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Older Learner tries Assimil for Spanish

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emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5531 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 129 of 175
23 May 2012 at 1:39pm | IP Logged 
I'll cheat and use English for this, so you don't have to run it through Google
Translate. :-)

sfuqua wrote:
My listening and reading comprehension seem to be doing a steady, step by
step improvement. My speaking, however, goes in fits and starts, and sometimes still
drops back to pretty pathetic -- a great day yesterday, a pathetic one today.


This has pretty much been the story of my life, all the way from A2 to just below B2.
One day is awesome, another day is terrible. In fact, the day-to-day variation was
roughly equal to the month-to-month improvement, even when I was studying quite a few
hours per day. I did two things: Switched to full-time studying for a while, and
learned to live with the wild swings in ability.

As for speaking, I never did much shadowing, and it's taken me a couple of months of
conversation to really "burn in" my French. My output ranges from 20% to 80% automatic
at this point, depending on what I'm trying to say and whether I'm already thinking in
French. But even when it's not automatic, I can sometimes conjugate verbs at a
reasonable conversational speed. ;-)

Even though I have an extremely supportive French speaker at home, I've also been
working with a tutor over Skype, and that's been surprisingly useful. She pushes me
beyond my comfort zone, certainly!
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sfuqua
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4764 days ago

581 posts - 977 votes 
Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 130 of 175
26 May 2012 at 9:31pm | IP Logged 
I had another slow, stumbling conversation with a construction worker near our house last night. I communicated, but I think I was pretty pathetic. I think I'm starting to sabotage myself by lack of confidence in ordinary conversation. I listened to a couple of children chattering away in Spanish at my school and fooling around yesterday, and I could understand every single word with no problem, but when I decided to throw a comment into the conversation, I decided that I would probably foul it up and decided not to say anything.

I remember when I was learning Tagalog, there was an American there, who used to brag about how good his Tagalog was. He had a big stock of memorized phrases, but could not produce a single original sentence, sort of a super A1. His pronunciation was bad, but he was proud of it. After 8 years in the Philippines, he could recite his memorized phrases quickly and loudly.

Anyway I was in a bar with this guy after about 6 months in country, when I was starting to break out into an intermediate level. I started to chat up our lovely waitress, and she was chatting back, and I saw the guy next to me starting to get mad. He probably didn't know I could speak any Tagalog; he had probably already exhausted his memorized lines for cute girls; nobody was paying attention to him, and he had had four or five beers. Suddenly he burst out with, "You know you sound like an idiot! Your Tagalog is a joke! Everybody is about to start laughing at you!" I said something best not repeated, paid the bill and left the jerk to his own company.

I understood completely that this fool's opinion was not a valid criticism of my Tagalog. I understood why he had said it, jealousy and beer. I knew that what he had done said much more about him than it did about me, but suddenly I couldn't get a sentence out in Tagalog. I would choke on anything I tried to say, sort of the way my Spanish is from time to time. It made me mad, but that idiot's outburst messed up my Tagalog for a month. Every time I would try to speak, somewhere it the back of my mind, I would tell myself, "You know you sound like an idiot! Your Tagalog is a joke! Everybody is about to start laughing at you!" I would think about the dumb mistakes I would make, and the circumlocutions I had to use to get my meaning across, and my tongue would just tie up.

This is what I think is in my mind when I try to speak Spanish. I've got to get my confidence up and allow myself to make mistakes. I'm not certain how to do this...


steve
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sfuqua
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4764 days ago

581 posts - 977 votes 
Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 131 of 175
28 May 2012 at 7:09am | IP Logged 
Assimil Spanish with Ease Passive wave 70, Active wave 21 shadowing/scriptorium

It seems that the weekend is when I get most dissatisfied with my Spanish. I played around with platiquemos yesterday. I daydreamed about being fluent. I read a big piece of Allende's Zorro.

Today, I did:

Lesson 69 listen to L2 read L1, listen to L2 read L2, listen to L2 read L1
Lessons 29-49 shadow while reading L1
Lessons 50-69 shadow while reading L2

It went well... I stumbled, but it wasn't that bad. I need to keep working with the language every day.

