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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 33 of 175 25 February 2012 at 5:56pm | IP Logged |
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I haven't noticed any big problem understanding the Mexican
Spanish on TV, or that I hear around me. Other than brain not working fast enough to process it, that is :) I seem to be able to shut off the many th sounds in my speech if I want to. It would be nice if Assimil made a "Latin American Spanish" course. I'm planning to work through a book called Streetwise Spanish at some point after Spanish with Ease. SS concentrates on slang and regional differences. 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 34 of 175 26 February 2012 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
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Spanish with Ease -- passive 71 -- active 22 -- shifting into low gear
OK; today is the day I shift gears. There is no point in rushing through this course, getting headaches, and not learning anything thoroughly. I'm going to do the passive and active waves on alternate days, and I'm going to go back to reviewing more. This will add 39 more days to getting through Spanish with Ease. I'm going to complete each section of each lesson without hesitations or mistakes three times before I move on to the next section. I'm going to review each lesson on a schedule, day 1,3,7,15,31,63, etc, to start out. I may switch to day 1,3,9,27,81, etc, or 1,4,16,64,etc if I find the reviews taking too long. The reviews go fast if the lesson is learned well in the first place. One of the frustrations many people feel about Assimil is that the instructions don't tell you to push things to the point of overlearning, and those of us who are mortals sometimes forget what we don't thoroughly memorize and review. What is nice about Pimsleur is that what you learn, you really learn. The progress may be slow, but you do learn thoroughly. There really isn't any reason that you can't do the same thing with Assimil, except for time constraints. Assimil may offer enough internal review for some, but I'm halfway through and I don't think that things are sticking well enough. I'm still amazed by how well the passive wave is going, I wouldn't have believed that I could learn to recognize as much Spanish as I have in as short a time with as little effort as I have put in. The material in the past few lessons has been harder, and I've recently been reviewing less to leave more time for the active wave, so I haven't been getting the recently lessons as deeply into my head as I was earlier. Putting the active wave on alternate days will give me more time to review, and will keep my favorite part of Assimil working well. The passive wave is working; I tried reading _La Reina del Sur_ yesterday, and it really wasn't that bad. I'd need a dictionary, but I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to read this book by the time I'm through with Spanish with Ease and Using Spanish. I'm toying with the idea of using the novel the same way I use an Assimil book, making each page a lesson or something. The active wave is less satisfactory. While the active wave was easy in the beginning, I'm not sure that I'm learning anything deeply enough to bring it out in an actual conversation. Yesterday, since it was not a work day, I spent a big chunk of the day pounding away on active wave lessons 1-21. I drilled each section of each one until I could get through each one without mistakes or hesitations three times in a row. It felt very good; it didn't take very long to go from, "completing the section once slowly, and with hesitations" to "completing the section quickly, accurately and smoothly three times in a row." It felt really good. If the need for any of those sentences came up in conversation today, I could rattle them off confidently. I think that the basic Assimil instructions may be enough to learn the language if you are a genius, or (more likely) you already speak a closely related language. For a nongenius like me, who does not speak another Romance language, I think more time and effort is needed. If I can get through the book, learning and overlearning each lesson in each wave, if I can translate every sentence in the book without mistake or hesitation, and I still can't speak Spanish, we'll know that this learner has failed to learn Spanish with Assimil. I could still use sentences from the book to have a conversation. Daydreaming... I walk up to a lovely Latina in a disco, I'll picture Kate del Castillo, and I say, "Mama acaba de morir en la bañera. ¿qué hago?" She answers, "Remedios no puede más y, a escondidas, una noche estrellada de luna llena ha ido a tirarse al rio," I reply with, "Volverán las oscuras golondrinas en tu balcón sus nidos a colgar." Yup, I'll be ready, as long as I only use sentences from the book. steve edited to fix my Spanish :) Edited by sfuqua on 27 February 2012 at 2:52am 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 35 of 175 27 February 2012 at 5:57am | IP Logged |
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passive 71 was fairly difficult today; I'm glad I had a full hour to work on it.
