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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| razorfin Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4685 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 15 28 February 2012 at 12:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi guys, i'm a newb to languages and I want to learn conversational Spanish, mainly because a lot of my relatives are Spanish, plus I hate being an ignorant English tool on holiday.
Anyway, I blathering. I'm going to Spain in August for 6 weeks to an immersion language school in Madrid and will visit my family in eastern Spain after that. Before I go I want to get my Spanish up to a decent standard of reading/speaking/comprehension, so the immersion will have more effect, I don't want to sit there not comprehending anything. I wash thinking of a plan like this. (I do understand veery basic Spanish phrases and words) 1) Do the Pimsleur 1-3 unlimited in Spanish. 2) I'm a big reader and after scouting the site, L-R method looks damn good, so will try books like Treasure Island, Harry Potter series and Da Vinci Code, progressing etc. Does this look like a decent plan, obv as a newb i'd like some constructive criticism. Also, how effective has L-R been for you? I have plenty of time to put towards L-R as i'm a student :D. Lastly, does L-R help you speak better too?(doofus I know) Look forward to your replies. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4893 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 15 28 February 2012 at 2:45am | IP Logged | ||
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1. Reading is the only way to learn reading. 2. Listening is the only way to learn listening. But I discovered the hard way that being a fluent reader and listener doesn't help one bit in the production of Spanish conversationally. Putting together a sentence is a painfully slow and laborious process for me. I have to stop and think about each word. Finally I realized that the only way to learn to speak Spanish fluently is to speak Spanish. I enrolled in a conversation course at my local community college and finally my speaking is starting, although very slowly, to catch up to my reading and listening fluency. Which leads me to rules three and four of my rules for learning Spanish: 3. Speaking is the only way to learn speaking. 4. Writing is the only way to learn writing. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5219 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 3 of 15 28 February 2012 at 8:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Agree with fiziwig. Do a bit of each of the four abilities, and don't neglect any one ability too much. Working them all will provide a synergistic progress to your overall language ability.
Now as for specifics, I am not a fan of Pimsleur. It's way too slow and puts me to sleep. In place of it I would do Michel Thomas for a quick grammar introduction and then Assimil, and my guess is that if you were to start within the next week or two that you would complete the final active wave lesson sometime in late July. As for the reading or LR, go for it and see if it works for you. There is a log here of one user who commenced LR with Spanish around autumn 2011. As for writing, get some grammar workbooks or even try your hand at writing essays. Sites like lenguajero.com have a feature that allows for you to submit writings which are then corrected by native Spanish speakers. Finally, consider entering into conversation exchanges with native Spanish speakers via Skype. If you start now and devote maybe an hour or two per day, you will be going to Spain with a pretty decent knowledge that will enable you to hit the ground running. Good luck. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6625 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 15 28 February 2012 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree about the "passive" skills, but reading and listening are VERY important for writing and speaking.
And yeah, I'd not recommend Pimsleur. Start with LR and see what to complement it with - MT, Assimil, shadowing, SRS, scriptorium, Teach Yourself, Destinos, podcasts... There are TONS of materials for Spanish. As you're from the UK, do you like football? I watch it A LOT online, in various languages. You can learn surprisingly much from watching it:) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| razorfin Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4685 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 15 28 February 2012 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi guys, thank you for your imput, I am very grateful.
I'm going to go for the Michel Thomas over the Pimsleur series, the cost difference alone is very pleasing :). So obviously i'll be doing the L-R method too. Surely by reading and listerning, these skills will improve your writing and speaking skill, by understanding the words and the pronounciation of the expert narrator? If i'm incorrect in my assumptions, please put me right. I do watch football a lot, but not online. What sites do you watch games on Serpent? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5158 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 6 of 15 28 February 2012 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
I think what fiziwig is getting at is that reading and listening are passive skills, where writing and speaking are active skills. They're very different in nature. Speaking, in particular, takes physical practice and is done in real time. It's quite possible to readily recognise a string of words and what they mean, but not so easy to reproduce. Tongue-twisters are an extreme example of this. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6625 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 15 28 February 2012 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I like the way Cainntear put it though, that the actual skills are phonetics, morphology, syntax and orthography. The AJATT guy also says you need to read to write better, and that's true in my experience as well. At the very least, reading and listening will improve your writing and thinking in the language.
OP, depending on how outgoing you are I recommend shadowing or doing language exchange/finding someone to speak with (in the beginning it's better if your language partner speaks at least some English). It might also be a good idea to find out more about Spanish phonetics. I love this resource: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/# If you have a lot of input (native, though...Michel Thomas had a strong accent :S), you'll be able to tell where you sound off. Listening might not automatically help you pronounce everything correctly, but you'll at least know. Edited by Serpent on 28 February 2012 at 9:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ZeroTX Groupie United States Joined 6163 days ago 91 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 15 28 February 2012 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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As someone with absolutely no skills you want to be ready to read the DaVinci Code in Spanish by August? That's ambitious. I've been studying for 5 years and I'm 100% conversational in Spanish with native speakers, but wouldn't venture into a novel of that depth, yet. But maybe I'm slow :P
It hasn't been mentioned here, but the Learning Spanish Like Crazy series is pretty effective and is especially great if you have a commute or a walk/run (as long as you can speak aloud while running). Each lesson is about 30 minutes in length and you MUST produce speech as well as listen. It's essentially the Pimsleuer method, but modified. I like it myself and I've never gotten bored or fallen asleep. I don't see how you could. You have to speak ... a lot, and fast. I think you're on the right track with your thinking about pre-learning... I have taken 8 weeks of immersion Spanish in Cuernavaca, Mexico and it's definitely a great idea to show up with some basic structures in your head, or else you'll spend your 6 weeks just gaining your bearings. Prior to going, and while simultaneously doing your other study methods, you should (in my opninion) rigorously study and memorize the regular verb conjugations (minimally your present, preterite, imperfect and simple future). For me, all of the immersion in the world can't beat 15 minutes of memorizing and practicing a verb conjugation pattern. You could have 20 conversations to finally discover that "comemos" means "we eat" or you could just memorize the verb "comer" and learn that the "emos" conjugation means "we/nosotros"...and do that in 15 minutes... then when you hear/read it, you recognize it and apply it to long-term memory. Despite what the Rosetta stone and some others say, learning a language for an adult who already has a very extensive knowledge of a first language is TOTALLY different than how a child learns a first language... in no way are they similar. You tend to apply everything to the structure in your mind, and with Spanish, that's at least 85% accurate... The other 15% is largely cultural or just a particular quirk of the language and you'll figure it out as you go.... even if you do it wrong, but use more or less the right words, you'll be understood. If you have family who knows you're learning, tell them to correct you, then you'll get it next time. Good luck and have fun in Madrid! ¡Estoy celoso! Edited by ZeroTX on 28 February 2012 at 11:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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