For me, I am absolutely slamming it in the gym right now. Consistency is great, eating is great, quitting drinking for now has been great. Some non-gym guy even called me a big lad a few days ago. I’m stoked.

Also, the general sentiment in the country regarding social issues has become more radical all of a sudden, and I think it’s forcing our party to do more radical things themselves. A thing I have been calling for for a while now. Let’s hope it takes off and snowballs from there on.

How about you guys?

  • Catradora-Stalinism☭
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    11 year ago

    haven’t attempted it, but I do want to try. I understand that it is an important step in learning how to speak a language.

    • @redtea
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      21 year ago

      It’s hard at first. But if you’re taking a course, it will come easier.

      One thing to get you started might be looking out for whatever you’ve learned in class. Maybe a verb conjugation/tense or something to do with word order, whatever.

      This will really drill in whatever it is. It relies on the memory curve (really, the forgetting curve – something worth knowing about in general if you’ve not heard of it before).

      I really struggle with grammar. And I don’t find textbook explanations all too helpful because they tend to assume that I will know what they are talking about in English. But I don’t. So when the textbook says, oh an imperfect conditional is so and so in Spanish, I’m sat there wondering what an imperfect conditional is in English. But if I spot the e.g. imperfect conditional in a TV series or book, in context, it makes much more sense and seems to stick.

      (BTW, I’m not confident that the imperfect conditional is even a thing.)

      Also something that I was not informed of in language classes for another romance language – not Spanish, but the principle still applies – is that you can get by with native content without knowing / while still learning the grammar. Because much of it, especially non-fiction, is the same as English. Either it’s international vocab or Latin, with minor adjustments. There are thousands of cognates. The first few Language Transfer lessons (they’re short) gives some tips on this. (E.g almost all words ending ‘al’ or ‘ion’ are the same in both languages, with maybe one or two letters different: capital/capital or attention/atención.)

      If you do have a look at native content. The trick is finding things at the right level. This can be frustrating. But you’ll know it when you see it. It’s also worth focusing on what you do understand rather than what you’re missing.

      I’ll end my unsolicited advice at that. But feel free to ask for recommendations etc if you do fancy jumping in.