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James29’s Spanish Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5775 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 105 of 668 12 March 2012 at 6:07pm | IP Logged |
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Platiquemos splits the dialogue up and gives English prompts, and the speaking is much
slower- you might want to try the Platiquemos version of lesson 47, I really think you'll not find it so bad (I don't remember it being so bad anyway). As for Assimil, I really think "Using Spanish" is a very underrated course...just my opinion. 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 106 of 668 19 March 2012 at 1:38am | IP Logged |
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Random review, thank you for your suggestions. I did, in fact, take your advice and switch to the Platiquemos version of lesson 47 this week. Unfortunately, I don't think it was really much easier than the FSI version. I think I have just reached my limit and these lessons are just very hard for me. This second time through lesson 47 was a bit easier and I think I will be able to come close to mastering it after a few more times through.
I also took your advice and reviewed Assimil's Using Spanish. I definitely want to do the course... hopefully soon. It looks like it would be about right for me at the level I am currently at. I think it would be challenging, but not so hard that it is "too hard." So, this week I went through lesson 47 one time. That is all I did for FSI. I was definitely assuming that lessons 45-55 would be roughly as easy as 3-45. I did not count on hitting the wall like I did. I wanted to just cruise through the rest of the course on auto pilot, but that will not happen. I guess it is good because these last 10 lessons are going to be quite challenging and also quite rewarding. I also listened to quite a bit of the da Vinci code. I have finished chapter 48 now which is almost half way through the book. I like the book and the narrator is awesome! It makes me realize how much of a difference a narrator can make. It is hard to tell how well I really understand because I am reading along with the English... I feel like I could do fine with just Spanish, but I really don't know. There is definitely some vocab I don't know. On a long drive for work I re-listened to all of the Living Language Beyond the Basics dialogues. They are great. The audio and actors are of a very high quality. I was surprised how easy it was for me to understand all the dialogues. There were some words that I missed, but between my Spanish improving and remembering the dialogues from a year or so ago, it was quite easy. I might want to take some time and re-read through this course. After all, it is only 20 lessons and I could probably get through it pretty fast. I think it would be well worth it to review it. I did a meetup. I go to three different meetups, but usually only one per week. I really enjoy this one. I am usually the worst Spanish speaker so I seem to get the most out of it. I also finished up the last two economics courses. A little over two hours. That was a nice feeling to complete that series. Overall it was not a great Spanish week, but I did manage to do something every day. Edited by James29 on 19 March 2012 at 1:44am 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 107 of 668 25 March 2012 at 10:54pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I am still stuck on lesson 47 of FSI. I went through it twice this week and I am still not satisfied. I split it into two different chunks so I spent four days on it. I think I will do the same thing this week and then move on. After going through it so many times I can tell that I will be able to do it. The drills are getting easier and I have realized that it is definitely not "impossible" as I previously thought. In fact, I think it is an incredibly useful lesson and I am really learning.
I feel like this is what FSI must be like for someone starting from nothing with FSI. I think it would be torture to go through the entire course this way and learning Spanish entirely from FSI. I am very pleased that I did not start FSI until I had a good grounding in the language. I am also realizing how valuable this course is. I think more and more that I will want to go through it again sometime in the future. I have been chugging through The da Vinci Code. I have finished 66 chapters now. That is about 2/3 of the book. I love it. I like it much better than when I just read the English. The narration is great! I went to buy the Spanish book today (because I think I may just move on to the Spanish text when I finish this run through the Spanish audio w/ English text) and I could not find a matching text. I was horrified. The text at the store was not even close to the audio I have. Hopefully I will be able to figure out what text they used for the audio. I watched a Spanish dubbed episode of Starsky and Hutch this week. I thought I understood it quite well, but then, the next night, I watched it in English and realized that I missed some MAJOR points. This was quite discouraging. I then watched the same episode again in Spanish the next night. I think I will keep watching the episodes like this... I picked up the entire first season for only a few bucks. I had a meetup. It was o.k. There was a man from Costa Rica I spoke with quite a bit and I had a hard time following him even though he seemed to speak perfectly clear Spanish. I had a couple nice and long skype talks. I have some really good partners now that I enjoy talking with. I feel so comfortable that it seems like the Spanish flows very naturally with them. I have very few problems when I talk with my partners now. We can talk about almost anything and be totally understood. The conversations are just for speaking practice and we rarely correct each other. I have been more and more disappointed with my listening/understanding abilities. I really want/need to improve my ability to understand regularly spoken Spanish. I don't yet know how to do this efficiently. Just listening/watching dubbed TV seems like it might work, but it seems so inefficient. I may also try to do more work with audio books. I have been thinking a lot about French over the past few weeks. Every time I get serious about it I get discouraged with my Spanish because I realize how much further I need to go with Spanish in order to get where I want to be. It makes me feel crazy to think about studying French when I need to do so much more work with Spanish. Anyway, I am determined to press on with FSI and get it done. I think I will probably then do some more work with audio books or, perhaps, start Using Spanish. 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 108 of 668 02 April 2012 at 3:00am | IP Logged |
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I spent another three days on FSI lesson 47 this week. I was going to do it a fourth day and I simply decided that I was done with it. After the third time this week I felt pretty good with it. My mind could not work fast enough to get some of the drills done in the time available, but I certainly understood everything that was going on.
