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Language Virgin. Let’s Start With Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4318 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 1 of 26 01 February 2013 at 7:10pm | IP Logged |
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I have no idea if starting a log is the right thing for me to do. I'm pretty sure that it's not, I have a poker blog that I never update so I don't see why this will be any different. Only I think it will based on the pure fact that I prefer learning languages to playing poker.. well, so far anyway.
I've been bashing Spanish for about 2 months so far, I've had periods where I did 5 hours a day and other periods where I either didn't manage anything or perhaps did an hour or less. My immediate goal will be to make sure I put in at least an hour every single day without fail. Although I would like to fit in more. I do have quite a bit of free time to devote to this, but I'm a T.V addict and I love sport so those things will undoubtedly get in my way. I suppose I could drop them but they're the 2 things I find the most fun in life and I'm not sure I could, even though they do me no good whatsoever haha. I'm hoping the more I study, the more progress I make, the more hours I'll want to devote to it. Unfortunately, at this early stage it's somewhat difficult to be super motivated since everything is difficult and nothing really makes sense as yet. So after a couple of months I haven't made much progress, mostly since I've really been trying to internalize the basics as best I can before moving on, I've always been very thorough in anything I learn so I kind of never really end up getting anywhere. However, since any language takes years to learn, there isn't much pressure for speed, I don't have any necessity to speak this language, I would just really like to. I've not an academic by any stretch, in fact, quite the opposite. I'm an extremely slow learner, but can be persistent so as long as I'm making progress I feel like I'll keep going. When things become so tough that I feel it's beyond me.. that's when I tend to give up, because it starts to feel like I'm wasting my time. As hard as it's been so far, I haven't yet had that feeling. Perhaps only when I realised how many verb conjugations there where.. admittedly, I felt a bit sick when I saw that haha. However, so far I've seen some small progress, if rather slow, at least it's progress and that's what matters I think. Current Resources: Coffee Break Spanish podcast: (I bought the full series with lesson notes). I've got up to lesson 61 already but each lesson is only 10 minutes or so long and I've deliberately been flying through that particuclar course (if you can call it a course) to see how extensive it is before deciding if I need anything else at this stage. I will absolutely be going back over each lesson much more thoroughly once I've seen all it has to offer. Notes In Spanish podcast: Only up to lesson 11. I can understand about 90% of the early lessons now and can just about get the gist of what's being talked about in lessons 10 and 11 but it's tough since they've started using past and future tenses that I haven't yet really looked at. I love listening to this though and I feel like it'll be a big aid in improving my comprehension. Hugo Spanish In 3 months: I worked my way through to a point where they started speaking about "que" and just didn't understand what it was going on about. That was the first resource I started, without any prior knowledge of the language and I wonder if I'd make more sense of it now. I haven't looked at it for about 6 weeks though. I found the whole text book/grammer thing a bit heavy and found it tough to get through even the very early stuff. Perhaps I'll take another look when I feel I have a better grasp of the language. I want to purchase Assimil, as well as the Notes In Spanish beginners transcipts so I can start to make more sense of the lessons I'm up to in those. I'm not sure which to buy first but I'm going to give it another week or so with what I have before making a decision on that. I'd love to buy them both but I don't have the funds just yet. I'm leaning toward Assimil though. Anyway, not sure what else to say right now, other than I just worked out how to say a full 3 sentence dialogue talking about the past from a Coffee Break Spanish lesson and only made one mistake when I used "estaba" instead of "era" I'm still not sure about ser and estar, it's all a little hazy right now but I have a feeling it's easier than I'm making it seem. Hopefully it'll click. That particular sentence was very basic but it used some past tenses that I haven't studied that much and I got most of it correct, I'm also not making any progress in my output right now, largely due to not attempting to, but this was one of the first times I've put a passage together using my own knowledge. It did take me about 5 minutes to really think it through and then I wrote it down and make some corrections whereas you were supposed to do it off the cuff in about 20 seconds. I guess skipping through the lessons caused that. Anyway, I'm treating it as a mini victory as it's the first time I've properly put something together that wasn't "my name is" etc. There are lots of things I know I've been neglecting, top of that list is definitely vocab. I find it quite tedious to memorize words and so I've kind of not done it. I've been writing out some words when I hear them but I don't really go over them for days on end to ram them home. I should probably be doing that but I haven't as yet. I'm sort of hoping that I'll just get them after hearing them more and more, but it does make my understanding somewhat limited when it's a simple lack of vacab that I'm missing. My goal for the year is to get to a point where I can use output and partake in simple conversations. I guess it'd be an A2 type level. I'm not sure. So, I'll probably update again once I have the Assimil course. I haven't really been working very systematically yet, a proper course might help with having things to report on. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 26 02 February 2013 at 4:07am | IP Logged |
