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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6532 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes  Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 94 19 June 2007 at 9:32am | IP Logged |
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Now I am less than 8 units away from review (38-45), and the course has not stressed the present tense much, particularly not the "he" and "they" forms (except for very common verbs such as querer, tener, etc). You barely have to use it ever (present subjunctive is used 10 times more often)! Usually, the present is the only tense you use in the first few units of a course.
I wonder if in the last 8 units, FSI would suddenly change and start having millions of imaginative drills on present tense, otherwise I'll probably be caught saying "¿Hable español?" for "do you speak Spanish?". 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6532 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 26 of 94 20 June 2007 at 12:31pm | IP Logged |
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I finished unit 38 today. I'm going to start a review of the entire course starting somewhere around unit 41. I will see how I much improved and how much of Spanish I still stink at (which hopefully isn't much).
The course is spending a lot of effort in making me practice the imperfect subjunctive, which is good since I've nearly never heard of that tense before. It isn't hard though, because of its resemblance to the 3rd person plural preterit form. I hope that the FSI language course web site updates its Spanish material, for programmatic course is coming to a close and I would like to continue with the basic course. Units 1-15 are avaliable at a local library, and units 16-30 are avaliable without audio (which is a waste). Basically, it's safe to say that I don't have the basic course. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6532 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 94 22 June 2007 at 10:51am | IP Logged |
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Looking ahead in the course, I see that the programmatic course will end with a ton of subjunctive drills.
That's a good thing, because I was at my local bookstore looking at books about the AP Spanish Exam (which I might take in 2-3 years) and on the section of identifying errors in sentences (part of grammar), over 50% of the answers had to do with errors in usage in subjunctive. I have the review of the course planned out. It will take a ton of time, probably about 3 hours a day. I'm not sure how long I actually spend on Spanish per day, so I don't know if this review will be more intense than my usual schedule. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6532 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 94 25 June 2007 at 8:10am | IP Logged |
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I'm about to finish unit 40 today. This is an endless cycle of dialog-drills-dialog-drills etc.
The introductions are essentially useless. Just a few constructions here and there. Without audio, the stuff doesn't stick as well. I had said that my full review of this course would begin somewhere around unit 40, and I maintain it so. I plan to review units 9-14 today. Seems like a lot, but it's basic stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6532 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 94 28 June 2007 at 9:02am | IP Logged |
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Here's a sentence that's really annoying me:
"Les pedí que nadaran, pero no nadaron nada porque no nadaban." If it's not saying "nadaron" instead of "nadaran" or anything like that, it's forgetting a minor thing, like saying "pidió" or just "le". There were several drills centered around a similar sentence, so you can imagine the trouble I had. My review of the course hasn't progressed much due to the troubling drills; I hope to finish reviewing unit 17 today. With that out of the way... I began to look up vocabulary that I didn't know from my school summer project, and I found so many mystery words that I don't know if I should take the class anymore. But most of the words pertain to food, something that I haven't studied in detail, nor do I plan to do in the near future. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6532 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 30 of 94 30 June 2007 at 6:19pm | IP Logged |
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Unit 42 was not nice. For some odd reason, I cannot get my si clauses straight, or rather, I can't get my tenses straight. When I want to say "empezaron" I say "empezaran" or "empiezo" or something of that nature. Whatever it may be, I hope to get it right some time. The end is coming soon.
I'm surprised at how easy the earlier units are now; I review those for relief from the brainracking units (40-45). My listening skills have also jumped; I can understand some words on normal Spanish television, enough to understand the show's general meaning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6532 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 94 02 July 2007 at 9:11am | IP Logged |
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I definetly need to move on from unit 42 before I scream. Si tuviera más tiempo, seguiría estudiando la unidad y practicando las frases con "si..." pero por lo visto, es casi imposible que yo pueda hablar en el condicional y el pasado del subjuntivo.
Enough of that. Si clauses are actually coming fine, much better than when I first started learning it due to many repetitions. I can only hope that unit 43 is a little easier. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6532 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 32 of 94 10 July 2007 at 8:52pm | IP Logged |
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It has been a looooooonng time since I've written in this log, and a lot has been happening.
I'm pretty much done with unit 45 (which was suprisingly easy compared to the other units), the last instructional unit. I plan to take 1-2 weeks to review the course and then move on to the basic course. Now that I'm done with this course, I'll share some thoughts: This is what I think would be an excellent course in Spanish, which implements the best of the FSI courses I have observed (I think eclectic is the word to describe such a course): 1. There should be an introduction like that of the programmatic series introducing pronunciation and presenting common errors and contrasts. I don’t think that introducing grammar points through the introductions is such a good idea, unless it is drilled on later in the unit. 2. The dialogs to be memorized, which appear in all FSI courses, should be around 25-30 sentences long (but length is not that important), giving the basic sentences. There should be at least a listening part, a repeating part, and a participation part. 3. Additional useful words pertaining to the topic of the dialog should be recorded in context (this is done in the French basic course). 4. Replacement drills based on the basic sentences that are not simple substitutions that you can do that in your sleep (like the lexical drills in the French course), but not as confusing as those in the Spanish programmatic course, in which any part of the sentence can be changed. 5. Questions on the dialogs, which are to be recorded, preferably. 6. Grammar – the drills should be of substitution, response, or transformation type as opposed to translation (although a few would be okay). I like the Spanish Basic course’s approach: giving you an extrapolation first, then making you do the drills, and discussing the grammar point afterwards. I’m not a big fan of “learning drills” that are present in some courses (these are sleep-inducing substitution drills that lets you assimilate to the pattern), but they are okay to include. 7. Listening exercises – may be simple short utterances or extended dialogs. No repeating should be necessary, just listening. While improving the student’s listening comprehension, these exercises can be relief from endless participation in drills and at the same time review important concepts. 8. Review drills that not only review the content of the present unit but also preceding units. These may also consist of question or response drills (where the student answers to a prompt) as wells as traditional substitution, transformation, etc. drills. 9. Readings – these may teach new vocabulary and cultural material. Comprehension questions may be included. 10. Written assignments such as translations or questions should be incorporated that also review the unit’s material. 11. Comprehensive reviews of material taught up to that point should appear at regular intervals. As far as the number of units... I’m not sure. If each dialogue can introduce 30 words, the “useful words” section presents 30, the readings have 20 new words and within the unit 10 words are learned (such as in drills, grammar explanations, etc.), each unit would contain 90 new terms. Since students should learn about approximately 3000 words, the course should have 36 units (3240 words), plus 4 review units equals 40 units, which is a “nice” number. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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