|
 |
Comprehensive FSI Spanish Review | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 9 of 18 13 December 2006 at 5:48am | IP Logged | ||
|
I wrote up my ideas on a more effective way for global learners to use FSI Basic Spanish or Platiquemos based on my personal experience. I put the link here to turn up the heat on that thread. Sometimes your own advice is the best.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 10 of 18 17 December 2006 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Week 7.
Part 1. I went through units 42-45 this week and have made a start on unit 46. It's apparent that the pace of my review has decreased as the units advance. I gave a progress report about my experience with various FSI levels in another thread. Part 2. Read the daily meditations. Wrote down three definitions in Spanish. Part 3. Didn't watch VOA every day, and I've got a cold or something, which has made me not feel like working out. I picked up Dish Latino which offers a variety of programming in Spanish. Some shows are fairly easy to understand. Having several channels to choose from helps me find something interesting. Part 4. I'm on page 171 in El Código Da Vinci. I still read the chapter in English first to have higher comprehension. The story remains interesting. Ángeles y Demonios may be better. It got away from me and I read the whole thing in English first because I couldn't wait to find out what would happen next. Part 5. Prado's Grammar may now be considered moribund. I have switched over to Programmatic Spanish. This week I did units 28-30. I'm not doing all of the exercises. In particular I'm skipping those towards the end of the chapter which have no answers in the book. I still think this is a helpful component in my studies, even if I am less than rigorous in my approach. Extra Credit. In addition to finally getting hooked into Dish Latino, I had my tutor session yesterday. Felt a bit under the weather, but the teacher has given me some assignments which hopefully I'll give some attention to. One is to learn one new word each day, and the other is to read a short story from Readers Digest selecciones. I believe she thought the story was several pages long, but it turns out to be only a couple. The plan is to discuss it next week. I guess I should practice, or else I should do a better job of letting the maestra know what I want to work on. Additional extra credit was reading through some of Barrons Spanish Thematic Vocabulary book, which is nicely arranged for my personality. It is more topical, rather than, "at the bus stop", "in the car", "at the restaurant", which is how some other themed vocab books are organized. Two weeks left in the year to finish level 4 of Basic Spanish. I don't know if I'll make it. I've got a bit of vacation coming up, but I generally don't study as much as I can during holidays. Not a big problem. I have thought about just zipping through a unit a day, not really to master the material, but rather to get to the end again. Then I could start a new goal of reviewing the final 1/2 of the course again, chipping away at it a little at a time. Maybe I should just follow my refined approach that I mentioned in the previous post in this thread. Then I'd be able to get to unit 55 by January 1st. That seems like a good thing. Edited by luke on 17 December 2006 at 6:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7101 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 11 of 18 18 December 2006 at 3:06am | IP Logged | ||
I'm presuming this is the book you're referring to. I've had this for a while and by a curious coincidence I also picked it up recently. In the absence of any better method of approaching it, I've been treating it as an active excerise - cover up the Spanish and translate both the headwords and sample sentences from English. Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 12 of 18 18 December 2006 at 4:49am | IP Logged | ||
|
That's the book. After I finish reading through it, a more active approach like you're using would be helpful. I've been reading the Spanish out loud and looking over at the translations when the meaning is unclear. That's not as challenging as what you are doing.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 13 of 18 23 December 2006 at 4:59am | IP Logged | ||
|
This is a surprise. I took the online exam at http://ave.cervantes.es/prueba_nivel and it said:
Según esta prueba, su nivel de español es: Superior+ One part of the suprise was because I couldn't hear the macromedia audio in the final part of the exam and had to just pick the most logical/interesting choices. The other is that I wasn't completely confident in several of my answers. The exam is meant to help you select the training material for the DELE. The levels are: Inicial Intermedio Avanzado Superior Maybe I should set a goal of taking a DELE exam next year. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 14 of 18 25 December 2006 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Week 8.
