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Older Learner tries Assimil for Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4767 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 175 13 January 2012 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I meant to start this learning log earlier, but you know how time is.
I am a 58 year old language learner. In my younger years, I learned Samoan to an advanced level and Tagalog to an intermediate level. I was luck enough to live in both Samoa and the Philippines while I was learning the languages. I worked as an ESL teacher for years, most of the time with adult learners. I recently began to feel frustrated about my lack of Spanish. I live in San Jose, California, and anybody who lives in a city named San Jose should be able to do more in Spanish than tell time. When I worked in the US refugee program in the Philippines in the ‘80’s, we didn’t say it out loud, but we more or less considered learners over 55 as “hopeless.” Anyway, I have decided to do an attempt at learning Spanish; if I learn anything I will be ahead of where I was. At this point I have been studying daily for about a 5 weeks. Through various discounts and sales, I got copies of Pimsleur and Michel Thomas Spanish courses. I used Pimsleur to brush up my Tagalog, and I found it very useful for that purpose. I also ordered Assimil Spanish, since so many people here found it useful. After a quick try of the first lessons of all of the courses, I dropped MT and Pimsleur, and stuck with Assimil. When I learned Tagalog and Samoan, I did both of them with very little in the way of study materials; I had to make up my own materials. I found Assimil to be pretty close to the course I wished I would have had for my earlier languages. I’m sure I would learn a lot from MT and Pimsleur also; it just looked to me like Assimil fit my style. I liked the relatively big chunks of language that you work with with Assimil. Everybody seems to have their own way of using Assimil; this is mine: Passive Wave 1) Listen to the Spanish while reading the English a few times. 2) Read the Spanish while listening to the Spanish, glancing at the English if needed. 3) Listen to Spanish, stopping every sentence to read the sentence aloud. 4) Read through the Spanish aloud, stopping at each sentence to repeat the sentence aloud without looking at the print. 5) (A step I haven’t seen other people use) Read each sentence aloud and say a (usually hyperliteral) English translation of the sentence. 6) Read the whole passage through again. 7) Listen to and read aloud earlier lessons for a half hour glancing at the English if needed. Active Wave (I haven’t started it yet, but these are my plans) 1) Translate each sentence from English to Spanish speaking. 2) Translate each sentence from English to Spanish writing. I plan to work through Spanish with Ease and Using Spanish the same ways. steve 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 2 of 175 13 January 2012 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today I am on lesson 30 of the passive wave of Spanish with Ease. Like many learners using Assimil for the first time, I am a little frustrated by my lack of ability to produce useful language, but the increase in my passive skills is encouraging. In San Jose, you often hear hear snippets of Spanish, and I find myself understanding snatches of random Spanish conversation I overhear. I listen to a song on the radio and I understand the refrain, or at least think I do. I effortlessly can read/hear/understand lessons 1-29 in the book. So I guess learning is going on. I'm trying to follow the Assimil instructions and wait until I reach lesson 51 before beginning the active phase, but I'm impatient.
One surprising (to me) result of my study so far, is my sudden increase in interest in the Spanish speaking world. I don't think I was any sort of bigot or anything, but my sensitivity is way up to notice interesting things about about the Spanish (mostly Mexican) culture that is around me. I guess I just didn't notice. I'm very excited to get strong enough in my Spanish so I can read native Spanish reading material, especially some of the novels. I hope my spoken Spanish can get strong enough to make some Spanish speaking friends on the Internet, not to mention making some Spanish speaking friends in real life. Perhaps I am being held back by my age, but I haven't noticed any big differences from when I was 29. This should be a pretty pure test of Assimil, confounded my my age. If I actually get to B2 or C1 in any skill area using only Assimil, it will be a pretty good testimonial for the method. So far, so good, but I can't wait for the active phase. I actually quite enjoy the process of learning so far. steve 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TehGarnt Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4854 days ago 33 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 175 24 January 2012 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Don't have much to add apart from offering encouragement from someone doing something
similar. Hearing Spanish around you offers encouragement during passive learning when you start to understand a few words "ca ba sa sa si ba tengo sa ba un poco tambien", etc 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 4 of 175 24 January 2012 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Well there you go. At 37, I don't feel any slower than at 17 either. 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 5 of 175 24 January 2012 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm on lesson 39 of the passive wave of Assimil Spanish. I spent a couple of days off of Assimil, doing FSI Basic, just fooling around.
