C1 Spanish by 2013 | My language mission and my log | Forum

Yes. C1. Being able to communicate easily. Sounds accomplish-able. I would currently put myself at a A2 in Spanish. I have the basics down. I am currently taking a Spanish 2 class in high school and getting an A so I would put that at an A2 level. My goals for this time segment:

-Finish an entire novel in Spanish.

-Be able to watch an entire movie with ease.

-Speak an entire conversation (more than 10 minutes) with little to no trouble

My plans to study:

-For goal #1, I plan on reading through Harry Potter, and if I can get my hands on it, the entire series.

-For goal #2, I plan on watching Star Wars Episode 1, or, once again, the entire series. I also have numerous dubbed spanish movies at my house.

-Practice daily on sharedtalk.com, also getting a few skype friends to have constant conversations with

-Learn 1000 words on memrise.com

-Also, I DO have my high school course, which I'm sure will help

JWood424 said
I own the entire Harry Potter series in Spanish.  It's a good start.  Try this http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-y-piedra-filosofal/dp/8478886540/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348016326&sr=8-1&keywords=Harry+Potter+en+espanol Just remember, they are pretty long.  Take your time and don't necessarily buy all of them at once.  I am still working on #5.  I also watched Star Wars in Spanish which should help you if you already know the dialogue fairly well in English.  Don't rush that either.  You might benefit by writing down key phrases you understand while you watch.  "May the Force be with you," will probably stand out, but if you hear something else you recognize, make a note of it.  You have a lofty goal (2013 is coming up fast) but if you really focus, you should be able to to it.  (Also, try practicing with your classmates!  They will go a little slower than a native on Skype I bet.)  Good luck, and don't hesitate to ask questions here.

Thank you so meach. And its so cheap. And I do in fact know the English dialogue very well. I have watched the first one many, many times since I was a little kid.

And sadly, I guess, I take spanish online, so I do not have any classmates. But this means that I can go faster than the actual course . I do, in fact, live in an area heavily dominated with spanish speakers (They are actually the majority at my school. 60% I am pretty sure) so it shouldn´t be too much of a challenge to find speakers.

9-20-12

So I have everything finished. I actually went ahead with my spanish today. I did the quiz, then I did more lessons and did another. I learned about car,gar, zar, and eer preterite endings. Fun grammar right there. I aced both so at least I'm understanding it. This morning I got in my talking with some people on interpals. They may become usual penpals so that is good. I harvested 10 words, planted 10 more, and practiced some old ones on memrise. If any of you are interested, I am currently working on two word lists. One is conversational and the other political, but I should be done with both within a week. (I try to do smaller word lists – within 100, around 50).

Now the annoying part. I found out something that kind of sucks. Star Wars is too above my level comprehension-wise. The vocabulary and grammar is there (barely…the political memrise helped actually), but everything is just too hard to comprehend. It is send so fast, not in crystal clear spanish then with my actual level of the language I'm just not quite there yet.

So I moved down on the intelligence scale. I found los simpsons (the spanish simpsons dub). It works a lot better for my skill level. I understand almost all of the grammar, most of the vocab, and while I'm not comprehending all of it, there is a decent amount. It is enough to work with. While Star Wars, I was only able to follow along because of I have watched the movie many, many times, the simpsons I was actually able to follow along just getting thrown off by the faster parts.

So, I will be studying with the simpsons for a while, until I am able to comprehend things better, and I will work up to things like star wars. My goal is still there to be able to easily understand the whole movie with ease, but just watching it now is not going to help me as much as watching something a bit more lower-leveled like the simpsons.

Hopefully, I will be watching Star Wars by the end of October. Thats all for now. Adiós.

8-22-12

Average day. Nothing special. Didn't get a chance to study my words for my spanish test. Thats happening tommorow.

Memrise was normalish. Harvested 10 (last 5 of political) and planted 10. But this time, I practiced each group (5 and 5) a good 15-20 times each. Got in some good practice. And now I know for sure son is hijo and brother is hermano and not the other way around hahaha.

Currently talking on babbel. I like the site. The spanish chat is fun to hang in. Can't say the same thing about the english chat. They are always fighting for some reason hahaha.

But on babbel, I've decided to stop using google translate to check sentences. I will only use it to look up words. I feel like google translate has been a bit of a crunch in letting go and actually trying to use the language.

Watched the same episode of los simpsons today. Understood it a lot more. I'm going to watch it two more times (probably both tomorrow) before I move on to the next one.

I'm going to have to get cooking on the grammar. Thats probably going to be next weekend, knowing that tomorrow is going to be vocabulary focused.

Overall, I think I am going to up my level of studying now. Can't do much more for listening (except not being lazy and not watching it), but I am going to start to try to do 20 words a day in memrise, and for overall language learning (school, grammar, etc.) I am going to study much more intensely. Looking back at this week, I really didn't put in nearly as much effort in as I could have. But its fine. Its behind me. Time to get serious.