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Older Learner tries Assimil for Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5718 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 161 of 175 21 August 2012 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
You could use FSI in the way Prof. Argüelles and others have recommended - just for ironing out the wrinkles. The FSI manual has a really great index for finding exactly the kind of drill you need, but you'll need to know what your weak points are. Personally, I think you'd be better off going through it the way I did with my German. The drills don't get boring and are actually kind of fun the first two or three times through. I just went through the whole book (skipping the pronunciation units) in this fashion, making notes on where my weak points were and using the dialogs for listening comprehension (which were spoken at native speed - I'd just listen over and over whenever I got the chance until I couldn't get anymore out of it, then referred to the text). When I was done, I studied up on the weak points I'd made note of and did some written exercises for these from other manuals, then went back and drilled (only) those points thoroughly. It really helped a lot, and it really helped my confidence.
I like all three, but you're right. In particular, I thought until recently that blind shadowing wasn't all that useful, but I was completely wrong. I do things in reverse order now: I shadow with the text until I can repeat and understand the dialog well, then I blind shadow. I've noticed that my brain "fills in the gaps" while I'm shadowing with the text (I guess because it's easier to understand a written word than a spoken one), so that when I move on to blind shadowing, I sometimes can't understand what's being said (even though I did with the target language text in front of me). I continue to blind shadow, referring back to the text after each session to see "oh yeah, that's what that word means - why the hell could't I hear that?" until I don't have to refer to the text at all. Like Prof. Argüelles said, try shawdowing exactly the way he prescribed then feel free to experiment and see what works best for you. [EDIT] I forgot to mention that I found Platiquemos WAY too slow. Even if you do decide to get Platiquemos, you might want to check out the FSI stuff anyway since it's free! Edited by Rout on 21 August 2012 at 10:50pm 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 162 of 175 02 September 2012 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Assimil with Ease Passive wave 88 active passive wave 39
Very good points on shadowing, Rout; my experience with shadowing is similar. It seems to me that there are details that I never learn until I finally do blind shadowing. For me my shadowing routine has evolved into something like this, including a couple of, listening steps: 1)listen L2, read L2 2)listen L2, read L1 until sound is connected with meaning 3)read L2 text aloud checking L1 text until I can pretty much understand every word 4)shadow L2, reading L2 text until I can "sing along" in sync with the recording. 5)blind shadow L2, checking L2 text whenever I have a section where I stumble or miss something. In an ideal world, I would shadow until I can "sing along" with the recording while understanding everything. I repeat blind shadowing with each lesson for several days. My progress has slowed down a bunch recently. It has nothing to do with Assimil, and everything to do with work. The first couple of weeks of the year for a middle school teacher are the hardest. I've been busting my tail at work, and haven't had nearly time or energy I had during school vacation. I've been spending a day each for the active and passive waves the last couple of lessons. I find myself slamming into material that isn't hard and failing to reach my completion criteria, over and over again. I don't think that I've suddenly become stupid; I think I'm just tired. I've done something in Spanish every day, even if I was already sleepy at night before I was able to get around to it. I'm going to try getting up early to put in some study time before anything else next week. I think I'll do much better studying before I do anything else. I also plan to add more shadowing back into my routine; I've been shorting it with the limited time I've had. While regular Assimil instructions lead to a certain amount of understanding, I really think that shadowing is the key to getting fluency out of Assimil. My experience so far would support the idea that Assimil, by itself, is a great way to rapidly develop passive knowledge of a language. A thorough study of Assimil may even lead to something like B2 passive skills. Developing active skills requires something more in most cases, I bet. I wonder if anybody has ever completed Assimil with good active skills, who did not also spend a lot of time talking with sympathetic native speakers, or maybe doing like FSI. I wonder if something like the 30 lessons in Pimsleur Castilian would be enough to "break through to speech"... I did a couple of experiments last weekend with other materials. I spent a few hours reading _La reina del Sur_. I needed to look at the English version from time to time, of course, but on a second or third read through I could just enjoy the Spanish. I also tried Harry Potter; it was easier. I have a copy of _Easy Spanish Reader_, which looks like a pretty effortless way to start reading after Assimil. I think it, along with a couple of the early readers might get a learner to the point where Harry Potter would be possible without a dictionary. After Potter, I bet you would be ready for most adult novels. I love reading through dictionaries for fun, but I don't like using them to look up words. The time you spend looking up a words is time that you are not using the target language... I also did a few lessons of Pimsleur Latin America. This was extremely easy, of course, but I was sort of shocked to find that I had cleaned up my pronunciation of a couple of sounds after only a two hours. Pimsleur certain teaches the basics very well. I'm tempted to get a copy of Pimsleur Castilian, and to work through it in parallel to whatever I do next after Spanish with Ease. I took Audacity and split up the first 6 and last 6 lessons of into short little, one sentence files for chorusing. Pounding away at a little passage for 15 minutes certainly can improve pronunciation of that phrase. I haven't noticed any transfer to regular language use. It's easy and kind of fun, although it drives my wife nuts if I do it where she can hear me. 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 163 of 175 06 September 2012 at 12:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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SwE passive wave 91, active wave 42.
