James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French
| Message 9 of 12 24 July 2015 at 1:52pm | IP Logged |
Regarding how to use FSI... when starting a lesson just open the book and start the audio and listen straight through while doing the drills. Then, when you feel like you can do it without looking at the book, just play the audio.
One good thing about a comprehensive course like FSI is that it covers everything. If you complete the entire course you will hit just about everything you need to know and they will present it in roughly the right proportion. You will still have problems after, but everything will be there. I say this because I would not worry about anything in particular you don't get at first. If you go through a comprehensive course and then get a lot of exposure to the language in general it will come.
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buylow12 Newbie United States TotalTravelers.ComRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3427 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 10 of 12 24 July 2015 at 11:07pm | IP Logged |
OK so you would advise starting at the beginning
and going all the way through rather than
attempting to pick specific topics from FSI? My
worry is that it'll be much to easy for my level
but from what I understand it starts right from the
get go fairly difficult from what I've read
elsewhere.
Pimsuelar was actually extremely easy starting out
but since Duolingo doesn't really cover basics such
as introduction, ordering food, etc. It was still
helpful, even if I already knew the vocabulary. In
fact I found myself using statements from pimsuelar
in my speech practice rather others I had
previously learned. I think it provided some
automaticty(not sure that's a word, lol). However
if I had already covered those phrases I think it
would have been a waste, at least the first two
levels of so.
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James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French
| Message 11 of 12 25 July 2015 at 4:17am | IP Logged |
Yes, I would advise to start right at lesson 3 of FSI (the first two lessons that focus on pronunciation can be skipped). I had done Pimsleur 1-3, Michel Thomas and Assimil before starting in on FSI. The content of the lessons will be "easy" for you, but actually doing the drills is well worth doing it. FSI, for me, was more about drilling the grammar than actually learning. It just makes it natural and automatic.
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buylow12 Newbie United States TotalTravelers.ComRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3427 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 12 of 12 25 July 2015 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
Yea, I think that's what I need. I tend to speak
fairly slowly, especially when it comes to
conjugations I haven't used extensively in speech
yet. I feel myself improving in fluidity every few
classes but I think that might really speed up the
improvement.
I had a great class today. It's crazy how one day
you feel like your going nowhere and then the next
you feel like you could be on the cusp of fluidity.
My tutor did say that although I speak slowly I can
cover a much wider range of topics then a lot of
the other people he works with.
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