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LearningSpanishLikeCrazy (LSLC) w/ FSI | ||
Tags: Fake Reviews | LSLC | Platiquemos | Pimsleur | Reading | FSI | Book | Grammar | English | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| NYC_Trini_Span Diglot Groupie United States Joined 7226 days ago 60 posts - 66 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 1 of 193 15 February 2005 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
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I posted this on the Pimsleur page but figured that others like me would want to know more about this newer course:
------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- Well I must comment on this. I 've only done the Instant Spanish for Pimsleur which consists of 8 lessons. As i child i had spanish in school at 5 & 6years old. Being that i was reading at 3 and writing at 4 this was an ideal time for me and thus i picked up a basic vocabulary. Nothing to write home about but i could rattle off the parts of the body from head to toe and hold simple "greeting conversations". Around 7 yrs old i gained 2 Puerto Rican best friends. By hanging around their families i picked up a lot. The one night i "knew" i was getting it was when my friends mom said exactly this in spanish: "What is Shaun still doing here so late. Tell him he needs to go home" and i looked at my friend and said in english "Ok, i'll go home then" and he looked at me so strange that even i realized what i did. Sadly... my exposure became non-existent from then on, beyond pitiful american "highschool Spanish". I say all that to say: I lost all the info i had gained and although i could slowly read some Spanish, i otherwise was a beginner who remebered words without meanings. Pimsluer was excellent in re-introducing the language to me and in fact made me easily understand concepts that were laid out too complex in school. My complaint is that it felt as if they were "babying" me, but i feel that if i were %100 new to the langauge instead of %90, that would be perfect. since completing the 8 lessons- i found a program and site from a guy who bought all the Pimlseur, Barron, etc and felt he was learning a formal spanish. I too felt like this (Usted all the time) especially since all the spanish in NYC comes mostly from Puerto Rico and Domincan Republic (PR and DR in "New Yawk Speak"). It was called Learning Spanish Like Crazy (.com) and trust me I'm not paid to promote it. I just recieved it in the mail 1/20/05 and it came w/ FSI 1 & 2, and a new FAST FSI (they've had that in Italian). FSI 1 & 2 USED to come as a bonus but i had to pay for it all for $347, up from $100 a few months prior. (i guess they realized they were losing out giving away 2 FSI's for free- and they remastered them digitally too). The FAST focuses 30 lesson on stuations, as opposed to building your way up- for example: Airport, Exchange office, Taxi, Hotel, Dinner. Basically the order follows everything you run into after leaving your house for a trip abroad. So far Learning spanish like crazy (LSLC) has thrown me MUCH MORE words per lesson and tells me the informal (tu hablas), then the formal (Habla usted), and then says "we won't use usted now until later". Rather than completely ignoring it, it comes back to the formal randomly to make sure you didnt forget. Also- the instructor talks less and less english once he knows you know the prompts meaning. How do you ask is now "Como se pregunta" and how do you say "Como se dice". It's working for me but i can't say i'm fluent as i've just started. i will keep the progress posted every month. Another good thing is that the speed is faster than Pimlsuer and i rattle off things like "Yo camino a la biblioteca todos los dias" as fast a native although I don't know if it is because of my early exposure or not. My brother's wife is form DR and i am going there with them on March 24th to April 2nd. I will be testing it there! I should mention this course gave me a good understanding of how to form word endings for I, you, he, she, usted, they, they (Fem), and Nosotros. Now when i run into a word like Trabar- i know to make it Trabajas for a friend and trabaja for an elder or he/she, trabajan and trabajamos, etc. I hope that helped give another point of view. Shaun PS- Nice to meet everyone- i discovered this yesterday while googling for inspiration on learning. I had to join once i read about using FSI to learn in 6 months. The funny part if i didn't start FSI yet (was going to do it next) but i listened to 30 seconds of it and deemed it "stupid" i kept hearing "Papa..papah, papa, papah.) and didnt realize you were supposed to stop the CD after you answer. PI'm sure Frank would agree, playing it like a regular audio track sound like a comedy!! But now i apreciate the method just by how you explained it and i can't wait. Since they gave me 4 programs in all - i was going in the order of LSLC, FSI FAST, FSI 1 then 2. Sorry for the horrible spelling but i'm at work :) If these threw you off here are some corrections LOL Stuations= Situations Trabar= Trabajar PPS- Really great site Francois!!! I should make you a Rap/Hip-Hop theme song to play LOL 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 193 02 March 2005 at 11:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi NYC_Trini_Span.
