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Older Learner tries Assimil for Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4660 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes  Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 41 of 175 01 March 2012 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | ||
How I understand this sentiment! This is the reason I switched almost exclusively to audio courses - even for vocab learning from book I am throwing together audio lessons through TTS. I can find time to learn when driving, walking or doing different chores at home, but the dedicated time for language learning in evenings when the rest of the family watches TV needs to be used as efficient as possible. I have actually a preference for learning through a whole lot of writing by hand, but there simply isn't enough time for doing it this way. Let it be a consolation for you - you are not alone in struggling for time. 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 42 of 175 02 March 2012 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Spanish with Ease, passive wave lesson 74, active wave lesson 25.
I've been pretty sick, which probably had a lot to do with why some of the latest lessons have seemed so hard. I'm getting better rapidly, and last night I got through both an active and a passive wave. It took 1:15, but was not too difficult. Assimil seems to be working again, or perhaps we should say my brain works better when I don't have a headache and fever :) Yesterday, a bunch of Spanish verbs sort of spontaneously popped into focus in my brain. I finally feel like the different parts of Spanish grammar are starting to fall into place. I wish Assimil had a better index about where its grammatical explanations are. They are scattered and uneven. It is frustrating searching for something that you know that you have seen, but need to review. It is also strange how Assimil will have a big explanation of something simple and obvious, and have little explanation of a major point. I know they are depending on "assimilation," but sometimes you want to see an explanation. Does anybody know of a good, simple Spanish grammar that I could use to supplement Assimil? Maybe I'll be able to get along with the explanations in Assimil, but I would appreciate something a bit more organized, systematic, and well indexed. 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 43 of 175 03 March 2012 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Spanish with Ease passive 74, active 25
I think I can get a copy of Prado's grammar today, which I may work through to systematize my Spanish grammar study. I spent some time yesterday reviewing every grammar note I could find in SWE. I have had a bunch of verb tenses fall into place in my head. I'll work on it some more; if I can figure things our from Assimil, I'll leave Prado on the shelf. I wasn't able to study at all last night; it was my son's 20th birthday, and celebrations were in order. I'm going to do a comprehensive review of everything today. I want to figure out exactly what is going on with every sentence I've gone through so far. I did a little talking in Spanish yesterday to my students. I was slow and halting, and I made a lot of mistakes and bizarre circumlocutions, but... I couldn't believe how much I knew how to say! I was very encouraged. The Spanish on TV and the radio seemed to pop into better focus yesterday too. One thing I notice is the rather severe interference I'm having from Tagalog. I speak Tagalog from time to time every day, and somehow Tagalog and Spanish seem to be pretty mixed up my brain. 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 44 of 175 03 March 2012 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Oh, very cool! Congratulations on your conversation. 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 45 of 175 04 March 2012 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Spanish with Ease passive wave 75, active wave 26
Yesterday's passive wave went well as usual. I start off with a vague understanding of a passage, 25 minutes later I can read it aloud, smoothly, and with pretty much complete understanding, and I can understand 95% or so listening to the passage without looking at the book. Magic. I think I'm going to do Listening-Reading a lot once I get through Assimil. The active wave was frustrating. My standard for calling the lesson completed is to translate the whole passage English->Spanish three times in a row without making any mistakes. I kept making little mistakes; some of my "mistakes," I think, were actually correct Spanish. I kept plowing ahead, starting to hate the passage. After about an hour, suddenly the passage started coming out of my mouth smoothly and accurately. This took too long, however. I think I might start practicing the passage as a "backward buildup" drill the next time one gives me a hard time. I suppose this suggests that I'm actually memorizing the passage instead of translating it. I have no idea why this passage took so long. I wonder how long it will take to do a passage when I get the active wave up to lesson 60 or so, when the sentences in the passages get long and "weird." I may want to change my "standard for completion" on the active wave. I know that some other people translate the sentences one sentence at a time. Maybe going through the passage a sentence at a time, translating and correcting until I get each sentence correct, three times -- would give me more practice translating and less practice memorizing. I'll think about it. I think some of the later passages, like the ones I'm going through in the passive wave, might take way too long if I don't change my procedure for the active wave. Perhaps the pounding of my brain was good for it. After I finished, I went to watch a telenovela with my family (they're actually starting to get into it). The Spanish seemed a little clearer and a little easier to understand than ever before. While I have whined about the process of working through Spanish with Ease recently, mostly because it has taken longer and had less ease than advertised, I am not truly disappointed about the results. My reading comprehension has gone through the roof. My listening comprehension is headed in the right direction. I think most of my comprehension is still just semantic processing. If the tenses are tricky or the subordination is complex, I can get lost. But the difference from three months ago when I started the course is amazing. My active skills still have a long way to go. I realize that I may have to follow Assimil up with fsi or pimsleur after I finish to get the Spanish rolling off my tongue. In some ways I wouldn't mind shifting my pronunciation from European to Latin American. We'll see if the active wave eventually works magic also. steve Edited by sfuqua on 04 March 2012 at 7:11pm 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 46 of 175 07 March 2012 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Spanish with Ease passive 78, active 29
The lessons seem to be going easier at this point. Perhaps they are a little easier, or perhaps I'm learning something. I've been continuing with the program more or less as the instructions say. My listening and reading comprehension continue to grow rapidly, daily. I had a few hours to kill by myself yesterday, and I read aloud every Spanish word in Spanish with Ease from lesson 1 to lesson 77. I found some lessons that I covered in the passive wave that I have more or less forgotten, and I stopped and reread each section where there was a word I didn't know. One thing I noticed was that the lessons I have also covered in the active wave are much easier to read aloud as you might expect, and I understand every single word easily. Right after this, I watched a telenovela with the family, and it seemed to me that my comprehension was at a higher level than usual. My active skills are still less than I would have hoped. I'm trying to do my interior dialog in Spanish, and I keep bumping into things I can't say, even things that I recognize easily. I battle on. If there is anything I've learned to far, it is that passive and active language skills are different things. I did my graduate school in applied linguistics back at the height of the "comprehensible input" wave of Krashen's. Obviously, comprehensible input is necessary for language learning, but is it sufficient? So far, for me, it is not. I am absolutely hungry for some explicit practice in conjugating verbs, or doing some substitution drills where I need to adjust for number and gender, or verb tense. I feel like I could get this straightened out in my brain easily with a little practice. I realize that there is plenty of material available that provides this, but I've been trying to work through Assimil first to see if Assimil by itself will be enough. I have 31 passive wave lessons and 80 active wave lessons to go. I'm a day or two away from halfway. steve Edited by sfuqua on 23 March 2012 at 6:17pm 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 47 of 175 09 March 2012 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Spanish with Ease: halfway through the lessons...