I continue to cruise through the Assimil passive phase, learning each lesson as I go along. On first hearing the lesson each day with the book closed, I usually can only get the main topic; a half hour later as I'm finishing the lesson, I understand every single word. When I review earlier lessons, I understand 90% at least the first time through. My productive ability, however, is close to nil. I plan to keep on cruising through Assimil. I'm using the steps from the Assimil Dutch book from this topic now to complete each passive wave lesson, since they seem to be the most detailed. I currently plan to do the active wave according to the Dutch book's instructions also. This should make it a clearer test of Assimil. I may do some sort of SRS system to review active wave lessons once I start them. I don't think I've fooled around enough with FSI to muddle up the experiment very much. One variation from Assimil I'm going to do is that I'm going to go through Streetwise Spanish after Spanish with Ease and before Using Spanish. I plan to treat the conversations in Streetwise Spanish as Assimil lessons; I'm not sure if I'll do the exercises. There is also something to be said for just staying with Assimil all the way through Using Spanish. Some people have said that the jump between Spanish with Ease and Using Spanish is too great. I really like Assimil so far, and I hope that it will actually work. steve Edited by sfuqua on 24 January 2012 at 9:45pm 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 6 of 175 25 January 2012 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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What if Assimil doesn't work?
Let's say I get through Spanish with Ease, Using Spanish, and Streetwise Spanish, and I still can't get much Spanish out of my mouth. To get through these books, I undoubtedly would be able to understand big chunks of Spanish, at least when reading. The next thing on my list, as native speaker material, is "La Reina del Sur," Spanish, English translation, and audiobook. I expect I could just keep moving through this, perhaps treating each page, or half page as an Assimil lesson. It would be fun to read again, and I might eventually get better productive skills. Or I could shift to Synergy, FSI, and Pimsleur, to fill in gaps I have. I may do this anyway over school vacation in June and July... Or maybe, just maybe, I would just start on French with Ease and then work through Using French and French for Business. If the language learning experience is fun, maybe finding the optimal method that leads to the most advanced ultimate outcome is not that important. If the journey is enjoyable, maybe the destination is not that important... Every year when I start teaching after holidays, I talk a couple of minutes to my students who are native speakers in the languages I speak (I teach 11 year old students maths and science). Now, I do a little speech in Samoan and a little speech in Tagalog. I sure hope I can add a little speech in Spanish by next September. I bet I will :) steve 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aodhanc Diglot Groupie Iceland Joined 6262 days ago 92 posts - 130 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 175 25 January 2012 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sfuqua, best of luck with your studies.
Despite what people may say, it's not too late to start learning a new language at 58 (it's just more difficult). And you won't find a more useful foreign language than Spanish, whether you're in California, Latin America or Spain. 20 countries.... 400 million people to speak with. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ElBrujo Newbie United States Joined 4710 days ago 29 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 175 26 January 2012 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||
I'm using Spanish with Ease as well and have noticed significant improvement in my listening and reading comprehension after one month of exposure to the course, and 26 lessons. I've chosen to skip the Passive Wave and follow Luca Lampariello's Assimil Method, as I had prior exposure to the language and felt that a more active-approach from the get-go would better suit my learning needs. If you're feeling any frustration--which I certainly have--don't stress it. You've learned two languages that are not English and you'll soon add one more to the list. Give yourself time to get more acclimated with the language, Steve. I suspect that within one month of starting the Active Phase, you'll be feeling much better about your future outlook with regard to Spanish. Good luck, and keep us posted. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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