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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 25 of 28 12 October 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged |
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Week 12: Pimsleur 3 Assessment
I'll finish Pimsleur 3 tomorrow, and have the same mixed feelings I had with the French series. It's hard to judge it in isolation, since I've done some Assimil and FSI and MT, and had some travel experience, along the way. This means that Pims 3 was much easier for me than the previous two. I could usually finish one lesson on my morning commute and one in the afternoon, and only had to repeat three lessons. And I love that I can do it while walking, biking, or driving. The time I invested was absolutely worthwhile, though it's far from a perfect, ro even great, system. Audio-learning did not come naturally to me, but I think it's a vital component of language study. These courses force us to think on our feet in a way that more focused courses don't. With other courses we already know the theme of the drill, and so are primed to think in the past, or future, or subjunctive. Pimsleur also focuses us to focus for a nice thirty-minute chunk of time. It's easy for me to drift off and day dream in the middle of an Assimil lesson. This is also valuable. And while the progress is slow, I do learn something new, or reinforce something old, each lesson. I also find the third level courses much less boring than the first level. Partly it's that I'm more comfortable with the TL at this point, so the lessons are less stressful. They also contain more variety than the dull "Can you drink tea at two o'clock? No, I can drink tea at three o'clock" type of drills. And yet ... sometimes Pimsleur just wastes time. There were moments where I had to double check to make sure I was really on the third level and hadn't reloaded the second by accident. Even at the end there were long conversations along the lines of "How many sons do you have? I have one son. He studies engineering in Venezuela." What I really need at this level is practice with the past, imperfect, and subjunctive tenses. Pimsleur covers these, but doesn't drill them in depth. It also focuses to much on minor vocabulary. For the last three lessons the targeted phrase was "music cassette with the latest hits." Assimil has gotten easier - I just finished lesson 85 active, 36 passive. I don't even try and do both them back to back, so my pace has slowed considerably. I can finish four to five lessons a week, and feel confident about them. Moving forward, I want to finish Michel Thomas Espagñol Perfectionnement, and the "Master Class" Language Builder just arrived in the mail. That will be it for my oral practice; I won't do Pimsleur IV unless I find a really cheap used copy. It's $120 right now, and the online reviews are mixed. I'll continue Assimil at my own pace, and might pick up FSI again from where I left off. Four more weeks and I get to test my Spanish out! Edited by kanewai on 12 October 2012 at 12:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 26 of 28 29 October 2012 at 9:39pm | IP Logged |
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Week 15: Ten Days til Immersion
I've been hitting Spanish from lots of different angles these past two weeks. Michel Thomas Espagñol Perfectionnement - Finished the second half. This has been very useful, as it focused on the compound tenses and subjunctive tenses that give me the most trouble, both in Spanish and in French. I love that I'm using French now as a working language to learn a second language. I like this course, and this teacher, better than the original courses, with Michel Thomas himself. Michel Thomas "Master Class" Language Builder - I started this morning, and so far it's been irritating. The Master Class level functions more as a phrasebook, but focuses more on the 'every day phrases' that will help the language sound natural. I think the concept is great, but the execution is flawed. Michel doesn't give much of a pause at all in between the English and the Spanish, so the recording sounds like I have to tell you tengo que decirle .... pause .... tengo que ... you can also say one must hay que ... pause ... one must tell you hay que decirle. The breaks are in the most awkward spots, so you need to be quick with the pause button to get your response in. FSI Basic Volume 2 - Lessons 18 and 19. Each lesson has about an hour of recordings with it, so they are much less intense than FSI French lessons were. I'll spend the first ten minutes listening to the dialogue and reading along, I'll read ahead, and then am usually able to finish the drills orally. Assimil - Lessons 86 to Lesson 94. The lessons have gotten much easier. Or at least, less overwhelming. My pace has slowed a lot, though, as I usually do the active and passive lessons on separate days. They each are taking me about thirty minutes to finish. I still don't grasp how Assimil expects us to do the active phase in only five minutes. Anki 2 - Inputted the Assimil Exercises, to lesson 74. I like the new Anki 2, though it took a couple efforts to sync my phone with my home computer with Anki Web. I think I have them all linked up properly now! My last attempt at Anki was a bust. I had entered a lot of vocabulary, but just drilling words wasn't really effective for me. This round I'm using full sentences, and studying it English > Spanish. I have high hopes for this approach; I think studying whole sentences will be much more effective. It's also a way to do an "Assimil Round Three" - there's a lot of information in their books, and I sometimes I think that I'm not retaining as much of it as I could. If this works I'll go back and enter the exercises from my French books also. The only drag is that entering it all is incredibly time consuming. Edited by kanewai on 29 October 2012 at 9:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 27 of 28 25 November 2012 at 9:22am | IP Logged |
