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Best use of a commute? FSI, podcasts, etc | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 9 of 25 21 September 2013 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks all! I've decided to stick to podcasts in the car.
I did copy the FSI unit 3 (skipped over the pronunciation ones) to my phone, and did it while going for a walk - about 45 minutes in all. I enjoyed it, and I could definitely see how it will help me internalize sentence structure. All I did was listen and repeat (for dialogues) and answer and then repeat (for drills). Then, the last 3 dialogues, I just listened - didn't repeat or do anything with them. I'm not sure if I should be doing *more* with the unit, though. Any links to suggestions for how to make the most of FSI? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4891 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 10 of 25 22 September 2013 at 12:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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There's so much in FSI already that just doing the lessons is already a lot!
I find that I need the book for the opening dialogue of each lesson, but can generally figure out the drills just using audio. I'm only half way through the Spanish FSI though; if it's anything like the French it gets complicated in the later parts. And I wouldn't totally write off Pimsleur. The new Level IV - if you can find an affordable copy - is useful even for intermediate speakers. It's a marked improvement over Level III (which was a disappointment). I wouldn't pay full price - it's not that good! But I bought it for about $60 of audible credits, which seems a fairer price. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6231 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 11 of 25 22 September 2013 at 1:05am | IP Logged | |||||
No, this was the one I was referring to... 1">http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Spanish-Advanced-Living-La nguage/dp/140002322X/ref=tmm_abk_title_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1379804 510&sr=8-1 I have heard through the grapevine that the new "complete" series is a "dumbed down" version of their older courses... :-( 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 12 of 25 22 September 2013 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks liddytime! I think I'll pass on it for now - I've burned a few CDs of Notes in Spanish advanced podcasts.
Those should hold me over for a month or so. Then, I think I should really consider switching to podcasts aimed at native speakers. Focusing too much on "learn to speak" resources is becoming a bit of a crutch. I want to understand Spanish as it's actually speaking - so I think I have to make the transition to natural Spanish. As for FSI - I enjoy doing it while walking. And since I walk for a few hours a day, it's nice to use that time productively! I can't really listen to audiobooks while walking, because I tend to walk slower and slower for some reason. Ha! But FSI makes me walk quickly! I think I'm just going to do purely audio until I stop understanding, then I'll download the PDF book. For now, though, my Spanish is strong enough that I have no problem understanding. I'm hoping that it will help me with grammar and automaticity. The accent's different, though! I hope that I don't get too mixed up - I really want to focus on Castillano, not LAm Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5221 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 13 of 25 22 September 2013 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
I used to have a 90 minute commute so I'd do a bit of Michel Thomas for the first 3rd and then 60 mins of various podcasts. Time isn't wasted 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| BonneVivante Pro Member Canada Joined 4860 days ago 33 posts - 59 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 25 22 September 2013 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have about 50 minutes of commuting each day and I use the time to listen to podcasts (French, in my case). There
are some very good podcast resources available for common target languages such as French and Spanish. Depending on the type of learner you are and the exact level of your Spanish, you might benefit from switching away from structured language drills and toward authentic Spanish media, at least for a portion of your learning time. As an example, I listen to two different current event podcasts for intermediate to advanced French learners: RFI's 'Journal en Français Facile' and 'News in Slow French' from the website of the same name. Both are fantastic, and give me a chance to practice listening comprehension while also catching up on the news. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5024 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 25 22 September 2013 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Stelle, FSI drills are the best possible way you could use that commute time. Don't mix up practicing listening with working on active skills- they are two separate skills, and I don't think any amount of listening can substitute for working diligently through either the FSI Basic course or Platiquemos. I genuinely think its the single most important thing you can do to make sure you can talk both with automaticity and grammatical accuracy. Do that course and you will never have to think about conjugations again!
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 25 23 September 2013 at 10:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I spend roughly half an hour five days a week riding the bus to my job while reading my newspaper (and sometimes a small free newspaper too), but back home I mostly read language related stuff. The main requirement is that it cannot be something where I need to write things down or look things up in a dictionary or think hard and be very concentrated (which exclude wordlists, grammar studies and intensive work with texts). So in practice it will either be small handy books or magazines in my better languages or bilingual printouts. Right now I'm halfways through a small book in Low German which certainly isn't one of my better languages, but it is not hard to read it.
I actually have a MP3 player, but so far I haven't use it for language learning - and I have only music on tape for my old walkman (and I don't use it much). The factor that could push me to drop my texts and switch to audio gadgets would not so much be languyage learning as disgust with the noise level of some of the other passengers. I need more peace and quiet for listening than I do for reading. Edited by Iversen on 23 September 2013 at 10:08am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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