Third Language Blog » Spanish

Excuse me did I hear you speaking Spanish

admin — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:31:58 +0000

One of the first things my new Spanish teacher said to the class was that we should always try to start a conversation whenever we heard someone speaking Spanish in a shop or on a train or wherever. I thought at the time that sounded like a good idea, in principle! This topic has just been aired on the "about Spanish" group and the consensus is … well see for yourself.

Most people seem to agree that its a good idea to initiate a converation but like most things in life, a smile and a bit of humility will go a long way when talking to strangers.

OU Results L140

Bill Ferguson — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 10:55:48 +0000

At last the results have come out for L140. Sadly none of my group of "study buddies" or me, made distinction level (85% or better in each component) but we didn’t disgrace ourselves and we all passed. Here is my long awaited letter from the OU:

Open University L140 Results letter

Strangely I didn’t feel like celebrating, maybe because the gap between end of course and results was so long. The other reason is perhaps a sense of disappointment that the OU is trundling off in its own direction and making it hard for students like me to stay with them.

Here is my summary of my OU Spanish experience after 2 years

L194 is excellent – it takes you from nothing to better than most ex-pats in a year, it was fun to do and a little bit of work each day kept me up to date. My tutor, Gemma was exemplary, even gave out her personal mobile number.

L140 is a good course, apart from the eluminate online tutorials which were unhappy events. It’s a bit heavy on old fashioned drills and exercises even though they are done in a modern way with CD-ROM. Once again I was lucky to have a good tutor, thanks Laura! so I could get help by email when I needed it.

The biggest problem, that I keep harping on about, is lack of conversation practise. I think it should be an intrinsic part of the course. Talking to other students this was a common criticism and probably part of the reason that hardly anyone intended to continue to the next level with OU. Maybe a tie up with a Spanish institution who teach English would be possible, one-to-one "intercambios" between students on Skype, half an hour a week might do the trick (wish I’d thought of that sooner).

No matter how well you can conjugate irregular imperfect subjunctives, when someone grunts and mumbles something to you in a noisy bar it is a good idea to have a phrase or two ready in response. I feel poorly equipped with "Spanish sounding phrases " for daily use "on the street". I intend to work on this on my next trip to Spain, I want to take all the podcasts from Notes in Spanish with me, and try out some of the phrases that Ben suggests will make me sound "like a local".

To finish this post, here is a link to a catchy piece of Spanish music that I like.

December update

Bill Ferguson — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:05:15 +0000

Resumé: its now 2 years and a week since I started learning Spanish and it isn’t getting easier or harder. It feels like swimming in the sea, if you try to go too fast it’s dangerous because you get tired and out of breath, plodding along is safest, and I can’t risk stopping because there isn’t anything solid to hold on to yet.

I have some new resources to share:

Notes in Spanish is very good www.notesinspanish.com , they offer three levels; beginner, intermediate and advanced. If you are a complete beginner the intro level is probably a bit advanced although it would augment any other course that you might be doing, there are some lovely colloquial phrases that will raise eyebrows from your Spanish friends. Intermediate is just about possible for me to follow and I haven’t yet dipped into Advanced.

The podcasts are about 20-25 minutes long and are free to download. If you want the transcripts and grammar exercises you have to pay a small amount. There are also some YouTube clips (which is where I originally found Ben and Marina, the presenters), just search for "Notes in Spanish".

Next resource is www.meetup.com ; I got in touch with a local group (25 miles away) who meet monthly and I intend to be a regular attendee next year. Here is the link to the group if you are near Kent, UK www.meetup.com/Kent-Spanish-Language-and-Latin-American-culture. This group meet socially to speak in Spanish and share resources. The local organiser Viviana told me about a movie on YouTube, called "Ilona llega con la lluvia" and it even has subtitles, I liked it but didn’t expect the ending …

Here is my Spanish "diet", I choose a little from each group every day. Watch some TV, online or satellite. Read some El Pais, online and free. Read some Spanish literature on the Kindle. Self test on vocabulary. Listen to some Spanish music, YouTube has huge selection. If I hear a good phrase or a new word I write it down and look for it later in the dictionary – today’s word was "acudir". I am not talking about hours of study. Five minutes on each is painless and it keeps the stuff dripping in to the brain.

My Adult Ed course is going well, this week it was cancelled because of bad weather. Full marks to Juliette Negri who made sure I was called early enough to tell me the centre was closed. I missed one when I was in Barcelona but otherwise I’ve been to every class. The teacher is great; she makes us work for the full 90 minutes and English is forbidden in the classroom. I am still suffering from what I see as the major weakness of OU – lack of conversational practice. I can do the written work and the reading comfortably but when it comes to speaking without prompt or preparation I struggle. If only I could have Michel Thomas in my ear saying "how do you say – ‘is it ready for me because I need it tomorrow?’"