Is there anything at all that you don't like about LSLC? I've visited the website and I've downloaded a couple of sample lessons. I really did like what I heard in the samples. I thought they were rather Pimsleur-like, but different. The recordings were very clear, and from what little I heard, the lessons seemed well thought out. I was a little turned off by the seemingly endless single-page website. It did answer all my questions, but I can't help but wonder if the same amount of creativity goes into the lessons. I'm also a little turned off by the fact that there are just soooo many mentions of LSCL in Amazon reviews of other Spanish learning products. It's almost cult-like. Nothing is that perfect. There has to be some warts in this program. I just wish I could read a really objective review. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pentatonic Senior Member United States Joined 7250 days ago 221 posts - 245 votes | Message 3 of 193 02 March 2005 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, It's obvious to me that those are false testimonials and part of their (somewhat shady) advertising campaign. That REALLY turns me off about the course. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 193 03 March 2005 at 12:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually pentatonic, that's exactly what I was trying to avoid saying. But now that you've said it and I've had a couple of glasses of wine, I don't mind agreeing with you.
And there are a couple of other things that make me skeptical. I keep reading that the version of the FSI program that they're selling is digitally remastered. What the heck does that mean?? Did they get the original studio masters from the US government? Or, is it more likely that they just bought a copy like everyone else, copied it into a wav file and then resampled it and encoded it to mp3? Well, I've already done that. Anyone can. Why is it that when I read the website, it seems like they are going to give me the first two levels of the FSI program as a gift for buying the LSLC course, but then when I get to the bottom of the page, I find out that the FSI program is actually costing me an extra $250? 2 1/2 times the price of the LSLC program! If I can't even believe the description of what I'm buying, or the price I'm paying, what can I believe? For all I know, this course might be great. Frankly, I believe that anything recorded in Spanish by a native speaker must have some value. And I really don't care if the program is the brainchild of some New York state lawyer with a bunch of Latino friends. That's fine. It doesn't make it bad. But the marketing tactics have completely turned me off. Please, someone write something really sincere to change my mind. Edited by heartburn on 03 March 2005 at 11:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 5 of 193 04 March 2005 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I got learning spanish like crazy a little while back
and will toss in my dos centavos. I bought it primarily because of the "bonuses". I.E. getting Programmatic Spanish Vol I, and though it wasn't explicitly stated, FSI Programmatic Spanish Vol II for what was the best price I'd seen. I was interested in Programmatic Spanish because of Francois (FX)'s experience with it. I did Barrons Mastering Spanish 1 over the course of about 5 months (checked out from la biblioteca). That course is an excellent value IMHO. It is FSI, but the slightly older (pre "programmatic" edition). Nonetheless, the drills are excellent. Not that they are super exciting, but the reality is they work. The library didn't have Mastering Spanish II (MSII), so I bought it from amazon. The first casette died shortly after I got it. Don't know if that's a manufacturing defect or not. A reviewer on amazon mentioned a MSII cassette broke on him too, and Barrons didn't offer any kind of help or replacement. My library has recently aquired MSII, so I've been thinking about checking it out. After the MSII cassette broke, platiquemos introduced the digital download version (all mp3 and pdf). The price was about $200 for the equivalent of the 55 lessons in the original (pre-programmatic) course. I went ahead and bought the whole (8 level) course, even though I have roughly the same material in lessons 1-30 from barrons (library + purchase). I kind of hit a wall with platiquemos. I'm studying programmatic spanish now. I'll return to platiquemos again, the courses are complementary. Let's use Ardaschir's premise that most language learning material sucks. So on a five star system: 0 stars - some kind of rip off 1 star - useful in some way, but not a good general tool. 2 stars - generally useful, but seriously limited 3 stars - useful 4 stars - very good, high quality, useful. 