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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6483 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes  Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 33 of 94 15 July 2007 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've scheduled the starting date for the Basic course to be July 18, which gives me little time to review.
I sure hope that the basic course would be worked on sometime on the FSI Language Courses site. Loquella is nice but you can't listen to it off line. I don't have easy access to the materials in the place I'm living. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6483 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 34 of 94 17 July 2007 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Now I'm really debating between staying with Basic course Spanish or returning to french.
From general advice that I've read, I should first finish Spanish and then go to french. But complications make this impossible. I won't get into the mess, except it's something about my brother's insubordination and limited access to the internet as a result, making learning through loquella a dream. But I never know. Maybe something nice will happen and I will be able to use loquella (I'm thinking of ideas). I can only wait and see... I'm really into Spanish and don't want to quit. Anyway, I don't think that desultory learning of languages is too efficient either. My French is really rusty, for example, and it will take weeks to restore it. PS If you are reading this have had any experience with loquella, could you tell me how well the method actually works, or any tips on studying through it? Any help would be nice. Edited by 236factorial on 17 July 2007 at 9:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6483 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 35 of 94 19 July 2007 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I did convince my parents to have me be on the internet (because Spanish is a legitimate reason!) and my brother not, so I guess I'll go with Spanish.
However, if within this week, I find that I learn less than 5 times, I might think about it again. I see that the FSI language courses website has been updated again, but still no news about the Spanish basic course. I'll be starting on unit 5 of the course. This is really early for having finished the programmatic course already, but I want to do it for several reasons: 1. I hate "holes" in knowledge, which may occur with skipping constantly 2. I need to get used to the style of the course, since it has been nearly a year since I've really done anything with it. 3. Loquella is new, and that will take some time to be acquainted with it. 4. Extra practice never hurts! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6483 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 36 of 94 22 July 2007 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've gone through units 5-6, and I'm throughly surprised at the difficulty I'm having! The drills are very different, for one thing. Instead of translations and patterned response drills (and little quizzes), I'm faced with substitution drills, response drills, and more translation drills (which are my least favorite). What makes the unit more difficult is the deviation in vocabulary from what you learn in the programmatic course. They are similar, but words like "avenida" and "ahi adelante" never appeared in the programmatic units.
I'm also excited about the extra present tense verb practice this course offers. Programmatic course didn't introduce it formally until unit 32 or so, and never had any extensive practice of it anywhere (just using it here and there). With the mastery of the subjunctive I acquired from the prog. course, I hope I'll able to get a break when the basic course begins blasting the subjunctive at me. I wonder if the diplomats who never knew Spanish had difficulty with this course. It appears to me that they require 11 hours per unit, on average. That seems ridiculous, even with no prior experience. I think I finished unit 6 in.... about 90 minutes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6483 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 37 of 94 23 July 2007 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder how FSI knew which drills that I absolutely hate.
Both courses have endless numbers of translations to do, and replacement drills (there are 6 per unit in the basic course!) [and both have speakers eating up their s's, but it doesn't count since I actually think that it's really cool, nor is it a drill]. I believe I said yesterday that the courses are quite difterent. That's true, except that the basic course has everything that I didn't like about the programmatic course. *Sigh* But there's something else very strange. I feel that the lessons are 97% sleep inducing, because I have to sit down and do them (with loquella) and because the content itself is not fun. Yet everyday I look forward to this with great interest. It's like smoking - you really dno't want to do it but you feel like you have to... except learning languages isn't bad for you. So much for my complaints. I just finished unit 7 and it was okay. Nothing too troublesome. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ridgley3 Newbie United States Joined 6276 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 38 of 94 24 July 2007 at 10:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been keeping up with this journal and curious what your overall opinion of the FSI course for Spanish has been since I am around unit 9 on the Platiquemos cds. I noticed your ideas for improvement, but how would you rate things so far?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6483 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 39 of 94 24 July 2007 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today I finished unit 8, and did so rather quickly because the grammar topics (-ir verbs and obligatory contractions) were completely review.
Unit 9... has...the...dreaded...present perfect construction!!! I disliked them in programmatic Spanish, and now, déjà vu!
Reading my posts, I make the course seem like a devil, but really it is quite effective. The good things about this course are characteristic of all other FSI courses. There are many chances for speaking, and extensive drills. Also, I think that memorizing basic sentences and then expanding the use of these phrases by various drills is a logical way to learn. I like the presentation of grammar points: illustrations, most of which come from dialogues, a brief extrapolation, adequate drills, and finally a detailed explanation of the rule. The conversation stimulus part is also a nice exercise: it is good listening practice (I think that in Platiquemos they turn this into a conversation exercise). Now on to the bad things. These have been corrected in the Platiquemos version, but haunt the original FSI course: - really fast speaking; combined with the tape quality this is a disaster - very little number of speakers (hard to distinguish who is talking) who speak with a strange accent - tiny and dull text appearance - phonetic transcriptions that are absolutely useless since Spanish is a phonetic language to read Other than that, I can only comment on the drills in both Platiquemos and the original, which are insipid and sleep-inducing, but that is where FSI courses gets their fame. I would like to have seen more free-response question drills using the words and constructions learned. This gives the student a chance to make responses without any rigid guide. So overall? The course is excellent, despite its repititious nature. The Platiquemos course is better since it cleans up some of the defects of the original. (You may be wondering why, then, can I be ranting so much about negative things. That's just me. I can make anything good turn bad.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6483 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 40 of 94 25 July 2007 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I finished unit 9 just a few minutes ago and am typing to clear my brain of the replacement and variation drills.
As far as the grammar went, the setup couldn't be worse: the present perfect construction side-by-side with the full forms of possessive adjectives. Both are topics that took me nearly forever to get in the programmatic course. Of course, the FSI authors knew in 1960 that 47 years later, I'll be hating these grammar points, so they decided to put them together AND wrote a ton of drills for practice. OK it didn't go bad at all. In fact, I was surprised myself to see how easy I pulled off the translation drill for the present perfect construction. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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