Part 1. I raced through units 46-50 in FSI Basic Spanish this week. I think it will be good to complete this quick overview of level 4 this year. Early next year I can do a more thorough study of the material. I've done pretty well with the dialogues, illustrations and the first couple drills of each section. Part 2. Read daily meditations. Wrote 4 definitions in Spanish. Wrote up my thoughts on the daily reading 3 days this week. Part 3. Have gotten back on the exercise horse and watched the daily VOA news program several times this week. The weekly show was pretty understandable. I thought to myself I may be close to achieving the goal for this component of my study by the end of the year. I also watched some Europocket.tv news. Part 4. I'm on page 277 in El Código Da Vinci. I've skipped the reading in English for a few chapters. I'm tempted to just read ahead in Spanish without shadowing the audio, as the audio really slows me down at times and I'd like to finish the book this year. Part 5. On the grammar front, I did a quick pass through units 30 and 31 in Programmatic Spanish. I edited the audio for unit 33 and the first half of 34. Extra Credit: I've watched a fair bit of television in Spanish. I've only had it for about 10 days, and I already notice my listening skills improving. I can understand almost everything in Infomercials, but that's not really new. I could do that for the extended radio informercials for learning English and other paid advertisements. At first Discovery in Español seemed like it would be a challenge, but now I'm starting to think it will be a good channel. HITN, which has programming like a Public Broadcasting Station (PBS) has some good material. There are a lot of news shows. Thankfully they are staggered throughout the day in case the news hits my fancy. I also have HBO Latino for 3 months and I've let myself get involved in a couple of dubbed movies. Finally, I pulled one of the Spanish telenovela DVDs out today and got interested in the story and have watched about 1.5 hours of that. That's encouraging, because a few months back, it was harder to concentrate on my telenovela DVDs. They have only English subtitles, which I've had turned on, but now I'm picking up most of the Spanish as well. Interestingly, I find that if I get up for a bite to eat or something, I can still understand the program. It seems I should have gotten Dish Latino a long time ago. Someone posted an interesting link to a paper on Esperanto in several languages including Spanish and I've enjoyed reading that. With the reading in Spanish and watching TV in Spanish, I found myself unconsciously counting my exercise repetitions in Spanish today too. That was a nice feeling. Edited by luke on 25 December 2006 at 7:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 15 of 18 26 December 2006 at 11:26am | IP Logged | ||
|
By the way, the DVD I've been watching is El Privilegio de Amar which is pretty good, although it only has English subtitles. Since the original telenovela is compressed into about 8 hours, the story moves along at a good clip.
I've also been reading a bit more in the thematic vocabulary book mentioned earlier. Even though that is not rigorous study, I do find myself recognizing words I've seen in the thematic book in other sources afterwards. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 16 of 18 01 January 2007 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Week 9.
Part 1. I continued the race through FSI units 51-55 and finished them up a couple days ago. I'll come back to these though because I want to know them better. Part 2. Continued with the daily meditations. Wrote out my thoughts for 3 days in Spanish. Part 3. Watched VOA news and the weekly hour show twice this weekend. Part 4. Quickly finished up El Código Da Vinci. Didn't shadow the last 150 pages or so. Read some of them, and only listened to others. I'm looking forward to reading some nonfiction. Part 5. Read and recorded 7 places to use the subjunctive from Prado's Advanced Spanish Grammar. Extra credit. Watched a bunch of TV. Read some other books. Recorded some of my readings. Finished watching El Privilegio de Amar. Wrote out some of its dialogue. That does it for this leg of the journey. Time to grade myself. On reviewing FSI - B. Completed the course again. This was the first review of some of the units in a long time. It won't be the last. On the daily reflections - B. Recently began writing my thoughts. Switched from writing definitions in English to Spanish. Haven't actually studied all of the definitions I wrote out though. On watching a news show or something while exercising - A. Went from a ten minute news show to doing 20-30 minutes most days. High comprehension on the 60 minute weekly show. Watched a telenovela on DVD with interest. Now receiving Dish Latino. On audiobooks - B. Finished the Dan Brown books I set out to do. Incomplete for finishing Prado's grammar. Overall grade - B. Lots of extra credit work and picked up a tutor to boot. Six months after changing my self rating in Spanish from intermediate to basic fluency and then reverting it back to intermediate again a few days later, I've changed my rating to basic again. On the speaking front, I had a good hour long conversation with a Columbian and wasn't at a loss for words and I actually did most of the talking. For listening, I have good comprehension of some types of television programs. I'm beginning to read a biographical texts meant for adults with pleasure and after 30 pages only wanted to consult a translation for one word (acción = stock share). From the writing angle, I'm doing my next learning log in Spanish. My goal for the coming year is to improve my Spanish and finish the year comfortable in a self-assessed "advanced fluency" rating. Edited by luke on 03 January 2007 at 7:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