5 stars - say a real FSI classroom course or something guaranteed to work in a relatively short time for a determined student. By the way, I use the Audacity audio editing program on Linux to edit sound files to smaller and tighter learning experiences. More on that later. I include "value" in the equation too. Okay, some ratings: **** Barrons Mastering Spanish 1 ***+ Barrons Mastering Spanish II (possible cassette defect in manufacturing - not available on CD) **** FSI Programmatic Spanish Vol I + II *** Michel Thomas 8 CD course (I edited out a lot of non-useful pauses, etc.) 8 CD's became 5, then 4, then 3, and finally an "80 minute review" CD. ** Living Language basic beginner (40 lessons 3 cds) * Spanish 30 ** Pimsluer Spanish What, two stars for Pimsleur? Well, it's expensive. The pauses are very long. Even at the end of entire series, I don't think you'll understand TV or native speakers very well. Nonetheless, if you're just getting started and can check it out of the library, it's worthwhile. Audio quality is excellent. ***++ Platiquemos. Download edition is good value. The audio quality isn't that great. But, it covers all the grammar and has drills to take you to a very competent level. Lessons 31-55 are similar to the Advanced A and Advanced B that Francois did. It's definitely cheaper than the original FSI Advance A/B courses from multilingual books, etc. Back to learning spanish like crazy. I too belive that a lot of the postings on amazon that surreptiously praise LSLC are by people with a financial interest in the company. That said, it's comparable to Pimsleur in some ways. A typical 30-35 minute lesson can be edited down to 20-25 minutes the first time through, even when the material is new to you. Long pauses. Repeating extremely similar phrases over and over. On that vein FSI (original) and Platiquemos use a lot of substitution/replacement drills that are for more effective use of the time they consume in the program. One simple FSI type of drill would be like this (except in the target language). The one word is spoken on the tape and you create a new sentence. This is more fun than conjugating the same verb in the same order over and over (yo, tu, usted, el, ella, ustedes, ellos, ellos, nosotros). I have a big dog. cat I have a big cat. you You have a big cat. small You have a small cat. need You need a small cat. kitten You need a small kitten. she She needs a small kitten. lost She lost a small kitten. fortune She lost a small fortune. won She won a small fortune. cookie She won a small fortune cookie. ate She ate a small fortune cookie. For instance, LSLC will have something like: (very simplifed, this is not an actual dialog) Yere's how to say dog. perro. Say dog. perro. perro. Here's how to say big. grande, grande. How do you say big? ..... Here's how to say i have a big dog. ..... How do you say i have a big dog? Here's how to say he has... How do you say he has... How do you say she has.. How do you say we have ... Anyways, only Job would have the patience to listen repeatedly to a complete lesson they have down fairly well. (hence, I edit 35 minutes to 25, then 20, then 15, then 10, then 5, then 3 minutes over time). But the bonuses in LSLC could make it one of the better values out there. FSI programmatic I + II. LSLC (they are up to about 32 lessons now, I think the pace is quicker than Pimsleur, which I haven't had the patience to do). Also, LSLC speaker pace is closer to native pace, rather than ultra-slow, like Pimsler. But, LSLC audio quality is not as professional as pimsler. True recording studio professional audio will be realtively even in level. LSLC isn't. I do have Audacity to help me even out the stuff that's too loud, and the parts that are too quiet, but if you aren't planning on doing that, you may not be quite as pleased. Also, since the rate of speech is faster, you may need to look at the transcript to help you figure exactly how they are pronouncing a word. (Spanish is phoenetic). I bought LSLC before the price went up. It was a good deal. It's still probably a good deal, considering the competion. To the fellow who recently bought the course, I would either start with "quick start", or simultaneously do quick start and LSLC lessons. You may want to get into the programmatic courses before you finish LSLC. One other tip, there is a paper on http://bilingualamerica.com/ about learning Spanish. It's probably mostly applicable to any language. It has some tips that are helping me a lot. They also have a "free language learner assessment" that may give you some tips about tweaks you can make in your own learning program. And most importantly for LSLC. There are two websites with different deals for what is essentially the same material. http://www.learningspanishlikecrazy.com/ http://www.learninglikecrazy.com/ The bonus lessons on vulgarity and insults can be helpful if you want to watch R rated movies in Spanish. One other thing I don't like about LSLC, they frequently (too often) include the personal pronoun "yo" or "nosotros" when it is redundant. Also, a lot of the lessons are meant to be like a converstion. Based on their "real spanish" theme, you wouldn't keep saying "ella" or "ustedes" once both parties understand who you're talking about. Don't get me wrong, I'm learning spanish like crazy now that I have the course and started applying some of the tips in the bilingualamerica book. (I wasn't doing enough "book" work before. I always do better when I'm working from a book in additions to audio lessons). Speaking of books, Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish is inexpensive and uses a semi-nonstandard but effective approach. (non-standard isn't bad. FSI is a way better way to learn to speak than typical school (high or university courses) By the way, this web site is awesome. Thanks to Francois for creating such a cool place. Edited by luke on 27 March 2005 at 10:29am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 193 04 March 2005 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Luke! That's very helpful.