Regarding the week before last, I note that I forgot to mention a few long drives I did. I listened to all of the LL Beyond the Basics dialogues again and I also listened to the last 30+ Assimil With Ease dialogues three times. Back to this week now. I also listened to quite a bit of the da Vinci Code. I am thinking this must be the perfect book for LR. I cannot say enough about how great the narrator makes the book. I got distracted once and I needed to go over the last page of a chapter again so I just read it in English without audio. Man, what a difference. It is so much better with audio. Today I just could not put it down. I am a little nervous that it will be too hard to do L2/L2. I think I will try that next and see how it goes. I only have about 2.5 hours left in the book. I did a meetup. Regular conversation is good and it really is nice to go somewhere and just talk in Spanish for a couple hours. This time, however, there were no native speakers. Boy, I cannot think of anything else I did this week. It was kind of a slow week for Spanish. Next week is going to be a very busy week for work and I expect I will probably have to skip Spanish for at least two days. I am not even going to try to do FSI. I will be happy if I just complete the da Vinci Code next week. 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 109 of 668 09 April 2012 at 3:20am | IP Logged |
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It was a busy week at work, as expected. I did not do any FSI. I did at least a little bit of Spanish every day. On Wednesday I only listened to Assimil dialogues as background for about 20 minutes.
I finished up The da Vinci Code. What a great feeling. I also got my Spanish version of the book in the mail. I just had to test it out and I ended up reading/listening to the first 4 chapters. I think I will continue with reading/listening both in Spanish. I did not know a lot of the words, but I could easily follow the book... mostly because I just read it... I would not be able to just do it in Spanish/Spanish from scratch. I read/listened to nine chapters of Acts... reading English/listenting Spanish. The audio is spoken quite fast and also quite bland/boring. I picked up the first season of CSI at the local second hand store. I watched the first three episodes. I think this will be more appealing than Starsky and Hutch. I really need to do this. My ability to understand TV is poor and it feels like a thorn in my side so I want to work on it. I understand enough that the shows are quite enjoyable so I will try to continue with it. I did a couple skype talks. One mostly in English and another mostly in Spanish. Neither were too long. I had a meetup. I was exhausted that day and I did not really feel like going, but I went and could talk just fine. I got a few compliments that made me feel pretty good. I feel that my Spanish journey is going to continue much longer than anticipated... this is a very long process. Hopefully I will stick with it long enough that I get to a comfortable level and then can maintain (and slowly improve). It is amazing how things seem to slow down at the intermediate level. Well, things at work should slow down a bit now. This should allow me to get back to my old routine and consistently work on FSI. I would like to start lesson 48 tomorrow. I think I will just work through the rest of the lessons at my own pace. 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 110 of 668 16 April 2012 at 3:39am | IP Logged |
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I am back on track with FSI. I did lesson 48 over the course of four days. I split it into two chunks. I did the first chunk twice and then I did the second chunk twice. I am not going to do the lessons to perfection (or even close to perfection) anymore... rather, I am going to do them so I am basically comfortable with the material and then I will move on.
I read quite a bit of the da Vinci code w/ audio. I think I am a little more than a quarter done with it now. It is very easy to follow now and it feels like I am not "translating" in my head anymore. I will keep moving through it as it is still quite entertaining and enjoyable. I would love to sound like Raul Amundaray, the narrator... eventually I may shadow the book just because it would be so much fun to copy his voice. I did a meetup. I go to various meetups and this one is, by far, the best. It only meets every other week. I am watching CSI episodes regularly. I think I have now watched 9 or 10. Even in this short amount of time I feel it is getting easier. Unfortunately, I have a very long way to go with my listening skills. I really need to improve them. I am going to build my library of TV shows with Spanish dubbing as I think that is going to be the best way for me to work on this for now. I picked up another TV series at the second hand store for $5. The show is called "Monk." I don't know anything about the show. Hopefully it is good. One cool thing I have learned about LR type things (and watching TV) is that it is very easy to spend a long time using the language. This weekend I had a lot of free time and I just sat and read from the da Vinci Code for a few hours. I could NEVER spend that much time in one day on FSI or Assimil. I think this is the primary benefit when people talk about "jumping into native materials as soon as you can." I don't think you learn more from these sorts of things and, in fact, using advanced courses is likely much more efficient... however, the advantage of being interested in the material and spending more time on it may outweigh the fact that it is not designed for language learning. Tomorrow I am going to dive back into FSI. I am motivated again and think I will be able to really get through it much more easily now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| camdo2 Newbie United States Joined 4667 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 111 of 668 16 April 2012 at 3:48am | IP Logged |
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Monk's a good show. It's about a detective with serious phobias.
Good luck, and your log is really long! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5014 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 112 of 668 17 April 2012 at 12:46am | IP Logged |
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I agree with you about native materials. At the moment I want to be able to engage with
native materials with more comfort, for exactly this reason. I have a suspicion that there will come a time when native materials will be more useful than advanced courses, but I reckon that at that point the results will be far less immediately obvious. But I think ultimately, lots of exposure to native material will help one get more towards the native end of the spectrum. Looking in newspapers etc. I often pick up common little ways of saying things. Have you looked at any of the bilingual readers that are available, with Spanish on 1 side and English on the other? I have a couple which are really good, although maybe a touch to advanced for the moment. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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