New way to make learning Spanish easier!
I've been trying to do a fair amount of Spanish reading lately, but am tiring of dropping my book every couple of minutes to go to the dictionary. I was flying home from Florida last night reading "Pantalones Cortos" and found myself without any dictionary at all. That's when I came up with a new plan. I took my pencil and circled every word that I didn't know and just kept reading the best that I could. Then, today, I went to the Flashcard section at SD and started putting them in, about 30 at a time. When I mastered the word list, I went back and re-read the pages. It went much, much faster and I felt I actually made progress because I specifically studied the words that were stumping me. I'm going to do this for the rest of this book....and the other 4 books in this series!
Hope some of you can benefit from this plan. If you'd like, you can check out the flashcards that I'm making, whether or not you're reading the books.
Does anyone else have plans that have worked?
3 Answers
You didn't mention which books you are reading, Echoline?
I try to listen mostly, but am reading Carlos Ruiz Zafón's La sombra del viento (lasombradelviento.net)and keeping a vocabulary for it which I will be happy to share when I finish.
But be forewarned, practically every word from the first pages is listed. Hmmmm..come to think about it, there are a lot of pages for which most words are in the list. The book has fallen apart already once -- I had to buy a new one.
I have such a list on paper for the first book I read: La isla bajo el mar from Isabel Allende. Not at all prepared with any vocabulary to read that book - I despaired in the beginning.. But it was a Christmas gift from my son-in-law, so what was a body to do? -- just plough through. I often wished the young man had chosen to wrap up another dictionary to put under the tree. It sure would have been easier reading with the words already looked up :--).
Anyway, as it turns out, my La isla book list is much less comprehensive because I got so interested in the story. Finding myself after awhile able to follow it without necessarily understanding all the words, I just raced through. Still, I would be happy to share it - even to go back and complete the list..
Mi sistema:
1-Leer libros que estén a mi nivel lingüístico. Creo que es la única forma de no dedicar más tiempo al diccionario que al libro que estás leyendo. Para mí , es un gran error intentar leer un libro que maneje un vocabulario mucho más extenso del que manejas.
2-Escuchar emisoras de radio (en mi caso en inglés) para ir acostumbrando el oido al idioma que estas aprendiendo.Esto es importantisimo. Puedes escuchar esta:
link text (Radio Nacional de España)
Yo oigo estas:
link text (Usa)
link text (Irlanda)
3-Ver películas .Yo uso un programa en mi ordenador , “CiberLink Power DVD” que me permite poner al mismo tiempo subtítulos en español y en inglés . Esto me permite de un vistazo, ver los subtítulos en ambos idiomas cuando tengo una duda.Un programa informático como este o similares es de gran ayuda.
4-Escribir redacciones,cartas,etc (algo que todos hacemos menos de lo conveniente).
5-Estudiar gramática (buffffffffffffff…………)
This is a great idea Echoline! Another related idea that I have found useful is to read Spanish books on a Kindle or any other electronic reading device. If you also have a Spanish/English dictionary on the device, the definition appears immediately when you place the cursor in front of the unknown word.
But since there are so many books that I have which are unavailable on Kindle, I will be using your idea for those. Also, you might be retaining more with your plan because you are reading, than going back to the words and finally making flashcards to study.
Great idea. Thanks for sharing! 
