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Older Learner tries Assimil for Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4768 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 175 19 February 2012 at 7:08pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil passive 64 active 15
The review lesson yesterday worked wonders for my confidence; I realize that I've been learning quickly even if it past few lessons haven't been as much fun as before. I have this week off from work, and I can add time to my language lessons. I was thinking of trying Platiquemos or Pimsleur in the mornings and keeping up with Assimil in the afternoons. It would ruin the "purity" of an experiment with Assimil, but I think that Platiquemos/fsi might complement Assimil well. Right now, at about a third of the way through Assimil, I have a greatly expanded passive knowledge of Spanish. I can read, and read aloud, and understand a whole lot of Spanish. My speaking skills are still very weak; of course I've only been on the active wave for two weeks. I also seem to have picked up a funky "Italian" sounding intonation when speaking Spanish. It seems to me that something like fsi/Platiquemos or Pimsleur would strengthen the very skills that seem to be weak after the first third of Assimil. I have another reason to be interested in the fsi based courses; long ago, I wrote a language manual for Peace Corps for Samoan. We had a few lessons of fsi Spanish basic around the office, and I based some of my manual on what I could figure out about how the fsi course worked (my manual was a combination of audio lingual and total physical response). Anyway, I lusted after the program then, but it was too expensive to get, and the Peace Corps director didn't think that the office should pay for it for my fun. I could do the fsi course one day and Assimil the next, and do both courses on weekends or holidays. I would keep moving through Assimil each day I do it and move on to the next fsi lesson as I "complete" them. I realize that finishing fsi Spanish would be major task that would probably take over a year. Other options include: 1) just plugging along as is with Assimil, and see if production and accent improve. 2) alternating Assimil with Pimsleur, Pimsleur covers much less of the language than fsi, but it may cover enough if done at the same time as Assimil. I would not be using Pimsleur the way it is designed to work if I alternate it with another program, but the parts I've listened to sound very simple. I can always do fsi or Pimsleur later. I have no particular deadline to reach any given level in Spanish, and I'll have a lot of time to work on it during the summer vacation. I'm still hoping to get in a holiday somewhere where Spanish is spoken at some point in the next few months, and it would be nice to be able to talk :) steve 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 26 of 175 19 February 2012 at 8:55pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you for posting your experiences with Assimil Spanish! It brings back fond
memories of working through Assimil New French with Ease. From the sound of it, you're doing really well, perhaps slightly better than I was doing at the same point. You've got a solid passive base, and a good intuition for the language. And you're rapidly learning to produce Spanish. Since your experiences seem similar to my own, I'd like to venture a few predictions: 1. If you stick with Assimil, your production will improve dramatically by the time you reach active wave lesson 50, and even more so by 80. You're only a couple of weeks into the active wave, and you'll get tons more practice over the next two months. Hang in there; you're doing great. :-) 2. By the end of the course, you should be able to communicate with most native speakers on day-to-day matters, especially if they're willing to slow down and rephrase. If you're like me, you might sound like "an unusually cosmopolitan three-year-old," but you'll be able to produce basic sentences spontaneously, often without translating or thinking about the grammar. 3. By the time you finish the course, you should be able to learn from native Spanish books, newspapers, etc. My first French book was a 450–page popular history of French! Basically, you're on track, you're doing well, and you'll be in great shape by the end of the course. Best of luck, and I look forward to reading further entries in your journal. Edited by emk on 19 February 2012 at 10:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4768 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 175 19 February 2012 at 10:23pm | IP Logged |
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I think you're right, emk. I think I should finish Assimil before I start anything else.