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Week 18: Post Central America
I decided to leave all my courses and recordings at home - I knew I wouldn't have much time to actually study, but would've probably felt guilty if I had had my books and was ignoring them. My experiences with immersion were similar to past trips with Spanish and other languages: Days 1-3 - How can I spend four months studying a language intently and only know four verbs, and even then only the first and third person, present indicative? Have I been wasting my time again? I wish I could get this language thing right some day. I can barely speak better than my friend, and he only did 20 lessons of Pimsleur. Day 4 - I use the conditional for the first time, and then feel brave and attempt the imperfect. It's a break though! I pester my buddy all morning - did you hear it? Did you? I used the conditional! I have other occasional bouts of clarity throughout the day. Days 5-9 - It's getting easier to hold conversations with people. They're basic, and I'm sure I mangle the grammar, but I can usually get a general point across. I'm starting to hear and understand better, even when I'm just listening in on conversations. Day 10 - Another break through. We went on a hike to some indigenous villages, and our guide spoke Spanish the entire time. He slowed it down for us, but I could follow him clearly. For the first time I could infer the meaning of a word I heard through the context. I'm also becoming much better at using the right tense. Or rather, I know which tense I'm aiming for, even though I still mangle the actual use of it. We only had eleven days, but in other trips I had a third major step-up around the third week. In my mind the plateaus have a nice exponential spread - 3 days, 9 days, 18 days, and 3 months. The only material I used were my Anki cards and Michel Thomas Language Builder. Both were useful in that I could do them in little bursts, when I had a few free moments. Anki in particular was great; too bad they don't have pre-made decks that are geared just for travelers. I would use one! Back at home, I've also finished FSI Basic Lessons 20-24. This feels so much easier after traveling, and I like that I can do it while commuting, or working in the yard. I picked up a pair of headphones with a pause button, so that makes the drills much more doable; I only really need the book for the beginning dialogues. And with Assimil I've only made it to Lesson 102. I seem to have stalled out, and am only finishing about two active/passive pairs a week. The passive wave has gotten very enjoyable, and easy, towards the end. But the active wave is a chore, and I need to be well rested and energetic before I tackle it. I downloaded some books to my kindle, but I'm not ready yet. It was too hard to even make it through a page. Maybe in a another six months - it definitely took me longer than I expected to get to the reading stage in French too. Edited by kanewai on 25 November 2012 at 9:25am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 28 of 28 20 December 2012 at 9:10pm | IP Logged |
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FSI Spanish Basic, Volumes 1 and 2: Five Stars
I finished the second volume of FSI Basic a few weeks ago, and I would recommend this to everyone! It can be a bit archaic - there are discussions on finding a good maid, on the different planes in the Spanish air force, on going to the bullfights, and about the cute gordita at the office. It's always 1961 in the world of FSI. But this was a fantastic course! The pacing was nice, and it was possible to do most of it orally. I would read the dialogue ahead of time, and review the exercises, and after this I was ready to go. Each chapter had 60 to 90 minutes of recordings to go with it. There were written parts at the end also, but I skipped by these. The pacing is nice. I never hit the wall, like I did numerous times with French FSI. There are two more volumes to go, with fifteen chapters in each. I figure I'll work on Volume 3 off and on this year. Meanwhile, I've stalled again with Assimil. I don't know why ... the course is fine. I can study multiple languages, but think I can only do one Assimil at a time! I finished the passive wave, and stopped on lesson 60 of the active wave. I'll restart again, sometime in the New Year. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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