Study Techniques That Work!!!

[maxiewawa]

Marky先生 from JapanesePod101.com, SpanishPod101.com's progenitor, started a thread about Japanese study techniques. Have a look here:

http://www.japanesepod101.com/forum/vie ... 4817#14817

A lot of Japanese learners seem to use hi-tech gadgets to read through lists of vocab. Most of the techniques Japanese learners use can also be applied to Spanish.

I made a video to show how I memorise words:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6AisYnJ8yU
If you look carefully, you'll see a Spanish flashcard. There's only one so far!

How do you learn vocab?

[davidperez]

maxiewawa:

I'm really shocked! How many languages are you learning right now?

About learning vocab, well, for japanese I'm using the "Remembering the kanji" series, which helps a lot, but, of course, this is only useful for Japanese. For english, it's just a question of searching the dictionary and memorizing.

Regards,
David.

[maxiewawa]

Quite a few! When SpanishPod101.com came out I didn't make an effort to learn any Spanish, but somehow I got pulled in!

[Elfunko]

Im over here now too. Learned for 3 years in HS and from friends, but since I stopped studying I forgot mostly how to speak, but can still understand most when heard. But now I figure I gotta take advantage of my environment wherever I am, so after studying abroad here in Japan, I'll study abroad again sort of, since my hometown is San Diego, closest thing to Mexico. Besides, after the thousand+ hours of Japanese study, Spanish would have about 4 times the results of how much I can speak now.

[Joseph]

One valuable way of learning a language, which I'd like to share with you guys is by transcribing. I know I've brought this up in some of our comment sections, but I want to take this opportunity to expand on it a bit here. The idea was brought to me by a renown poet and translator named Pierre Joris, with whom I studied a few years back. We was leading a course in Theory and Practice of Literary Translation and he gave us a very challenging assignment.

He handed out a copy of a poem written in Luxembourgish (his native language) and asked us all to carry out a "homophonic" translation. By homophonic, he meant that we were to reproduce what we thought were the sounds of the source text. Of course, none of us could concern ourselves with the meaning, because we had no knowledge of the Luxembourgish, nor were we expected to.

The process was fascinating. I found that I had to completely dissociate myself with the meaning of language, which was surprising difficult to do. I mean, I really had to force myself to know search online for a translator. It taught me a lot about the importance of the sound of language, and not only poetic language, but language in general.

As I continued my language studies and took on Portuguese, I began to listen to Bossa Nova on a regular basis along with MPB FM, which was one of the few internet radio stations I get at the time. I began to focus on one song, a short one at that. I listened to it over and over again, until I reached the point at which I could sing along without really knowing what the words meant. Then, one day I decided to transcribe what I was singing. It was hard. In fact, it was very hard, but again, I pushed my way through the exercise without using a dictionary. There were some words that I knew were obviously wrong, but I wrote them down as I heard them. That was the goal. Then, when I had finished, I went online and found the lyrics to the song and compared with my transcription.

The comparison was very eye-opening. I realized that I had gotten a good portion right, even though the spelling was wrong is some cases and I was missing a word here and there in others. But most of all, what was interesting was where I was wrong! I'll never forget the the sound that presented me with the biggest problem. I transcribed it as "sic". What is "sic"? That can't be Portuguese, I thought. At best, it's Latin. Could it be Latin? I was baffled. When I look at the lyrics, I realized that it was the verb "ser", and at the very moment, I learned a profound lesson in the Portuguese pronunciation of the "r", which can be somewhat guttural. To this day, I've never forgotten to apply this to my pronunciation of the "r" in Portuguese.

So, I just wanted to share this with you all, seeing that a few of us have posted links to sites that have video, audio and lyrics for songs in Spanish: http://www.spanishpod101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26
I would be interested to see if this technique works for anyone else, and most importantly to find out what presents the most difficulty...

Can't wait to hear from you on this and on other study techniques that work.

Saludos,

Joseph

[mariposita]

I couldn't agree more with Joseph about the value of transcribing. When I was studying French in France, dictation was a huge part of their method of teaching the language. It really helps with comprehension.

Another component of the French method was to go into a language lab and listen to a native speaker or speakers speaking on a recording. You then go sentence by sentence and write down what you think he/she said. Then you check this against a transcript. Next you listen again and, after each sentence, you record yourself saying the same sentence. Finally after you have done this for the whole thing, you go back and listen, comparing your pronunciation to the native's. It is AMAZING to hear the way you really sound (versus your idea of how you sound) compared to a native. You can do this with songs, radio programs, interviews, anything that is a natural use of the language. Of course now you don't have to go to a language lab in a foreign country to do this, you can do it with your ipod or computer!

[syn70]

I like the idea of listening to music and transcribing based on how I understand the words.

[shaunflan2017_73231]

Hola!

I am new to Spanish studies and have decided to try my hand at translating a few Spanish language songs by Shakira.
Despite this seeming like a simple task it has instead proven to be very difficult.
It appears to me as though the English translations available in no way correspond to what I produced after my attempts.
I have tentatively concluded that the English translations of these songs are more approximate interpretations rather than literal translations.

Is this anywhere close to the truth??

Any advice is fully appreciated.

[bazilinga_73098]

Thanks for sharing this post It's really helpful.

[carlavapu5507]

Hola!

Gracias por tu comentario.
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Carla
Team SpanishPod101.com