|
 |
Panama in 3.5 months | ||
Tags: Living abroad | Spanish | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4995 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 16 11 July 2013 at 9:15pm | IP Logged |
|
Hi all,
I am going to work in Panama. I will fly in early November and start to work a month after (use that first month to follow an intensive Spanish course there). So that gives me 3.5 months to improve my Spanish. I would like to get to a solid B1 level in that time, so that during the first month there I could improve to B2-C1. The first month, I will use to finish my master thesis, so during that time I do not have a lot of time to study Spanish (first things first eh). I will try to do a lesson a day of Assimil during that period and do some light reading/listening when I have the time. As some of you might remember, I did a quite big LR project here last summer. I logged about 200hours of LR and completed Assimil up until lesson 31. However, that is already a year ago, so a lot of it has faded. Hopefully, some of it will come back quickly. From that project I noticed that it was very nice to have some company with me during a language project. And this time, it is for real, since in 4.5 months time, my Spanish has to be good enough to work in Panama. After the first month, I will get more serious and start logging some real hours :) I will keep you all updated! Tom 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4995 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 16 11 July 2013 at 9:25pm | IP Logged |
|
Day 1+2
He hecho leccion primera y segunda de Assimil. Es agradable estar de vuelta. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aodhanc Diglot Groupie Iceland Joined 6261 days ago 92 posts - 130 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 16 12 July 2013 at 3:14pm | IP Logged |
|
What type of work will you do in Panama Tom? Best of luck with the study.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4995 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 16 13 July 2013 at 3:14pm | IP Logged |
|
I will work for a firm that can rent out large construction equipment to entrepreneurs in Middle Amerika :) Thank you!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4995 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 16 16 July 2013 at 5:49pm | IP Logged |
|
Finished up to leccion septima. What I try to do with Assimil is to first read out loud the dialogue about five times, making sure I can understand what I am saying during this progress but no memory yet. After this, I try to listen to the audio about 10 times (dialogue only). First five time using the book and translation. Last five only listening. I also try to shadow this as much as possible. After this, I have a fair understanding of the dialogue, so I try to translate L1->L2 three times, correcting myself after each translation. This way,I know the dialogue very well. I follow this up with the exercises which at this moment still turn out to be very easy when you know the dialogue well. But I like this way, both active and passive. No time to go through the whole course as prescribed, but I find that I am already learning a lot :)
Also finished the first six chapters of HP y la piedra filosofal L2L2. Definitely getting back into things:) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4995 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 16 20 August 2013 at 3:18pm | IP Logged |
|
So, a small update on my side.
I graduated last Wednesday from university, so I am now officially a master of science! This now leaves me with 2.5 months to go until I fly to Panamá. But this also means that I now finally have the time to do something with it, i.e. put in some real effort. The schedule I am working with currently (started yesterday, and have completed two days now) is the following: Each day, mon-sat, sun free - 1 lesson of Assimil - about 1 hour (two chapters) of Harry Potter LR - 1/2 - 1 unit of FSI Basic Spanish (three hours total) Assimil: I am not doing the passive fase. What I do is I first decipher the Spanish text using the English one, so that I understand what is being said. This includes reading the notes. Then I read it out loud a few times, partly looking at the translation, in order to get some passive knowledge and start to understand what I am saying when I am saying it. Then I listen to the audio about 10 times. In the beginning reading along and looking at the translation, later on shadowing. By the end of the 10x cycle, I have no problem shadowing the text. After this I go active and translate the text three times, each time correcting for mistakes. Only after this do I do the exercises, which by this point become very easy. This takes about 45 minutes at this moment. Might become a larger time span if lessons get longer. Later on the day I review the lesson and some difficulties of the previous lesson(s) for 15 minutes. Total Assimil time: 1 hour a day LR: I am again LR Harry potter. I love to do this and I know the books pretty well, so that helps a lot. At this moment, I LR L2-L2 and split the total session into two sessions of about 30 minutes (or one chapter). During the sessions, I try to off-course pay attention to what is being said and to enjoy the book, but I try to pay special attention to the grammar I have just learned. Thus, if I learned about the past tense this morning in Assimil/FSI, then I try to look for it in the text and learn the concept of the past tense better through context. Total LR time: 1 hour a day FSI: I work in two blocks of 90 minutes each day. During the first block, I go through the entire lessons so that I at least understand what I am learning and really understand it. Since the lessons so far contain about 50 minutes of audio, this leaves me with about 40 minutes to read the texts and understand what I am learning. During the second block of 90 minutes, I first start with really learning the new vocab/dialogue and then work on all the drills I had problems with during the first block. If after this block I can complete all drills with ease and feel that I really comprehend the material, I move to the next unit the next day. If not, I start the next day with a block of the same unit again, until I feel like I understand the material and am able to complete all the drills with ease. In total, I do two blocks of 90 minutes of FSI per day. The pace by which I progress through the units depends on my comprehension. Total FSI time: 3 hours a day Total time per day: 5 hours My goal is to get to about lesson 80 of Assimil, complete volumes 1 and 2 of FSI and read the first four books of the HP sequence before I move to Panamá. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4995 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 16 20 August 2013 at 3:23pm | IP Logged |
|
Day 1:
Assimil: Recap lessons 8-15 + completed lesson 16 LR: Chapters 8 and 9 of HP y la piedra filosofal FSI: Completed Unit 1 Day 2: Assimil lesson 17 LR: Chapters 10 and 11 of HP y la Piedra filosofal FSI: Completed Unit 2 I must say, the first two units of FSI are quite tedious because of the strong focus on pronunciation. But I really liked the first little drills at the end of unit 2. So I am actually looking forward to unit three which for the first time really focuses on drills and the real FSI stuff. Going great so far, but still, only two days in. Hope to keep this up. Like it so far! Edited by supertom on 20 August 2013 at 3:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4995 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 16 21 August 2013 at 4:07pm | IP Logged |
|
Day 3:
Assimil: Lesson 18 completed LR: Chapters 12,13 and 14 of HP y la piedra filosofal FSI: Completed Unit 3 Really liked the drills in FSI. After working through the whole lesson once, I was able to pinpoint the places where I had some difficulties (like when you use 'hay que ...', where I had some difficulty in directly linking 'hay que..' to 'it is necessary to..' and keep linking 'necesario..' to that thought. But all together it was nice, I liked the drills a lot. During the day I try to read out loud the older lessons of Assimil, just to speak. At this moment, having completed 18 lessons, I have about 10 minutes of uninterrupted speech when I read out loud all the conversations so far, so that is nice. Almost done with the first book of Harry Potter. If anybody is reading this who has both read the HP books and the Da Vinci Code, can you maybe tell be how they compare, in terms of difficulty? The link provided by Dbag made me download it and it also gives me a beautifull parallel text to work with. But I dont want to start that book only to find out it is way to difficult.. Good day again. Will start on lesson 4 tomorrow. Looking forward to it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