I'm looking forward to active 22 tomorrow. 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 36 of 175 28 February 2012 at 4:14am | IP Logged |
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active wave 22 today, passive wave 72 tomorrow
This was the most miserable language learning experience I have ever had, except perhaps some Peace Corps trainings I did while jetlagged. This was the first day back at work; everybody was tired. There was a violent confrontation 20 minutes into the day, and my headache started. I made it through the day, and came home dead tired. I went to the gym, hoping to burn a little stress and calm down, and the bozo's running the place had the volume on their "background music" turned up so loud that I had to max the volume on my mp3 player to hear. Rather than suffer ear damage, I quit after a few minutes, complained about the noise level to management, got laughed at, and came home to do my Assimil. Nothing would stick; nothing. I kept slamming my brain into it, and my aching head just wouldn't hold anything. I decided that I was being a wimp, and decided that I would complete what I had assigned myself, even if it took all night. Two and a half hours later, I had completed what should have taken 45 minutes. I wonder if anything is still there in my head. Clearly I made some bad decisions about doing the lesson when I was too tired and emotionally wrung out, but darn it, I split up the active and passive waves, and it shouldn't be that hard. I doubt that I could recite the alphabet tonight, much less deal with Spanish. Thank heavens lesson 72 for tomorrow looks much shorter than what we've been doing lately. Edited by sfuqua on 28 February 2012 at 3:24pm 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 37 of 175 28 February 2012 at 5:22am | IP Logged |
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I watched the telenovela, La reina del Sur, and now it is time to sleep.
I scanned through New French with Ease, and it looks to me like it has shorter sentences through this section of the book than Spanish with Ease has. I don't speak French, so I can't evaluate lexical or syntactic difficulty. I hope to get a good nights sleep and hit the Spanish with a fresh brain tomorrow. 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 38 of 175 28 February 2012 at 3:23pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil Spanish with Ease passive 72 active 23
What a difference a day makes! I went to bed early, woke up early, and I've already completed the passive wave for today at 6:07am. Everything clicked and it was shockingly easy, especially since I was having so much trouble 12 hours ago. Even though I said that I was going to do the active and passive waves on alternate days, I may go ahead and to the active wave tonight, it I don't feel too tired. I've got a cold, which probably helps to explain why I felt so bad yesterday. I'm very encouraged again. 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 39 of 175 29 February 2012 at 3:26pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil passive 73 active 23
Time and energy are the problems. This may be an age related issue, but I think it is an issue for anyone who has a challenging job and a family with children. I teach middle school; I have a daughter who is five. Both of those things have to take priority over my Spanish. When you throw in a bad cold, it is hard to stay focused on my studies. I completed the passive wave for lesson 72. I started, but did not finish active wave lesson 23 last night. I'm going to complete it today, and maybe go see the doctor about my cold, which has been getting slowly worse for a week. While staying with the Spanish is difficult with the nonlinguistic distractions going on now, I think that days like these are the ones where you earn your new language. If you can keep it up, and not crack, when things get hard, you can reap the rewards when things get better. I'm still hoping for vacation in the sun speaking Spanish this summer... 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 40 of 175 01 March 2012 at 5:14pm | IP Logged |
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I really admire your dedication when things get tough. As you say, you're definitely
earning your Spanish. When I'm having a bad day, I keep on studying, but I try not to worry about the results. As you discovered, you may still be soaking it in at a subconscious level. For me, the real danger isn't bad days; it's taking time off and sliding backwards. You're now 3 weeks into the active lessons, and you should be starting to activate some basic conversational skills. Your abilities will increase rapidly between now and lesson 50 or so. As you've discovered, there's a ton of stuff in your head, and more of it will start slipping into your Spanish speech. Do you know any sympathetic and patient Spanish speakers? Sometime between now and lesson 50, it might be helpful to set up a 30 minute conversation once per week. This will allow you to discover just how much you're learning, and it will amplify the effect of the active lessons. I certainly tried my wife's patience with my "toddler French" and crazy circumlocutions, but it helped. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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