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Conversational fluency in two weeks? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5208 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 17 of 22 18 July 2012 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Do what @emk suggests and people will beat a path to your door. Simply correcting without explaining is not nearly as effective or useful as taking the time to do it right. People generally appreciate someone who goes just a little bit out of their way to help. If that particular person doesn't reciprocate, what you do will be noticed and appreciated by others who do care. You will then have the functional equivalent and benefit of quality native-speaker instruction. As in life in general, going beyond the minimum will reap greater rewards. @nj24, you will be alright. The most important part of reaching any goal is the desire to do so. That desire will drive you to do the necessary work. Good luck with your goal, and, please, drop by again in a couple of weeks to let us know how it all went. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nj24 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4609 days ago 56 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French | Message 18 of 22 07 December 2013 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I created this thread over a year ago and have been meaning to come back and post an update. Better late than
never, right? Here is my long overdue update: After being disappointed with my level of Spanish at the economics conference and not feeling quite confident that I could tell fellow students that I actually spoke Spanish, I felt motivated to find a Spanish speaking partner who was learning English and would like to do a language exchange. However, I continued to make excuses. I really didn't want to talk with a complete stranger, which ruled out the easy way of finding a partner through websites like iTalki. I do have a bilingual friend (one of my motivations to learn the language), and we'd often text in Spanish, but since we're long distance friends, when we actually got a chance to talk over Skype, we'd usually just speak in English. It's funny, but I find that once my brain identifies someone with a certain language, I find it a bit of an effort to switch into another language when talking to him or her. Or maybe it was just me continuing to make excuses in order to postpone my speaking practice. Anyhow, after the conference, I continued to seriously study Spanish and work on my listening and reading skills. I don't use Anki or anything like that to memorize vocabulary; I just pick up words naturally from constant reading. As I read more and more and listened to hours of podcasts, radio programs, music, and dubbed movies, I found that I was relying less and less on subtitles and transcripts. I've since been watching a television show from Spain without subtitles and, on good days, I can understand about 85-90% of the content. Of course, it's easier to understand conversations in a TV show than those in person because you have the added benefit of completely understanding the context and watching the stories unfold. It's much different when you are talking to someone and can't see a visual depiction of what they're talking about. Studying a foreign language is my main hobby, and this constant studying meant that eventually my brain revolted against my excuses that I needed more time to perfect my Spanish knowledge before asking my friends if they knew anyone who would like to do a language exchange with me. I'd just finished the third volume of FSI Basic Spanish (so, really, I couldn't say that I needed to study more grammar). I'd also opened an account on Lang-8 and found it an invaluable resource. I'd write something, post it on Lang-8, take the corrections and rewrite the entry to post on a separate Spanish blog, read through the new post several times, then try to talk about the topic naturally using the vocabulary and sentences that I'd written. (I don't try to memorize it word for word. Rather, I try to remember as much as I can and speak as naturally as possible, as if I were having a conversation with someone on the topic.) I think writing, especially, really started waking up the speaking part of my brain. When I couldn't fall asleep at night, I'd stay awake chatting with myself in Spanish, and sometimes when I was talking to a friend, a Spanish phrase or word would pop into my head before the English one. So I got up the courage to ask my Spanish friend if he knew anyone who would be interested in doing a language exchange with me. I don't know why I hadn't asked him sooner. He got back to me the next day, saying his cousin was very interested and when would I like to start? And that's how I ended up finding a language partner. Her English is much better than my Spanish, but I've kept all of our correspondence to arrange meetings in Spanish. This has been a great way to learn more vocabulary! After our first video chat over Skype, I was very disappointed with my speaking level. I think I may have just been nervous, as my speaking skills seemed to progress quite quickly over the next several meetings. The last time we spoke I was able to have a conversation for over an hour only in Spanish. I only reverted to English to say the name of an object or concept and then would ask in Spanish how to translate it. Yes, sometimes I did get flustered and would forget simple words or verb conjugations. But it certainly wasn't the end of the world. And let me just say that my listening skills have been a huge help. She's from Peru, and my ears are much more attuned to Peninsular Spanish accents than those of Latin America. I guess I've listened to more podcasts and watched more TV shows from Spain. She starts out speaking slowly and clearly, but then as we continue talking, her words get faster and faster and the pronunciation is not as clear and sometimes the Internet connection makes the audio stall. I think if my listening skills were not as strong, I would be completely lost. Overall, I'd say if you want to take your language to the next level, you absolutely must find a language partner and make time to practice speaking the language at least several hours a week if not more, even if that just means talking to yourself. At the same time, I am not terribly worried about my speaking level. Learning Spanish has never been a sprint for me. I've always seen it as a long journey. I think I could have started speaking the language earlier, but I don't think I would have gotten as much out of it, and I may have been even more frustrated that I couldn't express myself or understand my language partner. My listening skills aren't bad (of course, I still need practice). My grammar knowledge is fairly solid, and I have a fairly large vocabulary. Overall, I now have the confidence that I could tell someone I speak Spanish and be able to carry on a short conversation. That was my goal for 2013. My goal for 2014 is to leave behind all of my textbooks (I am planning to finish volume 5 of FSI by the end of December) and concentrate on speaking and writing more and immersing myself in native content. This will also free up my time to study other languages (after studying Spanish for so long, I'm beginning to feel the urge to discover a new foreign language and have already started dabbling a bit in Mandarin). I am also thinking about possibly enrolling in a MOOC course from a Spanish university. Sorry this post ended up so long. I suppose I could have just written: ¡Muchas gracias a todos por su ayuda y sus consejos! Me han ayudado mucho. To anyone who has a strong grasp on his or her target language, but lacks the confidence to find a language partner and start speaking: No dudes porque crees que no vas a encontrar las palabras adecuadas o que no vas a ser capaz de explicar lo que quieres decir. The very act of speaking will build your confidence! And only through speaking can you improve your speaking skills. Edited by nj24 on 08 December 2013 at 6:12am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6543 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 19 of 22 07 December 2013 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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So glad to hear you're doing well! Consider joining TAC for 2014 :)
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4635 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 20 of 22 08 December 2013 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
Yes! We are definitely looking for Mandarin learners. You should really Consider it. But no pressure. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nj24 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4609 days ago 56 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French | Message 21 of 22 08 December 2013 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the invite! It would be great to study with other Mandarin learners. I'll check it out.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4774 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 22 of 22 08 December 2013 at 2:20am | IP Logged | ||
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@nj24:
What you've said about associating a person with a particular language is perfectly valid, in my opinion. If you've known someone a longish time, and always spoken to them in English, it's then quite difficult (on both sides) to start speaking in another language, even though it's the native language of the other person, and no matter how much the other person wants to help you. Hard as it may seem, it's perhaps better in those situations to find someone else to speak the target language with. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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