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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 57 of 83 01 April 2015 at 7:23pm | IP Logged |
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Looking at my last couple of posts, I'm going to pull the trigger and do it. I'm going to declare anki successful, and declare victory. I've backed up my anki deck, and I'm just going to try extensive reading without a dictionary or parallel text for a while. I know I will get lost sometimes, but I'm just going to try to guess what words mean that I don't know and just keep moving forward. I've got plenty of stuff around the house to read. I'm going to keep track of pages.
One problem I have is that I have started to do FSI during random little parts of the day that would also be good for reading. Finishing FSI is an important goal, and I think I will continue to do it as a priority, but during the times I used to do anki, I'm going to read. This feels like a good decision right now; I love to read, and to some extent Spanish has taken me away from reading for a while... Maybe I'll do a quick run through Hemingway and Faulkner in translation, or maybe I'll start on that book about "Pablo" that is in my backpack... I think I'll start right now! 6 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 58 of 83 05 April 2015 at 2:29pm | IP Logged |
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I think you are making a good decision. Keep chugging through FSI. I did basically the same thing with FSI when it felt like a drag... make it the priority... but that doesn't mean you cannot do other things. Just agree with yourself to do it a certain amount of times per week and spend the rest of your time reading, etc. The cool thing is that even if you are only going to do it three or four hours a week you will be able to eventually get through it. Time flies and if you just keep sticking with it you will get it done.
Also, on the reading piece, I highly suggest getting a Kindle. They are pretty cheap (I bought mine for $51) and they are wonderful for the type of reading you are going to do. It is very easy to just touch any word you don't know on the screen and see a popup translation. I was reluctant to get/use a Kindle for the longest time, but I think it is turning out to be, perhaps, the best thing I did for my Spanish journey. 3 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 59 of 83 14 April 2015 at 9:37pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I'm getting near the middle of Unit 30 now, which is probably about the middle of the course in terms of
material. In earlier Units, I was practicing things that I was already familiar with; the last few units are covering things I'm pretty shaky on. FSI forces you to pay attention to things that it is not really necessary to know for simple comprehension. As I feared, my reading quickly swallowed all of my FSI time, so I've had to ration myself as to how much reading I'm going to do. My comprehension is not as good as I thought it was. I'm not going to restart anki, but I need to force myself to stick to my FSI. My latest daydream about what to do after FSI involves doing a large number of pages of L-R through maybe 5000- 10000 pages of some novels. Some folks in the Superchallenge implied that it takes about that many pages of reading to get up to the high C range in reading; I wonder if it would do the same thing for listening comprehension. Many people who have used L-R have implied that the Listen L2/Read L1 stage is not useful for very long, but statistics seem to suggest that it would take a lot of input to build a near native speaker level of vocabulary, and Listen L2 Read L1 seems to offer a fairly foolproof way to get a big bunch of comprehensible input. I've experimented a little, and Listen L2 Read L1 still feels useful. In any case, I've got to keep grinding at FSI. I find it interesting that FSI helps as much with comprehension as it does. It really makes grammar salient, and once you are paying attention to a grammar point, you see it everywhere. Now, back to Unit 30... Edited by sfuqua on 14 April 2015 at 9:52pm 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 60 of 83 15 April 2015 at 6:07am | IP Logged |
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My last post makes it sound like I'm not doing any extensive reading, what I meant to say is that I'm limiting myself to only 30 minutes a day.
I think that one of the ways a course like FSI works is that it increases confidence. If you live in an immersion environment, you get plenty of practice; lacking that it is good to drill some things enough that when you need to use a structure, you can have some certainty that you are using it correctly. I suspect that most people can't really reach high levels (C and up) of active skills without actually using active skills for communication. A combination of a ton of passive skills and a active practice like FSI or shadowing can have a big impact; FSI's structure pretty much assures that you understand Spanish grammar, as well as being forced to produce under time pressure. 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 61 of 83 18 April 2015 at 5:01am | IP Logged |
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Work and things piled up, but I kept up FSI over the past few days; I'm now on to Unit 31. I really didn't master the last couple of Units at full speed, but I could get them all with the pause button. Rather than grind them into perfection; I'm moving ahead.
I haven't done any reading for a few days, and I'm a bit burned out on FSI right now; I'm going to ease off a little it over the weekend and try to have some fun... :) 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 62 of 83 07 May 2015 at 6:31pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, I haven't updated for a while. It looks like an update I made disappeared. I read "too much" for a while and fell behind on FSI. I read García-Márquez's _Relato de un náufrago_, and enjoyed it a lot. It is a short, simple, true story with a lot of rich detail. I picked up a lot of vocabulary while reading, but I think that I have forgotten much of it. I may get it much faster when I run into it again. My house is in total chaos right now, a renovation, which means that my Spanish books are buried, and that I haven't had as much time to do Spanish as I might like.
I'm not quite finished with Unit 33 right now, maybe another day or two. I'm eager to get to the material on the subjunctive that is coming up in a few units. I think that there are probably many better ways to do FSI than the "grind away at a unit until is finished" method. I read posts by a user named FSI, who apparently went through the entire course doing one repetition of each Unit, but he repeated the whole process several times. I bet this would lead to a pretty complete understanding of the course. Another way might be to have a fast run through and a slower one on alternate days. For now, I'm just going to continue to chug through FSI. FSI seems much easier than it did at the beginning; I think it is working. Maybe I'll do FSI on work days and extensive reading on weekends. One of my problems with free reading is that I consistently want to read kinds of books that are too hard for me at this point. I think that some L-R might be useful at some point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| slikew Groupie United States Joined 4065 days ago 79 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 63 of 83 08 May 2015 at 7:23pm | IP Logged |
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From my experience, it's good to stick to FSI. If I had not taken a month break reading, I would most likely be done with FSI right now. You can read as much as you want afterwards. However, it's really up to you what to do. I would say though, once you are in the 30's you should just get through it.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 64 of 83 08 May 2015 at 8:25pm | IP Logged |
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I found doing it in chunks was a great way to get through it... I did the first Unit (first quarter of the course) then took a break and so on. Also, I usually found that doing four one hour days a week was about all I could handle of FSI on a sustained basis. Definitely keep up with it... it is worth the effort.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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