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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 33 of 83 25 November 2014 at 6:20pm | IP Logged |
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I've had a fairly bad week for language learning. My dedicated hour for Spanish got swallowed my multiple work and family issues. I still listened to Podcasts from Caracol and VOA while driving. My SRS also fit into little pieces of time throughout the day. I only got to FSI about every other day.
There is plenty of written material in FSI to make a print based course. One could learn a lot this way, but I think it misses the point of FSI. Spending too much time on the printed course takes away time to do the oral course. Anyway, with the delays and so forth, it's going to take me to the end of this week to get done with Unit 16. I've been annoyed with the sound quality of some of the parts of these lessons. If the sound quality is bad, it drives one to the printed page. Platiquemos is better in some places; FSI is better in others. I'll get back on schedule next week. While there is a holiday coming up this week, I'm probably going to have even less time than usual for Spanish.... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 34 of 83 26 November 2014 at 4:45pm | IP Logged |
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I think I'm back in gear on FSI/Platiquemos.
Up until this time, I've been using the FSI download material. I own Platiquemos, also. Up until this time, I've been trying to do each unit once a day for a week. This means I have a few days of fumbling about before I start to hit on all of the unit. Of course another way to go through the course is to go through the units one drill at a time. This means that the whole process of learning would take place over a day or two rather than over a week. Since one is learning the material in smaller chunks, with the massed practice, one should be able to reach a higher level of performance. With less distributed practice, one should expect to forget what you have learned more quickly. Platiquemos is easier to use one drill at a time, since it is divided into files that are generally one drill each. The last couple of days I've been going through Unit 16 one drill at a time using the Platiquemos version. I've been doing each drill 6 times, reading along with the book the first time through, then doing it 5 times without the book. The first time through with the book assures that I understand everything, and the practice without the book gets it up to speed. I like doing the drills this way, it's not very hard, and I'm clearly learning. I'll need a review of the whole course when I'm through. My current "daydream" about what to do next is to review Platiquemos/FSI and L-R through all of Gabriel García Márquez on alternate days. I think that I need to do more listening comprehension than I have been doing lately. I ran across some structures yesterday while reading that were very transparent to me because they used some of the grammar from FSI/Platiquemos. I may have overstated how much I am "just using FSI to increase my speed; I already know the grammar." It's not that anything I've seen is completely new, it's just that sometimes when you see something introduced again, in another way, your understanding will deepen considerably. SRS continues to roll along. I've experimented with some easier cards, but I keep coming back to my deck of cards from Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is slower to process these cards, but I learn a lot from them, and they seem to do wonders for my reading... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 35 of 83 27 November 2014 at 6:20am | IP Logged |
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I quite like the "one drill at a time" method. On
reflection, before when I would say I was having trouble with a unit it usually meant I was having trouble with a small part of the drill and, to get to the "hard" part, I would go through the whole unit. Working through the unit a drill at a time, it reminds me that I really don't have that much trouble with most of the units. I'm going to keep doing the drills 6 times before I move on; I want to be sure that when I finish, I can say that whatever results (or lack of results) I get are from doing the course thoroughly. I'm going to try to avoid chasing "perfection". What we know about interlanguage suggests that only way to get immediate perfection is to memorize, and that this may not actually accelerate acquisition. Six times should be enough. I can always repeat later. I think that FSI/Platiquemos probably can take a learner further than any of the other "courses". If you live in an immersion environment, you may not need a course like FSI. However, if you lack the opportunity or personality to start interacting with native speakers while you're still at the A1/A2 level, FSI gives you a chance to get up into the B1/B2 range. I've had a lot a positive effects from shadowing, but I thinks that I really, really need the practice that FSI provides. In some of my earlier messages, I may have sounded like I was being critical of FSI and the demands it makes. I actually thinks that it is exacly what I need. I need a course like this because I am an introverted nerd, who is too shy to talk to strangers. I wonder what my Spanish will be like after I finish FSI/Platiquemos... edited for typos Edited by sfuqua on 27 November 2014 at 3:19pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 36 of 83 27 November 2014 at 2:49pm | IP Logged |
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Great post. You are exactly right about FSI. You have a plan and if you stick with it FSI will give you exactly what you want. I know exactly what you mean about one drill tripping you up. I still remember some of the "basic" drills that tripped me up (the one distinguishing direct/indirect object and the distinction between commands and negative commands in the familiar). I drilled and drilled those and never really got them. After time doing other things the things just come to you. I'd encourage you to just move on if there are points you don't get.