I'm only three months away from "finishing" Spanish with Ease. I can evaluate where to go next at that point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 175 19 February 2012 at 11:12pm | IP Logged |
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By the way, if you're concerned about your accent, you might try "shadowing" the
Spanish audio at some point during each lesson. Basically, you try to speak in sync with the audio, matching the accent and intonation as closely as possible. Some people find this useful, and there's a bunch of advice on shadowing elsewhere on the forums if you're interested. Some weeks are definitely pretty rough, and I occasionally felt like I was paying for my sins. But plugging along for 45 minutes to an hour per day was enough to make it all the way through. Frankly, I felt a bit weird when Assimil was finally done. It had been a huge part of my life for half a year. When it was done, all the other courses seemed pretty basic, and I missed the convenient structure. But it was definitely cool to have a few thousand words of vocabulary and several verb tenses "burned in." Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jalds Newbie United States Joined 4961 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 29 of 175 20 February 2012 at 12:29pm | IP Logged |
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Sfuqua, I wanted to offer my encouragement as I too am an older learner in San Jose
attempting to master Spanish. I just crossed the 2 year mark in my efforts and remember very well having a period where people told me I sounded Italian. In my case, that went away fairly quickly as I spent, and still spend a LOT of time watching TV and listening to talk radio. In any case, good luck with your studies. When you want to start reading books, La Biblioteca Latinoamericana on 1st street not only has a decent collection, but they always have books on sale ($.50 for paperbacks). By the way, you should take a trip to a Spanish speaking country. Recognizing in person speech is much different than course dialogs or even talk shows. Good luck. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4768 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 30 of 175 21 February 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil Spanish with Ease, passive 66, active 17
Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. It doesn't take long searching in the archives to see that my frustration with this stage of Assimil is shared by many who have eventually had success with it. I just need to keep working. I think there is less "ease" involved in this stage of the program. I don't mind working hard on Spanish, in fact I enjoy it. I just hope that I have time to push on through at the current rate. I do have work and family responsibilities that have to come before my Spanish, although my wife is very supportive these days. I can sound pretty impressive in Spanish, as long as I'm reading out loud :) When I start work again, I may have to split up the active and passive waves to alternate days. I have a week off from work, so I have plenty of time. I've been reviewing a lot. For me, at least, I feel better about Assimil if I do a lot of review. The review fixes stuff in my memory better, and it reminds me of how much I've learned. I keep plugging along. steve 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4768 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 175 25 February 2012 at 5:16am | IP Logged |
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Assimil Spanish with Ease, passive wave 70, active wave 21(for tomorrow)
Today's lesson was not terribly painful or anything, but took about an hour and a quarter. I used the "Dutch Instructions." I think I'm going to do a bit more overlearning from now on. The past couple of days, whenever I have completed a phase of the lesson without mistakes, I then repeat it a couple of more times. In other words, I complete each phase correctly three times before I move on. It only takes a couple of minutes more. On tomorrow's review lesson, I'm planning to spend some time and do a pretty thorough review of the past 7 lessons. I am definitely learning a bunch of Spanish grammar, even if I don't know what to call all of the things I'm learning. My passive knowledge of Spanish continues to grow by leaps and bounds; I'm very satisfied with this aspect of Assimil. I hope that I will eventually be as happy with my productive abilities. Looking at the results here near the middle of the course, the results are really quite reasonable. After about 70 hours of study, I can read a newspaper with a dictionary. I can understand chunks of telenovelas, although I often have the experience of understanding every word in a sentence, but not understanding the sentence. The next sentence starts and everything gets wiped out of short term memory before I can process it. Two months ago, I couldn't understand any of it except maybe numbers and a few words that were loaned to Tagalog. I can see how passive skills in Spanish are going to be quite good by the end of the book, even more so after Using Spanish. I don't know my "survival Spanish" as well as I should for that many hours of Spanish, but Assimil doesn't really concentrate on that. Assimil is aiming at something much higher. I suppose I can say "hello" and "goodbye" and "where is the bathroom?" I hope that eventually I'm going to be able to say more than that. Like more learners, I want to be cool and "speak Spanish already," but it takes time. If this course actually gets skills anywhere near a B2, you don't need to memorize survival phrases. steve 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MichaelM204351 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5447 days ago 151 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 32 of 175 25 February 2012 at 4:38pm | IP Logged |
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Great job! I have enjoyed reading your posts.
I just started working through Spanish With Ease and I was curious about something. My goal (like yours) is more to be able to speak Latin American Spanish (I live in the great state of Texas ;o) and the course is in Castillian. Have you had any added difficulty understanding the Spanish around you? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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