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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5183 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 65 of 668 10 October 2011 at 7:52am | IP Logged |
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Good job James. You are pretty much a year ahead of me to the day, so I like reading your posts to see where I might (hopefully) be one day. On the subject of the meetups, yeah that is my concern as well -- too much English and few (or no) native speakers. Agree on skype as well: I prefer it for conversing, not teaching / drilling. One final thing: someone in these forums mentioned conversationexchange.com in which you can language exchange person-to-person. I checked it out for my city, but it didn't have much to offer. Maybe more people use it where you live?
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| 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 66 of 668 14 October 2011 at 10:30am | IP Logged |
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Hey James, keep it up! Like you I went through FSI (well, Platiquemos) and it really is a great course. You've still got a ways to go in the course so don't get discouraged if you don't understand a whole lot of spoken speech yet, you'll quickly find this change as you start to go over some of the more complicated verb tenses and (especially) the subjunctive. It'll also be around that time when a lot of people'll start to prefer talking to you in Spanish than in English in chatrooms/those online language exchange programs because it's a lot easier than trying to communicate in English ;) There's still a ways to go but you'll get there quickly and have a lot of fun doing it! I really enjoyed the FSI Spanish course, it's a lot better (more interesting) in my opinion than the other FSI courses.
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 67 of 668 15 October 2011 at 1:19am | IP Logged |
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Well, it is nice to read the words of encouragement. Thank you. I actually logged in tonight to write this post earlier in the week than I usually do because the last several days have not been too good and I want to get a fresh start tomorrow. The days since my last post have been somewhat discouraging. I did the first day of FSI lesson 23 and hit a wall. I just did not want to do FSI after that. Lesson 23 was about 1hr 20mins of audio and was simply more than I like to do. That one day of FSI is all I did for my primary methods since my last post.
One bright spot is that I did do some Spanish every day. I watched the half hour Spanish economics show twice while following along with the Spanish text. I also read the google English translation. There are a few words I don't know, but I can follow just about everything in the show now. I also finished another economics lecture. What a joy it is watching these economics lectures and shows. I feel lucky to have the transcripts for them. I also listened and shadowed a number of Assimil With Ease dialogues in the car this week. I am working on the dialogues from the third disc (out of four) and I feel that I have close to mastered them. I just let them play at random and shadow whichever one comes up. I will probably move on to the fourth disc soon. This week was a bit of a culmination of bad factors. I think I was simply burnt out of the FSI thing a bit and then I hit that 80 minute lesson and I had it. I was also feeling under the weather too and I was definitely not 100%. I also think I unknowingly had extra motivation going through my second year mark and now I am letting down from that. I also think trying to set a pace to have FSI done by January was a little too ambitious. Oh well. I have no deadlines and I just want to keep having fun so I really do not mind how poorly this week went. This week I did have a couple nice telephone conversations in Spanish for work. They went very well. They were imporant calls and I think they went fine. One person was talking way way too fast and I had to ask her to slow down numerous times. The other person I had not talked to for several months and she commented on how much my Spanish had improved. These calls were quite encouraging. I am going to do lesson 23 tomorrow and hopefully I will get back on track. As Crush said above, FSI is really a great course. It is enjoyable and really worthwhile. My problem was that I was putting too much pressure on myself to move too fast and also my limit is 60 minutes a day so these long FSI lessons killed me. I looked ahead and it does not look like there are many more lessons that are more than an hour. For those other long lessons I think I will break them apart or I will not try to do 2+ lessons those weeks. I took some time and thought about this "problem" I am having with FSI. If the lessons were 30 minutes that would be great. I may try to find a way to break them down into smaller units. Well, now I will go onward and upwards... back to having fun. I got that bad week out of me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5775 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 68 of 668 15 October 2011 at 11:23pm | IP Logged |
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I used to break them down by doing half before work and half after. If you mark where the
"dialogue for fluency" begins you can do that again to refresh your memory (it's only 2 mins) before picking up the drills where you left off in the morning. 2 persons have 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 69 of 668 16 October 2011 at 10:47pm | IP Logged |
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The majority of the lessons sit right around one hour, though near the end (in the 40s, I believe) there are a couple pretty intense lessons. But by that point you probably won't feel it so much, as you should be able to converse fairly easily by then and'll start feeling the progress you make slow down.