Shadowing seems to me to be about the most useful thing that I've done for my Spanish. As long as I understand what every word means, shadowing *feels* like it is improving my Spanish. The lessons in SwE from about 60-80 are very hard. I keep having an urge to stop and "master" them. I think this would be a mistake; I need to keep moving forward, and wait for this material to eventually fall into place. This is about the place where I started to get discouraged the first time through the book; I think these lessons are probably too hard, and I had an unreasonable expectation about how well I was going to master them. Rather than smashing through this wall and getting a headache, I'm going to jump over it. I'll understand the lessons and shadow them 40 times, and if I still don't have a handle on them, I'll forget about them :) As if I'm going to understand a new tense after one lesson... Maybe I won't get some of this straight until I'm halfway through my third Spanish novel...

Outside of my practice time, I've been reading the passages and spending extra time figuring out what the tense of each verb is and exactly what or who each pronoun refers to. It seems to help; it is easier to shadow what has a transparent meaning.

steve

edited to take care of some annoying autocorrection spelling errors


Edited by sfuqua on 28 May 2012 at 7:14pm

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watupboy101
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4902 days ago

65 posts - 81 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 132 of 175
27 June 2012 at 8:08am | IP Logged 
Please update us on how things are going Steve, I myself am using SwE and am starting the active wave tomorrow.
Glad to see it has brought success for you. Hope it does the same for me.
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sfuqua
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4764 days ago

581 posts - 977 votes 
Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 133 of 175
27 June 2012 at 11:44pm | IP Logged 
I decided that I was repeating myself too much and made myself stop babbling in this thread, but I' proceeding through the book... And I'm still a happy camper, but I've slowed down some in progressing through SwE. I'm working more hours a day, but moving more slowly.

I've added a couple of things to Spanish with Ease that seem to be helping me a lot. I was dissatisfied with my understanding of Spanish grammar. Especially around lesson 60-80, SwE rushes through things pretty fast. The sentences to repeat in the passive wave are long; there is a lot of new vocabulary, and they move through the grammar too fast for my taste. I want to get through this book and on into native speaker materials, but I also want to be sure that I learn all I can.

I fooled around with FSI Spanish a little bit, but I think it may be too much work for what I would get out of it. I also tried Prado's Spanish grammar, and I like it a lot. The book gives some clear explanations of grammar and also discusses some of the differences between Mexican and Castilian Spanish. The exercises are written, so I can carry to book around and do exercises while waiting at the doctor's office, during lunch, and other times, where I couldn't really shadow or read Spanish out loud. there are many places where I've found that I knew some forms of the verb, but I couldn't really conjugate completely in all persons. Most of the time, Assimil has trained me to recognize what sounds right, but Prado teaches why. I find myself saying, "Oh, yeah!" whenever I recognize a pattern that I already know by "what sounds right." I don't know if Prado's book is actually improving my spoken Spanish, but it makes me feel more confident, when I understand that what I am saying is right, and why what I say is correct. It certainly makes me feel more confident when I write.

Another thing that is both frustrating and but in some ways reassuring is some of what I've been reading about how long it takes to learn a language, even and "easy" language like Spanish. If it takes 600-1200 hours to get to a high intermediate level, then I'm doing fine after 200 hours. I really, really want to complete SwE and Prado's grammar, by the end of July, so I can start novels and Using Spanish in the fall. When I start teaching again in the fall, I want my students to think of me as a teacher who speaks Spanish. It ought to be within reach; I'm a stumbling, fumbling A2. Spanish rattles out of my mouth fast, and sometimes it's even correct. emk has shown in his log that some concentrated work can move you a long way in a short time. I have to put in the hours, and I think Spanish with Ease will do it.

The claims that you can get to B2 just using the instructions in the book over a period of 120 or so hours are a little exaggerated unless you speak a closely related language, have a big chance to practice with understanding native speakers (girl/boy friend, family, etc.), or are some kind of language learning genius. But there is a lot of material. I think that thorough study of the book, including shadowing, and supplemented with other materials, could take you there...

I won't quit until I'm there. I love this language, and the more I learn, the more I realize that I have to learn.. So much to read, so much culture to learn, so many pretty girls to admire from a distance (I'm a very happily married old guy). Any language opens up a new world, the Spanish world is a big one and a very interesting one..

steve
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sfuqua
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4764 days ago

581 posts - 977 votes 
Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 134 of 175
28 June 2012 at 2:39pm | IP Logged 
To be more specific about SwE, I think that the lessons between 60 and 80 are flawed. The lessons cover too much material too fast, and the sentences are too long. I think that if they cut each of the extra hard lessons in half, and each of the sentences in these lessons in half, SwE would be a better course. For a section of SwE, I think the learning curve is too steep.

