that really put the days when you doubt yourself into perspective. The brain is such a wonderful thing to absorb language the way it does.
We are celebrating my daughter’s 1st in Geology tonight, so the 3rd listening exercise will have to wait until tomorrow, but I am looking forward to it immensely. Feeling tremendously positive, and looking back at this entry in the Learning Log will remind me of this feeling should there be difficulties ahead.
I tackled Challenge 16 on my walk down the bike path on a grey but warm day. It didn’t rain luckily. The lesson began well, but I found picking up the pronunciation of leer, ver and película a bit tricky. I had to just push through that and then check up on those words after I got home; I wasn’t too far off, but I was getting leer subtly wrong. My ears are not quite what they used to be, but I think I’m starting to get used to some of the sounds of Spanish. As soon as I saw leer written down, I immediately thought “Oh, its said a bit like creer, that’s easy…” I know I’m not supposed to look at the written words, but I waited until after the lesson and in this case it cleared things up straight away for me, as I know that English “ee” and Spanish “ee” are not said in the same way!
I had one run through Listening Exercise 3 and I have to admit it was mostly a blur. Some sentences popped out nicely, but it is going to need a fair amount of work for me to feel comfortable with it. I am going to try some Spanish radio from next week I think, just to get more of the sounds of the language into my ears.
I hope to be back in the saddle soon.