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SRS Practices: I Have an SRS, Now What?

by Ramses on July 3, 2009

In the last post I pointed out why I think using a Spaced Repetition System is a good thing to do, and what SRSs there are around. Now that you’ve set up the program of your choice you’re probably wondering; “now what?. In this post I’ll try to point out what the possibilities are (and what I think you should do - you’re always free to come up with your own formula (if you do, please share this in the comments)).

First of all, I’m a hardcore user of Anki (without doubt the most popular SRS today). And there’s a good reason I use it. Not only is Damien (the creator of the program) working on it actively, it also has MANY features I use daily. One of main features I use the most is the sound option. It’s just very easy to add audio to an item, which greatly improves your listening comprehension in the long run.
Tip: In the past I used the free FSI course to collect sentences from. To get the audio from the files I’d use Audacity (free software) to select the sentence in question and save it as mp3 file (be sure to download the mp3 codec from the internet - google for it). Then I’d simply type in the sentence in the question field and add the audio for the sentence (or only add the audio so that I had to transcribe the sentence, which makes things more difficult but more fun as well).

In my opinion, the only right way to use an SRS is to only add sentences. Next to that I’m only going for the direction Spanish -> English (Spanish sentence on front, English on the answer side) or Spanish -> Spanish (explanation of the sentence in Spanish on the answer side).

I never go English -> Spanish. Why not? There are simply too many ways of translating an English sentence into Spanish, and in the beginning you’re bound to make mistakes (which is bad, because these errors will ingrain). The goal of doing SRS repetitions is getting comprehensible input, so Spanish -> English will do the trick (and also makes life easier, believe me).

So, why do I only add full sentences? First of all; learning single vocubulary items results in rote-memorizing because there’s no context provided. Second of all; by seeing sentences you’re not only learning new words and expressions but are also learning to use the grammar without even knowing it! Sounds simple, right?

The main problem, however, is that is can be a bit tricky to find good sentences that are both fun and practical (in other words: teaching you both vocabulary and grammar).

You should always keep in mind that it’s not a case of collecting thousands of random sentences. You sure want to have many sentences at some time, but you have to be sure that it are sentences you want to learn and that are useful to you at this moment. Re-read that last sentence and memorize it.

Some ways of collecting sentences are using courses (like the earlier mentioned FSI course) and grammar books. I also recommend using cheap phrase books (in terms of price, mostly the quality is very high) to get sentences.

In a follow-up post I’ll cover some great sources for sentences (one of which is produced by me).

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Bye Bye Forum!

by Ramses on June 30, 2009

As you can see I got rid of the forum. Okay, actually the forum got rid of us; I wanted to upgrade it and this went pretty wrong (I could never get it out of the ‘update-status’). Sure, I’m able to restore everything, but do I want to? No.

The forum was rarely used and most questions are asked at the blog or by e-mail anyway.  That means that I won’t bring it back.

Bye bye!

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Two Must-Have Books for Spanish

by Ramses on June 29, 2009

I don’t have these books yet, but I’m certainly going to order them. Not that I actually need it, but I can’t let them slip through my fingers considering the price.

What am I talking about? These two incredible books:

Image of 1001 Most Useful Spanish Words (Beginners' Guides)

Image of Easy Spanish Phrase Book: Over 770 Basic Phrases for Everyday Use (Dover Easy Phrase) (Spanish Edition)

No, $2 per book isn’t a typo; they really cost $2 each. Can you believe it?

So, why are these books so good? First of all; they’re butt-cheap. Second of all; they’re an incredible source of sentences. The ‘1001 word’-book actually contains over 1300 sentences, and the’770 phrases’-book contains over… 770 phrases. That means you’ll have more than 2000 sentences for just $4.

Sure, it means that you’ll have to type a lot, but for this price I wouldn’t mind doing that (especially if you’re just starting out with Spanish typing will ingrain the Spanish even more).

