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Older Learner tries Assimil for Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4764 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 145 of 175 18 July 2012 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've finished watching La Reina del Sur; I've watched each of the episodes several times. It's an overly dramatic telenovela, but I have loved it. I'm not sure if there is that much more I can get out of it; at least we've reached the point of diminishing returns. During the 63 episodes, I've learned a lot. I still can't follow everything the first time through if I cover up the subtitles, but I can do a lot better than at the beginning.
Now, for Assimil. Everybody who uses Assimil seems to come up with their own way of using it. Some people just breeze through the book, learning to understand everything, and find themselves able to understand a couple of thousand words, but with limited production. Others shadow things repeatedly and basically memorize everything. My first time through SwE, I went through the material the first way, and was amazed at how much I learned to understand and how little I learned to produce. Obviously, if other people have had success with this book, they were getting something out of it that I was not. I tried shadowing, and had a big surge in speaking ability. On a scale of 10, I moved from a 1 to a 3 overnight. And 3 is where I still am after massive, repeated shadowing of the first 75 lessons. Maybe that's the best I can do, and I just need to put in the hours with native speaker materials to move ahead, but I decided to think about what I had done so far. The questions are, "when are you finished with a lesson, when are you finished with the book? Should you overlearn, should you review?" This is my final (?) answer. Different versions of Assimil have different instructions, but all of them include this (a lowest common denominator of Assimil?): 1) passive wave a) listen to the passage and/or read aloud using the parallel text until one understands pretty much everything in the passage b)repeat each section aloud, without looking at the print c) complete the exercises Assimil does not specify how well one has to do the above, nor does it specify a review schedule, other than the review each 7 days on the review lesson. 2) active wave a) listen to the passage and/or read aloud using the parallel text until one understands pretty much everything in the passage b) translate the passage L1->L2, spoken and/or written. Assimil does not specify a level of performance or a review schedule for the active wave either, other than the weekly review. Over the last month, I have gone through all of the lessons in Assimil up to lesson 50 completing the following steps: 1) passive wave a) listen to the passage and/or read aloud using the parallel text until one understands pretty much everything in the passage. b)repeat each section aloud, without looking at the print. REPEAT EACH PASSAGE THREE TIMES IN A ROW WITHOUT ERROR OR HESITATION WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE L2. LOOK AT THE English IF IT HELPS. c) complete the exercises. d) SHADOW THE LESSON REPEATEDLY UNTIL I CAN SHADOW IT WITH NO STUMBLES. 2) active wave a) listen to the passage and/or read aloud using the parallel text until one understands pretty much everything in the passage. b) translate the passage L1->L2, spoken (TRANSLATE THE ENTIRE PASSAGE FROM TOP TO BOTTOM WITHOUT ERROR OR HESITATION THREE TIMES IN A ROW). and written TRANSLATE ONCE AND CORRECT WHEN FINISHED. c) SHADOW THE LESSON REPEATEDLY UNTIL I CAN SHADOW IT WITH NO STUMBLES. I'm doing 2 to 4 lessons a day, since I've already been through this material earlier. I'll probably slow down when I hit the unfamiliar lessons around lesson 75-80. I'm going to get through this material as fast as I can, and I'm going to take as long as I need. The step I (and others) have complained about, repeating aloud without looking at the text, is not easy, and I know is going to be very difficult when I reach the material where SwE has very long sections to repeat, but I have seen some impact on my Spanish from all of the grinding away at it I've done over the last month. I'm definitely getting better at "repeating aloud." I haven't seen a huge change in my production, but I have found myself using more complex structures in my sentences than I did last month, so maybe that is an effect. Anyway, in pretty short order, I will have thoroughly finished Spanish with Ease. I hope that I'll feel like I can call myself a B1. After SwE, I'll continue on through Using Spanish or a few novels and then Using Spanish. I'm thinking about News in Slow Spanish too; it looks like it might be a good supplement to the Assimil Spanish series. I can pretty well understand it already, but it would be good for filling in holes in vocabulary. It's time to get this done and move on to other materials. steve 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 146 of 175 18 July 2012 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been following your Assimil experiment with great interest, and I really
appreciate this writeup. Based on your success with shadowing, I've decided to overlearn Assimil : L'Égyptien hiéroglyphique. I'm actually going to aim for a mid-point between your two approaches: I want to enter the book into Anki while listening to the recordings, and review the content periodically. This should give me some measure of overlearning combined with long-term retention. Since you're aiming for B1 oral skills, here are some nice examples of each level from the various DELF exams:
For B1 and B2, the exact topics will change, which is much of the challenge. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4764 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 147 of 175 18 July 2012 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks; that looks like about my understanding of the levels. I doubt if I ever take a formal CEFR test like you did, but the descriptions are very useful.