Do you really think that Michel Thomas deserves more stars than Pimsleur? BTW, I don't think you mentioned how many stars you'd give to LSLC. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 193 04 March 2005 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe Michel Thomas should be **+. I spent a lot of
time with it. Editing it down from 8 hours to 80 minutes of material over a period of time. Good parts about Michel Thomas: He covers a lot of useful grammar. Bad parts: Once he gets beyond the present tense (first 5 CDs), the imperfect past, imperative, 2-3 types of future tense, present perfect, the "ing" (estoy escribiendo) tense, and "acabar de" (just finished (doing something)) all get crammed into the last 3 CDs. Also, the student who has to struggle (probably no prior experience with the language) ends up being an impediment to learning after you hear the CDs a couple times. (That's why I edited most of the student responses out of my "mastered" copies. Michel also pauses frequently, and sometimes over annunciates and says things unnaturally slow - I tweaked all of that in my mastered recordings). Actually, if I took the 45-50 hours of Pimsleur spanish and edited it down to the essentials, I'm sure it would be over 80 minutes of material. But Pimsleur costs over $600 and I'd have to edit 50 hours of lessons, instead of just 8 hours. ;) Michel Thomas is kinds of expensive too. Barrons Mastering Spanish I is about the same price, and it has more meat than Michel. I got LSLC (32 lessons - about 17 hours of audio + transcripts), FSI programmatic Vol I and II (probably another 35 hours of audio + pdf books), 15 minutes of insults/sayings/vulgarities, for less than $100. To me, that's 5 stars. When I edit down the FSI programmatic lessons, there's more content than the LSLC lessons. I'm probably over-perfectionistic in my learning - that's actually not a good trait for a language learner, (according to the "language learning assessment" I took) - I review more than _need_ to. On the other hand, I think I'm coming along conversationally better than my peers. Mainly because I'm working from FSI styled materials. (reviewing isn't bad, but I've been studying more than an hour a day for over a year, and I'm not fluent and I don't know all the grammar or all the verb tenses). (but I know others who've studied even longer and I feel like I'm making progress faster than they are). My pronunciation is pretty good. I'm sure the words I speak make me sound like a caveman though. Crazy stuff like calling a raft "soft small boat" and making paddling motions with my arms. ;) One other thing about Platiquemos vs FSI Programmatic Spanish. Platiquemos is usable in the car. (I.E. you probably want to follow through with the book the first few times you do the dialogs, and you should read the grammatic points too). Whereas FSI Programmatic really needs to be used with the book. Many of the exercises are designed to be used with the book nearby. You couldn't really do FSI programmatic spanish by only listening to the audio and never looking at the book. It's possible with platiquemos though. (not ideal certainly, but possible). Pimsleur as you know is designed to be "book free". I make the fastest progress when I'm consistently using a book. (I prefer to do audio though - maybe that's why I'm still grunting like a caveman ;). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 193 04 March 2005 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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You got LSLC and FSI Programatic and Los Insultos for under $100? I'm looking at the site now and it's $347. Did they raise the price?
I didn't know there was two different versions of the FSI program. What's are the differences between the Programatic version and the other version? Which one is Platiquemos based on? Which is Barron's based on? What's the other version called? I noticed too that Platiquemos was easier to do without the book. Except for the response drills, I can pretty much do all the exercises book-free after the first reading. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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