Hope you're feeling better, y ¡disfruta del viaje! 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 70 of 668 17 October 2011 at 3:08am | IP Logged |
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O.K., I am back on track now. I finished lesson 23 yesterday and I did my first run through of lesson 24 today. These lessons were both about 80 minutes of audio and lesson 24 had quite a bit of grammar notes. I wish I had the stick-to-it-ive-ness to continue to do lessons this long back to back, but I simply don't. I can do two days of 80 minute lessons, but I don't want to do more than that. I will plan ahead now and look ahead for the long lessons. Boy, I sure sound like a wimp, but I don't care.
I really like the idea of breaking the lessons into parts and doing the "dialogue for fluency" before the second part. Great idea. Doing 30 minutes a day of FSI and then some native material sounds like a good possibility. I did a skype talk. Most of the talk was in English because I felt like helping my partner and it was right after I did FSI lesson 23 so I felt kind of burnt out. This weekend I listened/read my Dios Habla Hoy. It has been a long time since I have read it. It was much easier than it was the last time. I listened/read about 4 or 5 chapters and I barely needed to consult the English translation. Originally I did not like the fact that the audio is dramatized, but I think I like it now. It is more entertaining than just regular audio. It would not be good for shadowing, but it keeps my interest and now that it is easier to understand I think I would like to spend more time with it. I want to finish Assimil Without Toil and El Leon, La Bruja y El Ropero before I really dive into anything else. I don't like the idea of starting things without finishing them. Tomorrow I will do the second day of lesson 24 and then I will take a break from FSI for a few days. 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 71 of 668 23 October 2011 at 11:02pm | IP Logged |
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I am excited to update my log today because I feel great about the progress I have made over the last week. I finished FSI lesson 25 today. In terms of my primary methods I did FSI lessons 24 and 25 and one lesson of Assimil Spanish Without Toil.
There was one morning where I decided to do a skype talk instead of a primary method. I took randomreview's advice on lesson 25 and split it up into two shorter lessons. It worked great. In fact, I probably would not have gotten lesson 25 done this week if I did not do that because the first two days I worked on lesson 25 I did not have a full hour to study Spanish. Splitting FSI lessons into two shorter lessons will come in handy. It is quite easy to find the dialogue for fluency and doing it at the beginning of the second half is a helpful introduction to where the lesson left off. That being said, however, I cannot see how I could possibly do the rest of FSI while splitting the lessons in half... it would simply take way too long. I will split the lessons in half if they are more than an hour, if I am feeling burnt out or if I simply do not have enough time to do a full lesson... other than that I will keep trying to do a full lesson at a time. I would like to get FSI 2 and this passive review of Assimil done before the end of the year. Having Assimil 3/4 done and just sitting there is really starting to bug me... especially since the rest of the lessons look quite useful. I think I will finish FSI 2 and then do all the rest of the Assimil lessons. That will give me a good short break from FSI before starting level 3. In terms of other things I did this week it was a good week. I finished El Leon, La Bruja y El Ropero. This felt much better than I thought. I read/listened to a full "real" book in Spanish. I could understand and follow the plot when reading and while listening. I think having read the English first made all the difference in the world. I do not think I would be able to follow one of the other books in the series if I just picked up the Spanish version without having read the English version first. Anyway, I do like finishing things I start and finishing this book felt great. Plus, it was my first "real" book in Spanish. I watched the next economics lesson in the series I watch online. The university is slowly releasing the remaining transcripts. I noticed the next couple transcripts were available so I watched the next course. I really enjoy this series and will definitely watch it again. There are three one hour lectures I have not yet watched. Two of them have transcripts. I will try to complete the entire series before the end of the year. I did two meetups. I like meetups because they are the only time I really feel "immersed" in the language, but in a weird way I am feeling like I am not getting as much out of them anymore. I think it is because there are fewer native speakers now. I will definitely keep going