You're way past it now, I would assume, but did you ever try the "News in Slow French?" steve 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4764 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 148 of 175 18 July 2012 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'll get to B1 when I get to B1. It seems like a very cool level. I'm going to keep working. I've been plugging away at Spanish for about exactly 7 months now. I'm about one "breakthrough" away from... Of course I realize that however good I get, I'll always want to be a little better...
steve :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 149 of 175 19 July 2012 at 3:33am | IP Logged | |||||
I used RFI Français Facile, which really wasn't all that slow or easy. It took a couple of months of brute-force listening and reading the newspaper before I eventually started getting "most of some" news stories. Now I get "most of most and all of some", which is good, but not enough to make the DELF B2 a cakewalk. Spanish seems to offer a lot more options at the lower intermediate levels: telenovelas, subtitles, crazy stuff like that. I rather envy you. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bjorn Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 4867 days ago 244 posts - 286 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: German, French | Message 150 of 175 22 July 2012 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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sfuqua, thank you for your evaluation of Assimil.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5711 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 151 of 175 23 July 2012 at 5:14am | IP Logged | |||||
Haha, no need to envy. Once you break into C1-C2 territory with your French, Spanish would be the cakewalk to which you refer (if you were ever inclined to learn it). I'm currently pushing full steam ahead with Spanish, plan to bring (and test) my German and Spanish up to the advanced levels over next summer, then start with French. Spanish will be easy for the reasons you mentioned (plus my geographical location), but I still think French is going to be even easier. Love this log. Good luck, sfuqua. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4764 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 152 of 175 07 August 2012 at 5:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Assimil Spanish with Ease passive wave lesson 72, active wave 23
I've gone through much of Spanish with Ease a third time. The first time through, I did a hodgepodge of different things with each lesson, and at about lesson 80 passive wave, I realized that I could understand a lot of Spanish, but my productive abilities were about nil. I then went through Spanish with Ease again, up to about lesson 75 just shadowing and doing scriptorium. I made rapid progress at first and actually started to have some productive ability, but when I reached lesson 75, my improvement slowed down again. Lessons 60 to 80 in SwE are hard, and when I tried doing the standard, "repeat the sentence without looking at the print" step from Assimil on these lessons, I found that all of shadowing I had been doing had still not prepared me to repeat these sentences with any degree of fluency... A month or so ago, I started SwE a third time. I went through each lesson doing the Assimil "lowest common denominator" instructions. Assimil has many versions of their instructions in different books, but many people find them vague. All of the books seeem to include the following: Passive wave: 1) Read the lesson aloud, checking the translation, until you understand what the lesson means. 2) Read/listen to the lesson repeating each numbered section aloud without looking at the print Active wave: 1) Read the lesson aloud, checking the translation, until you remember what the lesson means. 2)translate the lesson from L1 to L2 both written and spoken. I've worked through all of the lessons up to 72 in the past month, the only difference is that I've used a little overlearning and set my standard at repeating or translating 3 time without an error before I called the lesson completed. I was able to get through several lessons a day during the early part of the book; when I hit lesson 60 my rate of progress slowed down to one lesson a day. Many people who do Assimil skip the "repeat aloud" step, and they seem to learn OK. Other people skip or modify the "repeat aloud" step, and claim they have not learned productive skills from Assimil. I suspect that the original "lowest common denominator" instructions may be more important than people think. Even if you shadow, Luca method, or whatever you do with Assimil, if you don't actually follow the instructions, you haven't gotten everything out of it you can. I mean it's your book, and you can grind it up and smoke it if you want, but if do not follow the instructions, you haven't really given it a fair try. I've found the repeat aloud step to have some good effects. I find myself using more complex grammar, and I can handle the "repeat aloud" step even on the "hard" lessons from 60 to 80, at least so far. I plan to complete the book this way hopefully by the end of August, or shortly thereafter. I'm also playing around with chorusing and doing shadowing, but not everyday. I look forward to finishing SwE, and then I have to decide what to do next. I'm leaning toward Using Spanish. I tried reading La Reina del Sur, and I found it harder than I expected. There was just too many words I didn't know. I'll try it again near the end of SwE. I'm certainly pleased to see the forum back up :) steve 1 person has voted this message useful |
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