I feel that French has really slipped although I can still read and understand it without too much trouble, in conversation I lapse into some sort of hybrid language that only makes sense to me. I have a notion to try the 80/20 principle so that my "language time" divides into 80% Spanish and 20% French – probably a project for 2011.

I’m still waiting for my OU results, L140 seems like a long time ago. They are so slow at getting results back. How long does it take to mark an essay and an oral exam?

Reading Spanish novels with Kindle 3

Bill Ferguson — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 17:19:01 +0000

I read recently that a school in Kansas had given all of the students Kindle readers instead of the usual course books. There were several advantages for the students: they didn’t have to drag heavy textbooks around with them, all the course books had been downloaded onto a device weighing a few ounces. Just like a real book they could highlight sections and make notes in the margins. I thought "how interesting" but didn’t feel inclined to invest £150 in an electronic reader. Until I found this… Dave Slusher has created a free Spanish to English dictionary for the Kindle, you can get it here

I ordered a Kindle 3 from Amazon the same day. This looked like the answer to my prayer. When I try to read Spanish novels I frequently come across words that I don’t know, I could read on and ignore the mystery word, or guess it sometimes. Or I could stop reading and look it up in the dictionary. Now if I am reading on the Kindle 3 I just move the cursor to the left of the word and the translation appears instantly at the top or bottom of the screen.

Here are a couple of pictures to demonstrate. The book is by Isabel Allende, called La casa de los espiritus:

Kindle 3

look at the tenth line down, suppose I didn’t know the word "gitana", I move the cursor to the left of the word using the five way toggle switch

Kindle 3 – 5-way toggle switch

and the translation appears at the bottom of the screen:

Kindle 3 – translation at bottom of page

So now I can lie in bed and read my novel without having to grab a dictionary every few seconds. Delightful.

After Open University, Adult ed and Kindle 3

Bill Ferguson — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:31:00 +0000

There is a space of less than a week between finishing L140 with Open University and starting a level 7 Spanish course with Kent Adult Education. This is going to be interesting: the prospectus suggests that I am going to struggle at this level but 2 years ago I was attending French at level 7 and we had quite a spread of ability in the class, so I hope that the range of proficiency in the new class will be broad enough for me to slip in somewhere above worst. Vamos a ver (we will see).

Kindle 3

As always I am looking out for helpful technology. I had noticed the Amazon Kindle making the news from time to time and it had never seemed anything more than an irrelevant techie gadget. Until a few days ago. I came across a blog post from someone who had designed a Spanish dictionary for Kindle, he says that if you highlight a Spanish word it will translate it instantly and that stopped me in my tracks. I have been slowly and painfully wading through books written in Spanish. Not as real books but as electronic versions on my PDA and PC. The possibility of having a reader with an interface that is kind to the eyes and the chance to instantly translate the words I didn’t know was seductive.

Then I read how the next generation of Kindles had been streamlined to pocket size and lighter weight. I checked out a couple reviews on You Tube and decided to risk it. I pre-ordered as Amazon were out of stock and reckoned on a month or two to wait. Today I had an email from Amazon telling me it has been dispatched – watch this space for a review. Spanish books I have been reading: Stieg Larson "Los hombres que no amaban a las mujeres", Harry Potter, Stephanie Meyer "Crepusculo", Isabel Allende "La casa de los espiritus". I’ve got them all as text files or PDF’s so theoretically I can get them onto the Kindle. I also have a dozen or so books that I haven’t even started yet.

The end of L140

Bill Ferguson — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:22:41 +0000

I haven’t posted for 6 weeks and the reason was Open University, in particular L140. This course has taken over my free time. The final exams (OU call them "end of course assessments") consisted of an essay; not too bad I thought, and a speaking assessment. That was stressful. The speaking assessment, 2 days ago, was done by telephone. It involved phoning in to a conference centre where four students at a time had to role play, in Spanish, while being recorded for later dissection and analysis by the examiners.

I think we did ok, the four of us. We each presented our allocated topics in the 2 minutes allowed. And we spoke together for the 8 minutes allowed, without any pregnant pauses or anyone dominating or being left out. It will be December before the results are released. The OU still rely on the Post Office and pigeon post for communication at the ends of courses.

Looking back to when I started studying Spanish in November 2008 I am pleased with my progress. I wish I could have gone further with OU but the next level is double the workload and I know I couldn’t do it justice while I still have to work for a living. My ambition is to eventually be trilingual and the next stage of the journey is going to be challenging: I will gradually reintroduce French while continuing to study Spanish.

