Spanish B1 in 9 months (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

Spanish B1 in 9 months
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Mike_405
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United Kingdom
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Message 57 of 60

07 July 2016 at 1:53pm | IP Logged

I hope your doing well and still making progress.

Can I ask you about your L2 listening reading L1 technique?

I am just finishing up assimil. I have Harry Potter book 1 as a Spanish audio book as well as English and Spanish copies of the book.

Did you go over each page listening to Spanish, then read in Spanish straight after?

Or did you just listen in Spanish and read English for the whole book hoping to learn intuitively and naturally pick up the language?

Thanks if you read this and can reply. Mike.
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Digitalis
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Australia
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

Message 58 of 60

11 July 2016 at 12:11pm | IP Logged

Mike_405 wrote:

I hope your doing well and still making progress.

Can I ask you about your L2 listening reading L1 technique?

I am just finishing up Assimil. I have Harry Potter book 1 as a Spanish audio book as well as English and Spanish copies of the book.

Did you go over each page listening to Spanish, then read in Spanish straight after?

Or did you just listen in Spanish and read English for the whole book hoping to learn intuitively and naturally pick up the language?

Thanks if you read this and can reply. Mike.

Sorry Mike, been out of it for a while, but I'm still going at the Spanish hard. I made some flash cards out of the first book + el principito (a couple of hundred) and just listened and read to Spanish at the same time. I went through the first 5 books in this matter. You might want to read the English version first though.)

Now my study pretty much consists of reading novels with an e-reader with a popup dictionary (I am halfway through the last harry potter book) and using Lingq to read Newspaper articles. I brought a cheap grammar book as well to use as a reference.
I recommend reading Doviende's blog.

My listening mostly consists of listening to podcasts without transcript and watching tv when I want (I can follow an episode of Los Simpsons well enough, which i could scarcely understand when I first started.)
I chose harry potter because, like you, I am a native English speaker and I knew the stories very well- can remember a teacher reading me the first one like 20 something years ago, when I was just out of kindergarden.

If you are having trouble with native materials, I highly reckon getting a Kindle with a popup dictionary and/or using an online based reader.
And absolutely believe me, you will start getting better soon- as I said, I can pretty much use native materials directly now. I do not plan on doing FSI at all (Serpent was right, they are very boring IMO) anymore, but I will probably use a reference grammar of some sort and have a look over Using Spanish. When I do, I'm confident that I will only need to spend a much smaller amount of time with them. Good luck mate. Keep me updated on your progress!

Edited by Digitalis on 13 August 2016 at 12:11pm
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Mike_405
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United Kingdom
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Joined 3294 days ago
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Speaks: English*

Message 59 of 60

14 October 2016 at 1:00am | IP Logged

Just wondered on your progress. I had a break from Spanish but back into it now. What techniques/resources helped you get were you are? Ive almost finished the recent version of Spanish with ease,tried the one you did 1980's version and its a lot harder got to lesson 30 but decided to finished the more recent one first. How did the Harry Potter go did it help.

Thanks, Mike.
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Digitalis
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Australia
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

Message 60 of 60

23 January 2017 at 8:35am | IP Logged

Hi there Mike.
As I said, I went through Assimil's Spanish "With Ease" 87' edition and the first 30 lessons of Pimsleur. Yes, the "1980's generation" Assimil editions appear to be a bit more difficult, but they probably take you further- I could get started working with native materials after finishing the original Assimil over a period of several months

I never got around to using Assimil's "Using Spanish" of the FSI course, nor will I ever. However, I have since used Anki in order to drill sentences (as opposed to word learning.) I have long since finished Harry potter and yes, it helped enormously.
y. I do most of my reading using Readlang (online,) although I used Lingq for a while.

TBH like you, I took a fair break from Spanish and am just getting back into it.
My reading is not too bad, it really depends on the material, although that material is now considerably more difficult than Harry Potter. My listening is mostly podcasts from Ivoox or TV (when I can stand it!)

I've finished my university degree now, and I am actually considering getting my Tesol course and heading over to Latin America/ Brazil for a few years- I'm an engineering graduate and the industry I'm in is pretty bad in Australia right now, so there you go...

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