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Older Learner tries Assimil for Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5538 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 57 of 175 13 March 2012 at 12:27pm | IP Logged |
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OK, you've convinced me. :-) I really need to try shadowing. But even though I like the
idea, I've always found it weird and difficult in practice, so I'd love to ask you a few questions. 1. How well do you know the text before you shadow it? 2. What written material do you use when shadowing? Spanish? English? Nothing? Do you switch part way through the process? 3. Can you actually speak "in sync" with the recording, or do you trail it by a fraction of a second? 4. What kind of earphones/headphones do you use? Also, have you tried looking at the online conversational exchanges? If you don't wish to pester your students too much, you might be able to schedule a short conversation or two per week with a Spanish-speaking partner. 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 58 of 175 14 March 2012 at 4:12pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil Spanish with Ease, passive/L-R wave lesson 50, active/shadowing wave lesson 1
I'm an absolute beginner at shadowing, so I reserve the right to change my mind :) I have no idea if shadowing led to my "breakthrough"; correlation does not equal causation. Many people know more about shadowing than I do; all I've done is read a bunch of posts. It felt as if shadowing had an immediate impact on my speech this weekend. I've already almost finished the passive wave with Assimil, and I'm 30 lessons into the active wave. My problem is that I didn't seem to be developing any active skills even though I was about a third of the way through the active wave. Last weekend I started to experiment with shadowing. I'm already familiar with the meaning of the lesson, so I would start off shadowing while looking at the L2, and after a few times through drop the text and just sing along with the recording, blind shadowing. My eventual goal was to speak simultaneously with the text. I can do that for the material I know best; I fall behind the text on material I know less well. It's sort of funny imitating the sexy little pout one of the women gets in her voice from time to time. I use regular earbuds. I've been looking at some of the more elaborate plans for shadowing at http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowing and I think I will adapt something for myself to go through the "active wave" of assimil. I have an aversion to doing large amounts of "blind shadowing" without knowing the meaning of what I'm shadowing, but much of the rest of it looks good. My current plan, is this: passive wave: Kind of L-R, for one lesson 1)Listen to L2 while reading L2 2)Listen to L2 while reading L1 3)Listen to L2 while reading L2 aloud, looking at L1 if I don't know a meaning 4)Shadow the lesson while reading L2 5)blind shadow active wave: Kind of Shadowing over a series of lessons: Lesson 1 Scriptorium (I may do oral L2->L1->L2 translation also and add a day) Lesson 2 Read aloud Lesson 3 blind shadow Lesson 4 blind shadow Lesson 5 blind shadow Lesson 6 blind shadow Lesson 7 blind shadow Lesson 8 shadow L2 read L2 Lesson 9 listen to L2 read L2 Lesson 10 listen to L2 read L1 I'll move ahead one lesson each day dropping the scriptorium lesson and adding a new one. For a day like this I would make a playlist of lessons 3-10. Next I would do scriptorium on lesson 1. Then I would read lesson 2 aloud. Finally I would start the actual shadowing on lessons 3-10, running through the playlist on repeat. I'll use support from the text when I need it and drop it when I don't, but I'll go through the activities listed. I'm going to reset to passive wave lesson 50 and active wave lesson 1, which is where I feel that the regular Assimil instructions fell apart and I'll probably alternate days for the passive and active wave. steve edited to try to clarify... Edited by sfuqua on 14 March 2012 at 4:17pm 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 59 of 175 14 March 2012 at 4:33pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you for your suggestions!
I think breakthroughs sometimes occur because they add a missing piece at just the right time. For example, I read my first French grammar book yesterday at lunch, skimming through about 100 pages in an hour, and lots of stuff fell into place. But I've mostly ignored formal grammar for the last 4 years, so the time was ripe. I've never done the scriptorium exercise, but I have done fairly intensive reading, where I try to figure out every last verb ending, declension and grammatical structure. This is really useful in moderation. But if spend too much time on it, I feel like I'm missing out on "organic" learning time that I could be spending on extensive reading, L/R, etc. For me, the right mix seems to be no more than 10% intensive. Your experience may differ, of course! :-) 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 60 of 175 14 March 2012 at 5:37pm | IP Logged |
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Another thing I tried this weekend which I may work into the mix, is only shadowing one of the voices in the dialog, or at least only shadowing every other line, while listening to the other; this feels a little bit like a conversation.
Something else I forgot to add is that walking seems to help, especially for me when I try to study after dinner and a hard day's work. 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 61 of 175 14 March 2012 at 5:44pm | IP Logged |
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I figure I'll work about an hour per day with this schedule.
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 62 of 175 15 March 2012 at 9:36pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil Spanish with Ease, shadowing wave Lessons 1-5.