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Sounds like a nice beginning. Good luck and enjoy your Spanish.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4318 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 3 of 26 04 February 2013 at 9:49pm | IP Logged |
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So I decided to purchase the transcripts for Notes In Spanish. I was a little concerned that I either wouldn't
enjoy Assimil or that it'd be a little tough for me at this early stage. As I'd already started listening to NIS I decided to play it safe and go for something I've enjoyed. I went straight to one of the first lessons I really struggled with where they talk about the future, the transcripts really helped to understand it obviously, and I've since listened to that same episode a number of times without the English translation and I'm satisfied that I can now get through the whole thing with a good degree of comprehension. I'm not sure if it's because I now know it all in English or whether I'm learning the Spanish words. I'm definitely playing close attention to how they say things so I think I'm learning. There are a number of passages that I'm still scratching my head with like when they use words in different contexts that I thought I knew the meaning of, only to realize that it has many meanings, or perhaps no translatable meaning at all. This is expected since every language must have similar things, as is so in English. I just googled those and found the meanings. I'm not sure if I need to know the exact meaning of the individual words in these types of passages, I'm thinking that just accepting that it means "x" is the right thing to do for now, so I haven't worried to much about it. I'm quite pleased to know that I understood a lot of the early episodes without having the transcripts. I think I did a decent job of guessing meanings by context which I hear is a skill in itself, so I'm pretty happy about that. Hopefully that will help me even more when I progress to native materials in the distant future. The good news is that the time literally flies by when I'm doing this and I don't feel bored at all. I figure I'll spend a number of months internalizing each of the 30 episodes and getting all the new vocab to stick, then perhaps I'll start with Assimil. I've also gone back over some of the CBS episodes that dealt with the preterite, perfect and imperfect tenses. It's been something of a struggle but I'm slowly understanding how these verbs conjugate. The regular ones should be quite easy but I do struggle to remember how to conjugate them at this stage, I haven't really worried too much about the irregular ones yet. Knowing exactly which tense to use is also a little hazy right now. Por and Para is becoming clearer now also, although I'm still getting that wrong, the explanations seem to make some sense though, it's just my memory that's letting me down, I just need to be patient I think. I plan to keep updating my progress with these materials and also perhaps write a few simple sentences In Spanish as I go along. I'm not ready to do that just yet but I will as my ability increases. I'll hopefully get some corrections in here too and improve still further. Edited by Heliion on 04 February 2013 at 9:51pm 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 4 of 26 04 February 2013 at 10:21pm | IP Logged |
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Slow persistence pays off!
I wouldn't worry too much about remembering all the complicated verb forms. You'll have to learn them one day, of course, but in my experience it takes a couple rounds. I think I've covered the subjunctive in four courses already, and each time it becomes a little more clear, and the ability to use it a bit more automatic and internal. The Michel Thomas courses give an excellent overview of Spanish verbs. It's structured like a podcast (no books, no writing, no memorization), so might be worth checking out. And the FSI Spanish course is also excellent (at least the first two volumes; I just started the third this weekend), and free! - though hopefully you have a heavy duty printer you can use for the docs. There are over 60 hours of recorded drills and conversations. It's definitely designed for the slow and persistent. I do a chapter or two when I have the time, or am extra motivated. FSI Basic Edited by kanewai on 04 February 2013 at 10:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4318 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 5 of 26 06 February 2013 at 2:46pm | IP Logged |
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Hi, thanks for the advice!