I think I'm far enough through Spanish with Ease to critique my approach. I have been following the printed instructions for SwE the best I can, and I think that they are not working well for my productive skills. I've been sticking to only the printed instructions to see if they would eventually start to work, and I'm tired of waiting. This may be because I'm: 1) old 2) dumb 3) limited in time I think that the people who have had great success with Assimil have either been smarter than I am, younger than I am, or have done a lot beyond the basic instructions Assimil gives. Maybe it works best for people who already speak a related language, or who have access to sympathetic native speakers who practice with them. I don't have either; I hate to impose on my Spanish speaking students to make them talk with me. I feel like I can throw some Spanish at them and have them answer, but they may feel forced if I ask them to help me too often, especially when my Spanish stinks as badly as it does. I'm sure they'll be a great source of practice once I get a little better. I am learning what I am practicing: 1) I have pretty complete listening and and reading comprehension of lessons I have gone through in the passive wave. I can understand a lot of what I hear on the radio or read in the newspaper. 2) I can read aloud any of the lessons I've covered on the passive wave, pretty smoothly and with good enough pronunciation to be understood easily by a native speaker. 3) I can slowly and laboriously translate the lessons I have covered in the active wave from English to Spanish. I believe that I have made two big mistakes so far: 1) I have only done the activities prescribed by the Assimil instructions, and I have not done the other activities that others in this forum suggest such as scriptorium and shadowing. 2) I have tried to stay locked into a one lesson/one day schedule. With the limited time and energy I have to devote to Spanish learning, this is too fast for some lessons, particularly the long and difficult lessons from about 60-80. I do not intend to abandon SwE, but I do not intend to move forward without fixing these problems. I'm going to make some changes: 1) I'm going to restart the active wave from lesson 1 doing scriptorium and shadowing with each lesson until I get back up to lesson 30, where I was. I have audacity, and I will edit out pauses to improve the recording's usability for shadowing. I'll shadow first with the book, and then "blind" until I feel I've accomplished what I can, and I'll review lessons periodically. I'm not sure where the regular active wave translating fits into this yet. Luca L2->L1->L2 translations? 2) I'm going to work no more than an hour a day with the book; I have other responsibilities, although I plan to be shadowing and listening to the lessons on my mp3 player during down times throughout the day. I will review regularly and I will not move ahead until I am satisfied with my results on the current lessons. 3)I'll keep reviewing passive wave lessons I've already completed while doing this restart on the active wave. The passive wave has worked well, and I don't want to loose what I have learned. 4)Once I get up to the point in the active wave that I was at the first time through, I'll move through the rest of the passive and active waves together this way. I will not make any attempt to do one lesson a day. If I have a thorough understanding of SwE perhaps I can go directly into Using Spanish afterward. I hope this will lessen my frustration with my lack of of productive abilities. If I can "sing along" with the lessons at native speaker speeds, I hope I will get fast enough to have a conversation. I was starting to give up on Assimil, and was already planning what I would do next, but I don't think I can stand to wait. It is so frustrating to understand exactly what someone said, and be unable to get an answer out fast enough to keep the conversation going. I've learned to love Assimil, and Castillian Spanish, and my motivation to master this material has only gotten stronger. I battle on. steve Edited by sfuqua on 09 March 2012 at 8:50pm 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 48 of 175 10 March 2012 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry about the long winded post, but I was working things out in my own mind. The short version is that I'm going to add shadowing, scriportium, and "Luca" two way translation. I'm also going to review, and I'm going to stop trying to move ahead one lesson each day.
I spent most of my language time last night watching telenovela's with half attention while cutting the pauses out of Assimil recordings. steve 1 person has voted this message useful |
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