I finally tried doing my Assimil lesson early in the day today. What a difference! It was so much easier! I think I've spent way too much time working on Assimil when I was too tired. I seem to have found an excellent interlocutor in my classes this year. He is a native speaker of Mexican Spanish; he seems very patient, and he is very interested in helping me learn. He's ten years old, but he's real excited about helping me learn Spanish and having me learn more about Mexico. It takes me about an hour to get through both waves of Assimil these days; I try to shadow as much as I can beyond this. steve 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5718 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 164 of 175 06 September 2012 at 1:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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To reply to your previous post: I think fanatic tested at something around a C1 after using Assimil (if I recall correctly), though I believe it was the older "Without Toil" series (which usually have more lessons, vocabulary, etc). You'd have to search for the exact post though.
BTW, if you feel like the newer Assimil lessons aren't sinking in as fast, you could just stick with Assimil a little longer to let things sink in - you could really internalize and consolidate your knowledge before moving onto another textbook. That is at least until you think you've reached the point of "diminishing returns". Since you're playing with Audacity you could make things interesting by speeding everything up and editing out the gaps, as well. =) Since I've already mentioned it, the Spanish without Toil seems really great to me, though I haven't had the heart to use it much since my mouth seems to utterly reject the Castilian manner of speaking. You could take a month or so using the dialogues for listening comprehension. This is one thing I did for German and it really cemented my active and passive vocabulary and bridged me to native audio materials. 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 165 of 175 10 September 2012 at 4:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish with Ease Passive wave 94, active wave 45
I continue on through SwE, looking forward to the end of the passive wave in a couple of weeks. At that point, I have to pick something else to do while I finish the active wave with SwE. The passive wave lessons are shorter and shorter; there is still a lot of grammar in them that gets mentioned, and introduced in the lessons. The active wave lessons are getting longer, but aren't really that hard. A few days ago, for no reason I can understand, I suddenly realized that I was sick and tired of shadowing. I've been reading aloud, the last few days. It's a little slower and lower pressure, and seems to have a slightly different effect. I'll start shadowing again as soon as my "burn out" is finished. I bought a copy of Spanish without Toil, and I have a copy of the audio, which seems to be pretty complete, and to match the book pretty well. At first glance, Spanish without Toil is very appealing. The grammatical explanations are simple and clear, and there is a story line through many of the dialogs. It was interesting to read the version of the "Assimil Instructions" there. They advocate a process very similar to what I'm doing (minus the shadowing), and they really discourage memorization and overlearning. They do a bigger emphasis on review, suggesting repeated reading aloud. When I complete the passive wave of Spanish with Ease, unless something about my Spanish changes suddenly, my Spanish is going to be like this: 1) I will lack quick, automatic speaking skills. 2) I will have a lot of loose ends in my grammatical knowledge of Spanish. 3) I'll have much much better vocabulary, and comprehension skills. Passive skills solid intermediate, active skills, beginner (sigh!). I have several courses available as a follow up: FSI/Platiquemos: this course would certainly help my automaticity of speech. It doesn't look like there is that much new vocabulary. It would certainly tie up loose ends in my grammatical understanding. Spanish without Toil: There would be some new vocabulary, more than you might expect for a course that is an earlier version of a course I already have completed. The grammatical explanations would help my incomplete understanding. I like this idea right now. Using Spanish: Tons of new vocabulary, increased grammatical complexity piled on top of my current incomplete understanding. I might survive it. Native speaker materials: with audacity, it is easy to turn an audiobook into a set of Assimil style lessons for some intensive learning. This would have tons of new vocabulary, and increased grammatical complexity piled on tope of my current incomplete understanding of Spanish grammar (to repeat myself). From my analysis, you can see that I'm leaning away from switching completely to native speaker materials and Using Spanish. The choice between FSI and Spanish without Toil boils down to whether or not I think that the Assimil method will eventually produce enough spoken fluency. Today, I had a pretty good day speaking, I was slow as usual, but I got out some pretty complex utterances. Do I really need a year of FSI drills? Maybe; more experienced people than me swear by FSI. Assimil is Castilian Spanish, FSI is Latin American; I really don't care which I use. A big difference between FSI and Assimil is how long the courses take. FSI, done thoroughly, seems to take most people over a year. Assimil takes about 5 months. Right now, I'm inclined to do the Spanish without Toil, and then decide whether to do FSI, or Using Spanish next. Getting something finished has an appeal to it. Of course I've just spent 9 months on a 5 month Assimil course that still isn't quite finished :) steve Edited by sfuqua on 10 September 2012 at 4:54am 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 166 of 175 18 September 2012 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish with Ease passive 100, active 51