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Spanish Word of the Day: sino

by Ramses on June 29, 2009

So, you think Spanish is quite easy? Could be, because you’re progressing quite fast (I assume). But then you suddenly see this word; sino. You look it up in the dictionary see that it means ‘but’. Errr… WTF?!

Yes, Spanish has two ways to say ‘but’; pero and sino. And no, you can’t choose which one to use; there’s a rule dictating which one you *have to* use. Don’t worry though, it’s an easy rule which you don’t even have to memorize. I learned it by reading an explanation about it, and applying it when speaking (instead of working around it, which *is* possible).

This is the rule:

Sino is used when…

  • …the first part of the sentence is stated in negative, or…
  • …when the second part of the sentnece contradicts with the first part.

Still don’t know what I’m talking about? Look at these sentences (taken from spanish.about.com).

Pero in use:

  • Me gustaría salir, pero no puedo. (I would like to leave, but I can’t.) The first part of the sentence isn’t stated in the negative, so pero is used.
  • María es alta pero no es fuerte. (Mary is tall, but she isn’t strong.) The first part of the sentence isn’t stated in the negative, so pero is used.
  • Los huevos son fritos pero no revueltos. (The eggs are fried but not scrambled.) Again, the first part of the sentence is stated in the affirmative.
  • María no es alta pero es inteligente. (Mary isn’t tall, but she’s intelligent.) Although the first part of this sentence is in the negative, pero is used because there’s no direct contrast.
  • No son muchos pero buenos. (There aren’t many, but they’re good.) Again, there’s no direct contrast, so pero is used.
  • El virus Código Rojo no afecta usuarios, pero Sircam no remite. (The Code Red virus doesn’t affect users, but Sircam doesn’t let up.) The two parts of this sentence are used as a comparison rather than a contrast, so pero is used.

Sino in use:

  • María no es alta sino baja. (Mary isn’t tall, but short, or Mary isn’t tall, rather she’s short.) There’s a direct contrast between alta (tall) and baja (short).
  • No creemos lo que vemos, sino que vemos lo que creemos. (We don’t believe what we see, but we see what we believe, or we don’t believe what we see, rather we see what we believe.) There’s a clear and direct contrast between cause and effect used in this sentence.
  • El protagonista no era conde sino señor. (The protagonist wasn’t a count but a lord, or the protagonist wasn’t a count, rather he was a lord.) Although conde and señor aren’t opposites, there are used in this sentence to contrast each other.
  • No he venido a ser servido sino a servir. (I haven’t come to be served but to serve, or I haven’t come to be served; instead I have come to serve.) Again, there’s a direct contrast between the two purposes stated in the sentence.
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Spanish Word of the Day: agua

by Ramses on June 27, 2009

Okay, you may think “WTF?!” right now because of the simple word I have today. But in reality, it’s not really easy as it looks.

Yes, I always say el agua, although some natives(!) tend to say la agua. Which one is correct? Without sounding cocky; el agua, of course. So far, for me this never caused any problem.

Why did it never cause a problem for me? Because I never had to say aguas - the plural form. Now, you may think the because it’s el agua it’s also los aguas. But that is wrong!

Because of the nice irregular nature of Spanish it is indeed el agua but in the plural form it suddenly because feminine, thus las aguas. Officially, agua is a feminine noun that receives the masculine article in the singular.

To be honest; I didn’t know this until yesterday. After reading this tweet I looked it up in the dictionary and it appeared to be true. This also proves that it really earns to follow @escuelai.

UPDATE: Received two replies from @jillybean65:

@spanishonly No, no lo es. Las palabras femininas que empiezan con ‘a’ lleva ‘el’ en vez de la, pero siguen siendo femininas. Es el sonido.

@spanishonly así que… no se dice ‘el agua frío, sino el agua fría. Lleva ‘el’, un poco semejante a ‘a/an’ en ingles.

This means that -like I said- it is indeed a femine noun, but that el is only used to make it easier to pronounce. Thank you Jill!

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