I found recently the best way to get loads of listening practice: Minecraft!
Day 8-18 (took an involuntary break)
Because life happens.
@ColinJohnstone What do you mean Minecraft? A playthrough?
I don’t know what a playthrough is, but I just meant the game itself. It is a highly addictive game that you can play for hours on end that doesn’t require much concentration and, most of all, doesn’t require the audio to dominate. It fact it doesn’t require the audio at all. You can line up a few hours of podcasts and just listen straight through, and actually concentrate on what is being said.
I dont’s know how to use the 90 days’ challenge, becuase my english is so bad,but i like to challenge my spanish for 90 days too,fighting.
offtop: I still can’´t get why Germans use ´ instead of ’ all the time 
"My brain feels a little “foggy” today, so I decided to play the drums instead of studying Spanish. "
Can you rephrase that sentence without using “instead of”?
I mean there´s “in lieu of” and “rather than” and whatnot…but they have a different nuance to them.
Day 19 (3 hours)
- Listened to “The Linguist” (Steve´s Book) for about 2 hours
- Watched a Fallout 3 let´s play on youtube and used it to do some “sentence mining” (only 20-30 sentences, 1 hour)
A playthrough is a someone else playing the game with or without commentary.
The idea that you’ve just said about playing Minecraft and listening to a bunch of podcasts is a good idea. I think I should do that next time I play Minecraft on the Xbox 360.
Day 20 (3 hours)
- Fallout 3 sentence mining (1 hour, 30 sentences)
- Worked through “the Linguist” (about two hours)
I think I´ll keep using Fallout and Steve´s Book for a while…
Fallout 3 is kind of “touristy”. It´s about some guy´s journey through post-apocalyptic America. The “let´s player” keeps saying “vale” and “cojones”…so I guess he´s speaking “street Spanish”.
“The Linguist” is great because it´s written by a familar person (Steve) about a familiar topic (language learning) which makes it really easy to read (even though it´s probably upper intermediate content).
Day 21 (ain´t nobody got no time fo dat!)
Day 22 (15 minutes)
Worked through a lesson about “El día de la Candelaria”.
nee, hab keinen Bock
I know about sentence mining per se (articles, You-tube), but I’m curious as to what exactly you do for your own sentence mining? And do you like it/find it helpful?
Kann ich nachvollziehen^^
The “héroes del silencio” video totally rocks. Aber wie heißt eigentlich “domestic violence” auf Spanisch? 
“…but I’m curious as to what exactly you do for your own sentence mining?”
Sentences that are “i+1” and/or interesting. My Spanish deck contains phrases like “I´m glad you´re still alive”, “I need a drink”, “What the heck is that?”, “Why is he wearing a bee costume?” and so on…
“And do you like it/find it helpful?”
Yeah, definately. Creating a flash card makes me feel like I “own” a small fraction of the language and I´m more focused because I´m trying to find “good” sentences. Immersion is awesome but you easily get the feeling that you´re “not doing anything”…sentence mining helps.^^
Now, this is a funny coincidence - I used Fallout 3 as the source of quite a lot of new words and phrases in English a few years ago. The game has a lot of dialog lines, even for an RPG game. Now I am going thru Steve’s course and I am finding it an excellent source of new vocabulary in Spanish.
*** End of Diary ***
I decided to stop learning Spanish. There are two reasons for that:
- I like Spanish, but I love the four other languages that I´m already studying. Spending three hours on Spanish means not spending three hours on my other languages…
I wanna reach an “above-native” level in German (my native language), a near-native/C2 level in French and English and a pretty high level in Japanese. Achieving these goals might take a little while…
- Learning Spanish doesn´t feel like learning a “new” language. I want novelty. German has great words for that…“neugierig” which literally means "new-greedy or “Wissensdurst” (knowledge thirst)…but I digress.
More than 90% of the vocabulary is similar to French, English or German…no nasal sounds, no “tones”, latin script, the same “th” as English, the same “R” as Japanese, no super-crazy-grammatical-insanity-madness (like polish cases/genders or Japanese politeness levels)…
What do you think?
I enjoyed writing this diary actually. “Public accountability” is nice but I also enjoyed talking to guys and I think that “language missions” (sorry if that sounds “too Benny-ish”) are pretty cool. I might start a mission like “Read 4 books about four different topics in French in six weeks” or “learn 300 Kanji within 3 months”
I encourage you to join me or come up with your own missions
Paule, I am really sorry about that, because I really loved following this thread and getting inspiration for new material and music ! I love Spanish and this love came quite unexpectedly so I can’t really relate to your reasons. The similarities with French are there, it’s the small differences that are challenging and fascinating. But we are all different. It is really great to share notes so please do start some other missions,by all means. I am leveling up in French too, trying to get back to a former level, so it would be great to swap notes !
When I saw the title of the thread I immediately thought of the French phrase. 
Well, what can I tell you? That I totally understand and actually feel the same about Spanish (and Portuguese to a lesser extent). I’ve never enjoyed studying Spanish, but maybe this is also due to the boring Spanish classes I had in high school where every year we learnt the same conjugation tables… I don’t think this is the only reason though.
As a native French speaker, most of the vocabulary is the same. I don’t “love” the sound of the language either (because of my awful teachers? or is it my Spanish neighbour who has always yelled at her family in her language?). Unlike Portuguese there’s no sound I really love in Spanish, there’s nothing “strange” for me in Spanish. Yet I loved spending some months in Madrid, I really liked speaking to Spanish-speaking people, whether from Spain or elsewhere. I like speaking Spanish, using the language, but I don’t like studying it. Whenever I come across a word I don’t know I feel bored and annoyed. I would like to know them, not to learn them.
At least with Portuguese there are things I really love, some sounds, the-ões,-ão, nh, etc… But stll… I like to see Portuguese words but I don’t really enjoy reading a book in Portuguese. Well, in the case of Portuguese I think I could love it more had I not spent some months in Spain before. I needed a language break, I needed to spend some time with Arabic or English.
I cannot wait to getting back to Arabic and to reading books in English again! I can’t say I love the sound of English or anything, but I do love reading in English, trying to guess the meaning of new and sometimes obscure words. I love hearing English too, don’t really know why. As to Arabic, even learning a useless word makes me happy.