FSI is really just the beginning. I've been doing the Spanish thing a little bit every day for about five years now and I am always amazed at how it just never ends. FSI is the best thing you can do to get that good solid foundation, but it is definitely just the beginning. Don't let that be discouraging, however, because by "mastering" FSI you are doing yourself a HUGE favor with the things you do after because you will have such a good solid foundation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 37 of 83 07 December 2014 at 5:19am | IP Logged |
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I've had a couple of frustrating weeks of language learning. The frustration has nothing to do with Spanish, SRS, or FSI/Platiquemos. I've repeatedly had my dedicated hour of Spanish interrupted, postponed, or skipped entirely. While I am obsessed with learning Spanish, I am a teacher of 170 10 year olds, a father of an 8 year old daughter, and a son of elderly parents, and sometimes other things take priority. So now I have spent two weeks on Unit 16 and I'm starting a second week on Unit 17. I may be satisfied with Unit 17 tomorrow, and move ahead only two days "late."
Unit 17 itself is pretty easy; it deals with past tense 1, the preterit. As is usual, there isn't really anything very new, but I need several times through before I can do it all at full speed. Lately, if I'm doing FSI at home, I keep the written lesson open while I do the audio one. After the first time through I don't need to look at the book very often, but knowing it is there seems to help. I continue with my study of Gabriel García Márquez through my anki deck which includes sentences from most of his books. There are tons of new vocabulary, and from time to time, some absolutely thrillingly beautiful prose. By the end of FSI, I should have gone through several thousand sentence cards, and I should be able to read gabo without the dictionary. Working with harder sentences seems to be helping my general reading. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 38 of 83 16 December 2014 at 10:38pm | IP Logged |
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I found that I could learn faster with the one drill at a time method, but that I would forget faster. I went back to the one unit at a time method, and added back a step of reading the response column for the whole unit aloud once before doing the unit. I didn't find reading aloud to be useful earlier in the process in the first few units, it seems to help more now, and it gives me something to do with the reading selections. It may take up too much time eventually. I really wish FSI was broken up into 30 or 45 minute "bites." It would give more flexibility for a father/driver of a ballerina during "Nutcracker" season. I wonder how many of us have done FSI while sitting in a parking lot in a cold car, waiting for another show to finish...
Unit 18 is pretty easy; it deals with Past Tense 2, the past continuous tense. This tense is generally regular, and, since I tend to overuse it, familiar. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5857 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 39 of 83 17 December 2014 at 12:36pm | IP Logged |
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I also found that focusing on one drill at a time wasn't as helpful for me in the long run. I think you end up just memorizing answers more quickly. I'm not exactly sure how the FSI course is structured, i assume it's just tapes like all the other FSI courses i've done. You really might enjoy the structure of Platiquemos more, it's broken down into drills (ie. each drill is a separate mp3 file) and probably easier to fit into those 30/45 minute bites you mention. Also, i like how the dialogs are introduced much more in Platiquemos.
I also agree that Gabriel García Márquez' writing can be astoundingly beautiful at times (Cien años de soledad is my favorite book of all time), though their writing can be a bit hit or miss for me. I've had to sludge my way through a few of their novels that just weren't that interesting to me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 40 of 83 29 December 2014 at 4:34am | IP Logged |
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A quick update.
I'm on unit 20, which has a very hard response drill. It isn't that the structure, direct and indirect object pronouns, is so terribly hard, it is hard to keep track of who is who (or whom) in the drill. I've only gone through it a couple of times, so it isn't going very well now. Unit 19 was pretty easy, by comparison. I mentioned in a different thread that I think that drilling on the two main past tenses in Spanish had an impact on my comprehension. Drilling on grammar points certainly makes them more salient, and I think it can really help with features of a second language that English lacks. You can fool yourself into thinking that you are comprehending a passage when you are getting the gist, but missing the details. Over the past 14 months I've gone through about 9000 cards in anki. Most of these have been passive cards, so this week I decided to add in a bunch of active cards; we'll see if I find these useful. I'm really getting hungry to do a bunch of L-R, shadowing, and extensive reading, and I'm considering dropping anki. I haven't really been doing enough listening lately, and I've recently discovered that I can read novels, not perfectly, but well enough to enjoy them. A million words of L-R, reading, and shadowing would fill out the skills I'm getting from FSI very nicely. I wonder if anybody has done a bunch of shadowing at the same time they were working through FSI. It feels to me that the pressure shadowing puts on the brain would complement the pressure that FSI puts on. I just don't have time to do both. I'm not even half way through FSI, so I've going to keep emphasizing it to try to get it done, thoroughly in 2015... Edited by sfuqua on 29 December 2014 at 4:38am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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