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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 4771 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 73 of 175 26 March 2012 at 5:43am | IP Logged |
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Assimil Spanish with Ease Lesson 13
Continuing Shadowing through these early lessons. I had a rapid increase in speaking ability when I first started shadowing a couple of weeks ago; this rapid improvement has slowed down. I'm spending about an hour a day, most of it shadowing. I plan to complete the book this way, doing all of activities specified by Assimil for the passive and active waves. I'll also shadow each lesson, maybe, 20-30 times. I'll repeat each lesson over two or three weeks. After this, I should be able to recite the book, and I probably will actually be able to productively use some of the language. I was shadowing today in a mall parking lot waiting for my wife and daughter to finish clothes shopping. I went to the far end of the lot to try to be less conspicuous. I certainly got some strange looks. One guy looked frightened, went to his car, and locked himself inside and peered out looking worried. Maybe I'll make a placard I can wear that explains what I'm doing, although I doubt that would reassure many people. steve 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4771 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 74 of 175 28 March 2012 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil Spanish with Ease shadowing wave lesson 15
I'm feeling a little impatient with the pace, since this is my third time through this material. I'm going to continue at the pace of one lesson a day, since I intend to learn this thoroughly. I continue to be impressed with the benefits of shadowing; it adds an intensity and concentration to Assimil that I think I missed the first time through. Perhaps some people can learn a language by casually going through a passive wave and then following up with a little light translation on the active wave, but I don't seem to be able to, at least not at the pace of one Assimil lesson a day. I wonder if adding shadowing on the the passive wave might make it more satisfying also. When the files are edited to take out the pauses, one repetition of shadowing only takes 90 seconds or so. You can add 10 repetitions of shadowing a lesson to the routine, or you can shadow the past 10 lessons in 15 minutes. If this shortens the time needed for, translation or "repeat the sentence aloud with out looking at the book" it would be time well spent. I found lessons 60-80 in the passive wave almost impossible to "repeat aloud" unless I split up the turns I was repeating into smaller pieces. I think these lessons are not properly designed; the lessons before and after are much easier. The "turns" in New French with Ease are shorter also. While some find shadowing boring, I find it infinitely interesting. I approach it from the viewpoint of acting or doing a musical performance. There is always a deeper level of perfection to reach, even when the material is familiar. I try to actually "become" the speaker I am shadowing; I try to stay exactly in tune with the speaker. This may or may not have anything to do with language learning, but it adds interest for me, and takes me to a deeper layer of the language, in my opinion. I think this will wring the last drop out of Assimil. steve 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4771 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 75 of 175 28 March 2012 at 4:07pm | IP Logged |
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Shadowing also allows one to review many lessons in a short period of time. Reviewing every lesson in the book once a week would take 25 minutes or so a day.
I sure do wish that Assimil offered a Latin American Spanish version. I was listening to the news from Spain this morning; I usually listen to it from Mexico or somewhere else on this side of the Atlantic. I was surprised to find that I had more difficulty understanding the Spanish newscast than I usually do with the Mexican newscast. Even though I'm learning to speak Castillian Spanish with Assimil, I wonder if I actually understand American Spanish better, since that's what I hear more. I realize that there might be many other reasons why I would have trouble understanding a particular newscast. steve edited to clarify, hopefully Edited by sfuqua on 28 March 2012 at 7:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4694 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 76 of 175 28 March 2012 at 5:20pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Steve, just read up on your log. Your progress so far is very encouraging, and you've given me a lot of good food for thought on using Assimil (I recently started Assimil French, not having tried any Assimil courses before).
I'm fascinated by the fact that you're finding shadowing to be such a help with conversational production, and I'll keep that in mind. I've been doing some shadowing for the simple reason that pronouncing French is my biggest difficulty for now. And yet, as you also appear to have indicated in your longest post to date, I find shadowing can be a lot easier than pure untimed production. Simply repeating the sentences from the course one at a time, per the "Dutch instructions" is harder for me, because I have to both learn the idea that the sentence conveys, and recall how to put it together in a sentence. I find I keep forgetting what I need to say, even though I might be know how to say it. With shadowing, I don't have to remember more than one or two words at a time, but I get the practice of copying the sounds directly. Good luck and I wish you much more success! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4771 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 77 of 175 28 March 2012 at 6:23pm | IP Logged |
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Oddly enough, I find translating the turns from L1->L2 easier than "repeating aloud" if the turns are extra long, as they mostly are in lessons 60-75 or so in SwE. It suggests that some of my difficulty with repeating aloud is due to forgetting what the sentence is about rather than forgetting how to say the L2. I think this means that these turns are too long for language learning through simple repetition, at least for me.
steve Edited by sfuqua on 29 March 2012 at 6:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5538 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 78 of 175 28 March 2012 at 8:18pm | IP Logged |
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Looking at my MP3 player, it looks like nearly all French with Ease lessons are
less than 2 minutes long, though lessons 101—110 are between 2:30 and 3:00. I think this is a pretty reasonable length. You're really inspiring me to go dig out some lessons from Assimil's Using French and to try shadowing them. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4771 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 79 of 175 30 March 2012 at 9:36pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil Spanish with Ease shadowing wave 17
I miss the feeling of rapid progress in passive skills that I had when I was cruising through the passive wave. Since I'm covering material that I already know, at least mostly know, I'm not increasing my passive skills very much. I think I'm gaining ability to deal with rapid speech, but I'm not increasing my vocabulary and reading ability. If there is any surprise for me from doing this course it is that you learn what you practice. Practice learning to understand and you learn to understand, but you don't learn to speak (or at least I didn't). I had a satisfying, but silly, confrontation the other day with a student. One obnoxious student in our middle school, with a Hispanic last name, learned that I was studying Spanish and decided to belittle me in front of other kids as I was walking across the outdoor area at school (ah, the respect public school teachers get). He took off in Spanish at a million miles an hour, and I answered him. He tried again, and I answered. I smiled and kept up the conversation. In a few sentences it was clear that I speak more Spanish than he does. I'll readily admit that my spoken Spanish stinks, but I've only been studying 4 months. I'm not completely hopeless, kid. Don't try to to dazzle me with "¿Qué tal?" We did have a laugh about my Castillian sounding "th" sounds. steve 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5871 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 80 of 175 31 March 2012 at 7:06pm | IP Logged |
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¡Me alegro un montón de oír de todo tu progreso! Creo que en cuanto tengas oportunidad de practicar tu castellano, es decir, de hablarlo, te darás cuenta de lo mucho que ya sabes. Al principio a uno(/una) siempre le cuesta hablar, pero como ya dijiste: aprendes lo que estudias. Está todo ahí en tu cabeza, sólo tienes que soltarte un poco la lengua y acostumbrarte al pensamiento español (a pensar en castellano).
¡Felicidades por todo tu éxito! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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