I'm hoping that the more complicated verbs will just make sense over time, I'm not too worried at the moment, well, perhaps a little bit, but I'm trusting that it'll be fine if I spend enough time with them. I've already found myself "getting" the regular verb conjugations a little bit more after going over some material from a few weeks ago for a second time, I have a strong sense that this is how it works and, nothing, but time with the materials will work, I've tried just hammering it in over a few hours but it doesn't appear to stick. I guess doing that can't hurt, but it's not enough to do it once, that's for sure. A lot of people have recommend MT to me so perhaps I'll look at it if the resources I have don't meet my expectations. I don't really want to spend more money at this point, I've got 3 different options in terms of materials at the moment so I'll try to get as much use out of those for the time being. I looked at the FSI course a few weeks ago and it looked incredibly long and somewhat dull. I went through ten or so pages of the basic course and it was still pronunciation drills, which I know is important, but I've worked on that quite hard with Spanish in 3 months and CBS. I think if I did anymore it'd something of an overkill. Also it's Latin Spanish so the pronunciation of some of the words differ from what I've been learning, as well as no vosotros form etc. I think at this early stage I want to avoid confusion where I can, however minor. However, I did end up downloading the course and I now have it on my IPad. I've skipped a little further on and it does appear to have a lot of content, it just seems that it expects you to kind of intuitively know how to use it. I guess it wasn't intended for a random guy to just pick it up and learn from it in a structured way though. I'm not sure if one is supposed to learn everything 'by heart' before moving on, or just keep going after going through it once? It starts off with the beginner stuff like "how are you" which isn't too far from my current level tbh, but reading on a bit further it seems to get more complex very rapidly, and without much by way of explanation. If this is how other people are using it and they're not worrying about total comprehension of rules and the "why" and "how" of what they're learning then perhaps I should use it, I'm not sure if this is so, or whether I'm just missing something. I don't want to spend time on it if I'm using it incorrectly, but tbh I would work through it if I was confident that I was using it correctly. Edited by Heliion on 06 February 2013 at 2:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4667 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 26 06 February 2013 at 2:50pm | IP Logged |
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As far as I know, FSI materials were originally designed for use by people who were also taking a very fast-paced class on the language for five hours per day, five days per week, in addition to studying the recordings and text. So there is a *lot* of other exposure and instruction being assumed. But I know that some still find them useful. Edited by tastyonions on 06 February 2013 at 2:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4318 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 7 of 26 06 February 2013 at 2:57pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah that's what I was thinking might be the case actually. Thanks. So I guess it's just an extra body of
content to work with alongside another course/learning materials. That makes more sense now, perhaps I'll work more with the other materials until I get to a point where I can get through FSI without the confusion. I think it's just a little too early for me to make good use out of it.. Thanks for the quick reply. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4767 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 26 07 February 2013 at 6:22am | IP Logged |
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Try Assimil, if you can. Follow the instructions and don't be in any hurry to get through it. The course is the fastest way to build a reasonable level of comprehension in Spanish that I know of. There is something about Assimil that I just love. I think that Assimil, a Spanish girlfriend or boyfriend, and a few novels and telenovelas might be all that a person might need to get to a high level of Spanish. There are many other choices, of course.
You might want to call a course called "language transfer" or the "thinking method" which can be found at www.languagetransfer.org. It is a free course that is supposed to be similar to Michel Thomas. It might make a good way to get up to the speed to handle FSI. I haven't really worked through this course all the way myself, but the first bit looks good. It probably wouldn't take more than a couple of weeks to complete. I'm blasting my way slowly through FSI right now after having "completed" Assimil. FSI is a lot of work, but I am clearly learning a lot. For someone in a nonimmersion situation, who does not live with a native speaker, FSI may drive the language home in a way that gentler methods may not. The pronunciation drills in the beginning don't take that long to get through, and there is plenty of other material. steve Edited by sfuqua on 07 February 2013 at 6:23am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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