Now that I have shed the weight of OU, at least for now, my next job is to sort out this blog and make it easier to use for any readers new to the obsessive compulsion of learning not one, but two new languages, as adults, from scratch.

Open University Course Material L140

Spanish TV via Satellite in the UK

Bill Ferguson — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:58:26 +0000

My new satellite system was installed on Friday and it’s wonderful. I thought I might get half a dozen or so Spanish stations but I can actually get 14 and there may be more that I haven’t found yet.

The installation went smoothly, the guys from Challenge TV in Tenterden, Kent, did a great job – have a look at the photo sequence to see what was involved.

Challenge TV, Tenterden, arrive to install a new satellite system to pick up Hispasat at 30 °W and Astra at 19.2°E with a motorised dish.

The old satellite Sky dish used to pick up Hotbird and Intelsat but since they went mainly digital it hasn’t been much use

They inspect the old satellite dish, it was about 15 years old and rusty and needed replacing

The old satellite dish comes down

The old satellite dish and the new dish – the old dish was 80cm the new one is 78cm

New satellite dish with its motorised unit

Fixing the mount for the new satellite dish. This was the skilful part – the mount had to be vertical so that the presets on the motor line up with the right parts of the sky

The new satellite dish installed and now ready to test. We all watched the satellite dish move when a different satellite was selected from the TV

The new satellite decoder (SatCatcher Voyager). This is the clever bit that converts the signal into TV language. It can cope with 3000 channels according to the box

For those of you who are technical minded the satellites I can recieve are:
HOTBIRD
TURK1C
ASTRA 1
HISPASAT
INTELSAT 10
THOR 2,3
ASTRA 2A, 2B, 2D
EUROBIRD 1

There may be more to come but so far I have found these Spanish channels:
TVEi
Canarias
Galicia
Extremadura
Madrid
Andalucia
Telesur
Popular
CNC
Vit
TBN
RTPA int
Aragon
EHS

Overall I am delighted with the choice of stations, I feel like a kid in a toyshop, I don’t know what to play with first.

¡Hispasat viene!

Bill Ferguson — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:05:45 +0000

At last all my heavy hints for the ideal birthday present have paid off, the installation is planned for Friday. After suffering Eurosat as my only Spanish TV channel for the last six months we are upgrading to a motorised dish that should be able to pick up at least a couple of European satellites including Hispasat 30°W and Astra 19.2°E and maybe half a dozen or so Spanish channels. I am looking forward to the breakfast show on TVE to accompany my bacon and egg in the mornings. More details to follow…

Where have all the Spanish Classes Gone

Bill Ferguson — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:39:28 +0000

I’m getting started on the L140 Open University course, one of the suggestions is that students arrange some conversation practice with native Spanish speakers. No problem you might think. I put out lots of feelers but so far I haven’t found anyone to practice with, so I started looking for conversation classes.

According to Wikipedia, Spanish is the 2nd most widely spoken language in the world. You wouldn’t think so if you lived in Kent. I have been trying unsuccessfully, to find a Spanish conversation class for the past few days, today I got through to a very helpful person at KAE (Kent Adult Education) who looked through their database on my behalf and confirmed what I thought – there are currently no Spanish conversation classes run by KAE in the entire county. I knew that foreign languages were having a hard time but I didn’t realise just how bad things were.

Maybe my comments on KAE were more apocryphal than I realised at the time (http://thirdlanguage.co.uk/adult-education/local-authority-adult-education-classes/ ), perhaps the bureaucracy has worn down the teachers and the hard-to-navigate website has put off enough potential students so the classes have withered and died.

I haven’t given up yet, there is a possible lead I am following. I will write more when I know more.

Spanish note taking

admin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:20:04 +0000

While in Spain I found my recordings useful, Michel Thomas and Pimsleur. I also found my notes helpful, I’ll come back to that . . .

One of the strange things I have found when going to Spain, or France, is the disappearance of vocabulary after one use. You prepare for the trip, have several prepared phrases ready, you use them on day one, everyone is impressed then you suddenly revert to "imbicile" mode – mind goes blank – can’t conjugate beyond present tense. What is going on!!

Michel Thomas and Pimsleur help enormously, don’t leave them at home!

Next tip is to lay your notes out in a way that makes it easy to revise:

Tip 1
If it is worth writing down – give it a line to itself

Tip 2
Buy a solid notebook – you are more likely to use it

Here is an example from my notebook. I write down some phrases from a lesson that I want to be able to use. I test myself by covering up either the English or the Spanish and say out loud what I think the translation is, if I am testing English to Spanish I work up the page – Spanish to English I work down the page. I do this every day for 5 -10 minutes. Try it, see if it works for you..