I continue through the last part of the passive wave of SwE. I continue to use my process of overlearning current lessons and shadowing for review. I've had some bad days speaking, and I've been quite frustrated. All areas besides speaking seem to be improving steadily. I have had good days speaking also. It seems to me that my speaking should be better than it is, considering how good my reading and listening comprehension are. I'm not advanced in these "passive" skills, but I'm way ahead of my speaking. This is the first time I've learned a language to a fairly high level without living in a place where the language is spoken, so my relative weakness in speaking is probably normal. I spend an hour or two a day practicing reading, repeating, translating, and shadowing. I spend little time trying to produce novel sentences. I'm improving faster in the things I'm practicing more. I'm looking forward to the end of the passive wave, although I will have to decide at that time if I want to just finish the active wave before I do anything else, or if I want to add in a new program. 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 167 of 175 21 September 2012 at 5:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish with Ease passive wave 102, active wave 53
I've been reading through lessons 1-102 over the past couple of days, whenever I have a spare moment. I've found this to be a pretty good confidence builder. It reminds me of how much I've learned. Nine months ago, I only knew the Spanish words which have been adopted into English and Tagalog. I knew no grammar. Now I can read SwE for hours in Spanish, understanding every word, with an accent good enough to be understood by a native speaker easily (or at least that's what friendly 10 year olds say). I very rarely stumble or see a word I don't immediately know. Of course this isn't a tough test of communication, but I find myself looking at Spanish books in the bookstore and reading a page or two, without really thinking about the fact that I'm reading Spanish. I need to get better at Spanish, and I think I've been expecting too much out of SwE. It just takes time, and it takes more than Assimil. I wish that reaching B2 was just a matter of completing 109 lessons of Assimil, but there is more to it. I really knew that. I'm getting near the end of the passive wave, but I still have the hardest part of the active wave ahead. I assume that lessons 60-80 will be the hardest in the active wave just as they were in the passive wave. We'll see. Anyway I seem to have a lot of Spanish grammar falling into place in my brain the past couple of days. I don't know why now instead of earlier. I think it's just time on task, maybe the extensive reading review I've been doing. Perhaps by the end of the active wave in a couple of months, I will be B1. If so, I'll be happy, but I'll probably start whining that I'm not B2 :) Learning a language in a place where you are not immersed, especially with an intense job and family responsibilities, is a very different thing from learning a language in an immersion situation as a single person. I think my skills are developing in a different order. I love Assimil; I think you might get to B2 if you used Assimil in a immersion situation. I read, repeat, translate, read, and shadow, whenever I get a spare moment, but right now I'm going to get my wife, daughter, and me each a glass of wine :) steve 3 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 168 of 175 25 September 2012 at 6:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish with Ease passive wave 104, active wave 55
Spanish with Ease is easing up at the end. I completed today's lesson in about 45 minutes, both the passive and active waves. I'll be done with the passive wave by the end of the month. I have learned a tremendous amount from Spanish with Ease, however, my passive skills have benefited most from what I've learned. I had no real background in Spanish before I started this course; now I can read and understand quite a bit. I have horribly variable active skills, and I am alternately excited and discouraged, based on how my Spanish comes out of my mouth on a given day. I suspect what I have done with Spanish with Ease is that I have built a house from the second floor up. I have not done enough practice with basic, simple things, and I failed to get a comprehensive grasp of the grammar as I went through it. Since I don't have a solid grasp of grammar, I don't know if what I'm saying makes any sense or not, but I can score a C1 on at least one of the online CEFR tests, just based on the vocabulary I know and "what sounds right" (I'm no better than A2 in active skills). I think I've got to do something to fill in the holes in my grammatical knowledge, and something to get me so I can rattle off all of the phrasebook Spanish that I now build up word by word when I speak. I don't think that it will take that long to fill in the "ground floor" of my Spanish, and I think it's worth doing. I started to doing Michel Thomas foundation over the weekend, and I found it very easy and very pleasant. I know all the vocabulary of course, and there is little if anything new in the grammar so far (CD 4), but if this will give me quick overview of Spanish grammar, it's worth doing. He does have you stringing together long sentences very early. I have the advanced Spanish course too; if I get anything out of the foundation course I'll do the advanced one. I don't really feel like starting anything really hard after the passive wave; maybe I'll even do Pimsleur or something while I finish the active wave; I've also got Pimsleur Castilian 1-30 and Pimsleur Latin American 1-90 on my cell phone (I keep having credits left over at audible.com) . I'm also tempted by Prado's grammar books, or even Madrigal's Magic Key book. steve 1 person has voted this message useful |
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