as I do like them. As mentioned above, I did a bit of skyping this week. Skyping is cool because it gives the learning process another dimension. I am getting to know other cultures. I realize how ignorant of Latin America I used to be. I am also feeling like I am really getting to know more worldly things. I am getting to know some of my exchange partners better and it is really neat to learn about the cultures of their home countries. This week I did quite a bit of text chatting on sharedtalk.com. It is quite easy to do. I just log in and go to the text chat room and someone almost immediately asks to start a text chat. Native English speakers must be in high demand there because it is very easy to get someone to write with. I spoke with people from a few different countries and that was cool. I must say, however, that it is somewhat "hit or miss" if you just write with whomever. My impression is that many of the people on that website are immature and/or not serious language learners. It was a good decision to limit my chatting with people who have some indication in their profile of being serious language learners. I have about 30 minutes each evening to myself and that is when I did this sharedtalk texting. I really wish I could find a 30 minute TV show to watch each night. I have tried so many different things, but I cannot find anything that seems to work. I would rather be watching a 30 minute drama or telenovela than doing sharedtalking. Oh well, maybe someday I will stumble on something that works well for the 30 minutes I have in the evening. Incidentally, this inability to find something to do for 30 minutes in the evening got me thinking of studying French. Watching the 30 minute FIA videos would work perfectly... then I again promptly stopped thinking about learning French... I can tell that this French thing is going to be an ongoing problem for me. I would love to know French... but I really do not have any interest in really putting in the time to learn it. Now (as I am re-reading this post) I am thinking how easy it would be to go through MT's French Foundations and then watch the 30 minute FIA videos at night. It would not impact my Spanish at all. While I was sitting on a bench at the local mall reading Narnia and waiting for my wife to finish shopping (that can be a long wait) I found myself next to a young man and his very young son speaking Spanish. I could follow everything they were saying. I wish I had the nerve to strike up a conversation with them and practice my Spanish. While in the car earlier today I was scanning through the channels and heard Spanish on public radio. That was a surprise because I have never heard Spanish on local radio here. It was some show about things for Latinos to do in the area. I listened to the last 2-3 minutes of the show. I followed 100% of what was said. The speaker spoke very clearly and slowly in what sounded like perfect Spanish. I had to think about/translate some of the words she said and it made me realize that my biggest problem with comprehension is simply "translating" in my mind fast enough. This was the second time I noticed this. Last week when listening/following my DHH I realized the same thing... that I understood everything and it was slow enough for me to have an extra split second to translate/think when I did not quite understand what was being said. That extra split second makes all the difference. I thought about what I would like to do in 2012. Man, I have a ton of things I want to do in 2012. At only 60 minutes a day it seems like it will take years to read/watch all the things I want to read/watch. The only thing I know for sure about next year is that I definitely want to complete FSI. All of this work this week and this thinking I have been doing makes me see how this is really a never ending journey. On one hand it is somewhat discouraging because I now see that there will never really be a day when I am "done". On the other hand it is kind of cool to be unraveling this amazing process of learning another language and learning about unknown cultures... and realizing there is so much more to it than I ever thought. Boy, I really wrote more this week than I thought I would. This coming week will likely be kind of time consuming at work so I am not expecting to have a great Spanish week. Family and work take priority over Spanish and that is fine. Edited by James29 on 23 October 2011 at 11:11pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| getreallanguage Diglot Senior Member Argentina youtube.com/getreall Joined 5463 days ago 240 posts - 371 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Dutch | Message 72 of 668 23 October 2011 at 11:19pm | IP Logged |
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What's up James. If you ever want to get in touch to speak Spanish, ask questions, whatever, you can send me a message. ¡La mejor de las suertes!
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