I continue to be encouraged with the effects that shadowing is having on my Spanish. I think that the effort to mimic the speech of the recording makes me pay attention to parts of Spanish pronunciation that I wasn't paying enough attention to before. The difficulty of speaking at the same time that I am listening seems to keep my concentration high. I may not build up to a reviewing a full 10 lessons before I drop the oldest lesson and move ahead. It is nice to concentrate a little deeper on fewer lessons. At the end of my shadowing each day, I spend some time going through the lessons that I'm shadowing, and I try to do a little, informal substitution drill with the sentences from the lessons I have been studying, changing the person or the tense, or putting in different verbs or nouns to replace the words in the original sentence. I try to make up sentences that I might say to someone about my daily activities. If I can't think of anything to "talk" about, I do an imaginary conversation with one or another of the characters in one of the telenovelas I follow. I'm trying to set up some language exchange, so that I don't have to impose on my students... steve 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5268 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 63 of 175 15 March 2012 at 10:15pm | IP Logged |
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@sfuqua, if you're trying to find a language exchange partner for Spanish, try going on-line to Lenguajero. Also, there is the sype language exchange thread here on HTLAL. There are many Spanish speakers there who are looking to practice their English with a native speaker. You can also post your writing in Spanish and have it corrected by native speakers. Looking at Spanish-speakers' mistakes in English is also helpful in "reverse-engineering". Good corrections with explanations are better than simply crossing out words. This will make you quite popular there.
Also on-line, there's a "fair trade" language school in Guatemala, Proyecto Lingüístico Quetzalteco, that offers private tutors via skype for $10/hour. A private tutor is best utilized for conversational practice and to help you work on pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar points. Skype has the benefit of allowing link sharing and message board writing. I don't know if you live in a large city, but in most medium to large US cities there is a hispanic community. One way to meet people for an exchange is to volunteer to help immigrants with their English in a local hispanic community center. Catholic and Protestant churches often offer this kind of help to their members, in addition to Spanish language services. I admire your hard work and dedication, Steve. Keep the faith and never give up. You will get to where you want to go! Edited by iguanamon on 18 March 2012 at 12:27am 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 64 of 175 18 March 2012 at 8:49pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil Spanish with Ease active wave lesson 9
Another long winded post while I work things out in my own head... I said that I reserved the right to change my mind about how I work through this material, and I have. It felt silly repeating the passive waves for lesson that I have already done the passive wave for; I think I will start doing the passive wave again when I get up to active wave 30, where I was when I did a reset. The passive wave worked well as it was described by Assimil's "Dutch" instructions. My understanding of the active wave using alternative activities is evolving. When I was working through the Assimil lessons according to the instructions, I felt that I was learning a lot of Spanish, but not getting fast enough with the language to actually use what I knew in a conversation. I started shadowing, and it was a revelation. Within a couple of hours, my production speeded up to where I could talk to someone about simple topics. I'm sure I make a lot of mistakes, but shadowing seemed to give me the speed I needed to break out of my frustrated tongue tied state. Whenever I open up to doing things beyond the basic instructions in Assimil, there is a whole world of activities that people have used with Assimil. Some of the more famous ones are: A) Luca Lampariello method, with the L2->L1->L2 translation. If I interpret his instructions on http://womenlearnthai.com/index.php/an-easy-way-to-learn-for eign-languages-part-two/ correctly... Lesson 1. check L1->L2 translation Lesson 2.translate L1->L2 Lesson 3. Listen, Read, Repeat Lesson 4. Listen, Read, Repeat Lesson 5. Listen, Read, Repeat Lesson 6. Listen, Read, Repeat Lesson 7. Listen, Read, Repeat Lesson 8. study Lesson 9. translate L2->L1 Lesson 10. Listen, Read, Repeat Lesson 11. Listen, Read, Repeat Lesson 12. Listen, Read, Repeat Lesson 13. Listen, Read, Repeat Lesson 14. Listen, Read, Repeat The only question is exactly what is meant by listen, read, repeat. Listening/Reading. No daily schedule is specified; this could be all done on one passage before moving forward, or it could be done on different passages over different days. There are different versions of this; this is my favorite synthesis. 