the sixth week, video time – 11th post

Progress?

Well,this week saw me waste a lot of time, not many new vocabulary items from my own studies. Having said that, I spent a lot more time speaking Spanish this week than previous weeks. I read all my (Spanish) comics. I got an X-men and a Sin City comic. Tomorrow I think I'll buy a Hellboy.

The point being that even when I haven't had enough time nor energy to do active study, the passive stuff comes through a great deal. As well as gaining more confidence with speaking (I'm ordering take out over the phone now) I find that the words I have previously learnt, though not as fresh in the mind, require little effort whatsoever to recall them.

New items?

During the week, whether with pupils, at home or out and about, I have encountered new strange words. Puddle for example (Charco). It takes a conscious effort of less than 5 repetitions and 2-3 minutes to commit to memory. If the effort is active in acquisition, time is minimised.

http://voxy.com/blog/2010/12/brain-learns-new-words-in-less-than-15-minutes/

I believe with context and/or mnemonics, you don't need this much time and could accomplish 100% with much more complex phrases.

Such as the 3 minute effort with (granted it took more) 10 repetitions to memorise the phrase “no te vallas por las ramas” - stay on point/ topic, don't stray.

As suggested, I am going to start inserting video clips to track my progress. Please be gentle with comments and understand how humbling it is to do this. Having said this, I will only put on up every four posts so that greater difference between videos can be seen.

Here is the first

Please leave comments on this blog and not on youtube (I'll  try disable the comments on the video anyway).

Next week?

More vocabulary actively studied. Continuing with the active indicative verbs. More passive stuff such as comics, songs, movies, etc. I think it should be good :)