The "unreasonable" lessons in SwE, for my taste are:
64(Baldomero should be shot)
65 (I liked this one, even though it was hard)
66
67(you can get through it easily enough, but you will not understand the subjunctive after this)
68(too much vocabulary, too long sentences to repeat, should be two lessons)
71 (Baldomero again; this lesson makes me feel like Remedios)
73 (sentences are too long)
74-78 (long sentences, a lot of grammar, a lot of vocabulary)

If they put me in charge of rewriting SwE, I would take these lessons and cut each one in half, making them into two lessons; in most cases I would take each of the sentences(turns that you repeat out loud) in the new lessons and cut them up, making two or three turns out of them. SwE has much shorter "turns" in other parts of the book, even when the turn is less than a complete sentence. I don't know why the left these so long here, even though they sliced them up more in the lessons before and after these.

For example:

Lesson 71
turn 9

Buenos días doctor, no puedo más, tengo ganas de llorar, no sé que hacer, necesito su ayuda, ¡ah...! ya emiezo a llorar... pero... ¡por el amor del ciel, digame algo!

(This is long, 30 words, and pretty incoherent. It could easily be broken up. This is a big mess to keep in your mind in English, much less in a second language. I think this is a ridiculous challenge to remember)

Contrast this with these turns from lesson 79
turn 1
El imperativo es utilzado en España tanto
turn 2
el honrado padre de familia
turn 3
como por la abnegada ama de casa,
turn 4
el sereno ejecutivo, el tierno niño e incluso por el melenudo "progre".

(here they took a sentence and chopped it up to make the "repeat out loud" part of the passive wave and the "translate" part of the active wave easier.)

I really think the lessons I mentioned, and a few others, need some editing. When a learner hits these, I think that he or she needs to slow down and take a few days on each lesson, or actually edit the lessons to make two or three lessons out of each one (about the same thing). If you can get through them in a day as written, more power to you; for me they were just too hard.

A couple of posts ago, I said that I was just going to slide through these lessons, and not worry about my very imperfect results. I changed my mind, and have spent the past month getting so that I can do lessons 60-80 as well as I did the passive wave with earlier lessons. I'm not sure if this was the best use of my time, but I'm mostly done with them. I hope to be moving through the last 29 lessons of the passive/shadowing wave of SwE in July.

steve




Edited by sfuqua on 28 June 2012 at 2:49pm

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sfuqua
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4764 days ago

581 posts - 977 votes 
Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 135 of 175
28 June 2012 at 3:13pm | IP Logged 
Of course, the length of the sentence or turn doesn't affect you at all when you're shadowing, so if you completely ignore the Assimil instructions, and just do shadowing and/or scriptorium, you can move through these lessons at usual speed.

I wonder if it wouldn't be a good thing to work through an Assimil book using ProfArguelles's 22 day shadowing technique for the passive wave and then do Luca's two week, two way translation technique for the active wave. It would take a lot longer than the usual Assimil instructions, but I think it would lead to a thorough knowledge of the material in the book. I think some of us, me especially, get confused between, "completing the book" and "learning the language". :)


steve
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lingoleng
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5297 days ago

605 posts - 1290 votes 

 
 Message 136 of 175
28 June 2012 at 3:16pm | IP Logged 
sfuqua wrote:
For example: Lesson 71 turn 9
Buenos días doctor, no puedo más, tengo ganas de llorar, no sé que hacer, necesito su ayuda, ¡ah...! ya empiezo a llorar... pero... ¡por el amor del ciel, digame algo!

(This is long, 30 words, and pretty incoherent. It could easily be broken up. This is a big mess to keep in your mind in English, much less in a second language. I think this is a ridiculous challenge to remember)

I don't see any problem here. These a r e very short, super easy sentences. It does not matter that they are separated by commata instead of the usual fullstops. I guess that you are relying too heavily on some rigid rule what exactly to do with these sentences, and are trying to learn the entire passage by heart, but why would you want to do this? If you can say "tengo ganas de llorar" that's fine, and if you can say (and understand at the same time) "digame algo" it's great, and so on ...

I have not read the entire thread to find out what causes your problem, but just try to see things from a different point of view. These are simple sentences, anything that makes you think they are not should be changed and things will look much brighter again.
(maybe it's really just the idea that everything between two fullstops is a sentence, it is not, I can write on and on without end and never actually put a fullstop anywhere, it is very easy, do you see, it is even a bad habit of mine, I do it all the time, well, I like it, people think I am much smarter than I am, they think I can speak in very long and complicated sentences ;-) )

Edited by lingoleng on 28 June 2012 at 3:17pm



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