1) Read L1 2) Listen to L2 read L2 3) Listen to L2 read L1 maybe 3X 4) Shadow L2 and read L2 3X? Finally Alexander Arguelles's "Shadowing" technique. This is the system that he used for his fantastic success as a language learner. It is elaborate. In its first mention in the "Assimil" thread it does not specify lessons and days, but it includes this: 1) blind shadow until you stop getting better 2) shadow while reading L1 until you stop getting better 3) shadow while reading L2 until you stop getting better 4) scriptorium 5) repeat the book until you stop getting better. This seems to imply many repetitions at any one stage. Later the technique was explained in more detail and a more elaborate version was revealed: 1 - Listen 2 - Read silently 3 - Correct printed text 4 - Type out lesson 5 - Scriptorium 6 - Read text out loud 8 - Study 9 - Shadowing + reading L2 10 - Thumbs (L2 dominance) put your thumbs under corresponding L1 and L2 sentences 11 - Thumbs (L1 dominance) 12 - Shadowing + reading L1 13 to 23 - Blind Shadowing The sentence, "Para llegar a la gasolinera, tiene que girar a la derecha después del semaforo." convinced me that 10 days of blind shadowing lessons once a day before I look at the text is not for me. I already have quiet a bit of familiarity with this sentence, and I simply could not get this sentence out in sync with the audio. 15 tries later, I looked at the print, and shadowed it with little problem. After that I could shadow it without the print. I hate to discount Dr. Arguelles's vast experience and knowledge, but I'm a mere mortal and I don't see how all of that blind shadowing with no repetition would help. I've (mostly) blind shadowed the living daylights out of lessons 1-8 and I've started to notice myself shadowing the earlier lessons automatically, without really paying attention to what they mean. I doubt if this is terribly useful, although I do get a sense of satisfaction when I can get in exact sync with the audio, even when I'm not really paying attention to what it means. I wonder if there isn't some sort of musical connection to language learning that I haven't really considered before. When you learn to play a piece of music, at least if you are from the classical tradition, you probably listen to it, then learn to play your part slowly by yourself, and then play it with the rest of the orchestra, while reading your music. If you are a soloist, depending on the exact tradition for the type of music you're playing, you may finally learn to play your solo without looking at your written music. I'm going to think of this while I plan and also consider what I find more difficult and more easy. Ranking the different activities listed above in order of difficulty, from easiest to hardest, I find this: Listening to L2, reading L2 Listening to L2, reading L1 reading L2 aloud looking at L1 and notes when needed scriptorium translating L2->L1 written shadowing reading L2 shadowing reading L1 blind shadowing translating L1->L2 written I've left out some of the steps from the more elaborate version of "Shadowing" I fall down if I try to think about where my thumbs are, where I'm walking, and what I'm shadowing. I think I'd rather do translating than typing. For a language like Spanish, scriptorium is not too challenging, you just have to remember where to put the accents. Luca Lampariello does several days of listen, read, repeat before he does his L2->L1 translation, and scriptorium is a later step in both versions of "Shadowing." Luca's schedule appeals to me, especially if I can do some interpretation of what is meant by "listen, read, repeat" and "study." Considering it all, and trying to weave it together, I think I'll do these steps on a hypothetical day: Lesson 1. translate L1->L2, shadow L2 Lesson 2. shadow L2 Lesson 3. shadow L2 Lesson 4. shadow L2 Lesson 5. shadow L2 Lesson 6. shadow L2 Lesson 7. shadow L2 Lesson 8. translate L2->L1 (hyper literal, word for word, maybe ungrammatical translation), look at notes, shadow L2 Lesson 9. shadow L2 Lesson 10. shadow L2 Lesson 11. shadow L2 read L1 Lesson 12. shadow l2 read L2 Lesson 13. shadow L2 read L1 Lesson 14. Listen L2 read L2, listen L2 read L1, read L2 aloud checking L1 and notes, shadow L2 read L2 The order I would do things in on day X is: Lesson X-13.translate L1->L2 written and corrected Lesson X-6. translate L2->L1 written hyperliteral Lesson X. Listen L2 read L2, listen L2 read L1, read L2 aloud checking L1, shadow L2 reading L2. Lesson X-13 to X. shadow until I can't stand it any more, at least one time. Shadow later during "dead" times in traffic, at lunch, etc. This schedule will have me shadowing passages the same number of times as in the complex version of "Shadowing" and it will have me doing the main activities of Luca's direct-inverse translation method. The order of kinds of shadowing I'm doing with each passage is backwards from what Dr. Arguelles suggests. I'm leaving out several steps in the complex version of "Shadowing," but I'm including the steps in the simpler version, if you assume that doing a written L1->L2 translation includes the important parts of Scriptorium. I start the sequence out with some steps from the "Dutch" instructions for the passive wave. Oh, where there are lessons that are multiples of 7, the review lessons, I'm going to substitute in different activities, reading aloud for listening, reading aloud for shadowing. I'll do any special 7th lesson activities before I begin regular shadowing. steve edited to clarify hopefully :) Edited by sfuqua on 19 March 2012 at 12:35am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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