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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 65 of 175 19 March 2012 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Looking at Luca's answers to questions about his method, I see that he likes to have a period of no review before he translates L1->L2, so I should maybe move the Luca steps further back in the sequence.
I'm also probably "ruining" the "blind shadowing" by looking at the text during the little, one day L-R sequence I'm doing. So be it; I think this is easier. The book is called Spanish with Ease isn't it? After a couple of tiny refinements this is what I've got for a hypothetical daily sequence: 1) translate L1->L2, lesson 1 one line at a time, written, correcting as I go. 2) translate L2->L1, lesson 8 one line at a time, written, correcting as I go. Read notes and do exercises. 3)listen lesson 22 while following L1 text 3X, shadow lesson 22 following L2 text 3X 4) Shadow lessons 8 to 22. For lessons 8 and 9, follow L2 text, for lessons 10 and 11, follow L1 text, blind shadow the others. I may compress this sequence into fewer days if I feel that I need to concentrate on individual lesson more, or if it is too time consuming. For the past week, due to a bunch of unfortunate circumstances, I have been the sole caregiver, 24 hours a day, for an elderly parent with dementia. This has made it difficult to find the time to study, but I have kept up some review of what I've been doing. I should get back to more normal living and study in a couple of days. steve Edited by sfuqua on 20 March 2012 at 12:10am 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 66 of 175 23 March 2012 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Assimil shadowing enhanced passive/active wave lesson 10.
I continue to be amazed at how well shadowing complements the regular assimil activities. For me, Assimil gave me passive skills very quickly and easily, but it did not give me enough active skills "out of the box." Perhaps I was not patient enough, but I felt that I should be doing better with my active skills for the amount of passive knowledge I had developed. Other courses, like Pimsleur, give good, although narrowly focused, active skills. Many people have said that Assimil is a good course to follow Pimsleur. Others have said that shadowing, even though it is not mentioned in the Assimil, is a key activity for maximizing the benefits of Assimil. I only started trying shadowing a couple of weeks ago, and it seems to move Assimil lessons right to the tip of the tongue, the way that Pimsleur does with its material. This will be fantastic if it could continue through the entire Assimil course. I've fooled around with different schedules for other activities, but currently I'm not doing much except adding shadowing to the regular Assimil activites. I'm doing the regular Assimil activities only after I have done several days of shadowing of a lesson. Both passive wave "repeating aloud" and active wave "translating," two of the key activities with Assimil, I found difficult to do the first time through, and impossible to do quickly. After several days of shadowing, these activities are trivial. Here is what I've been doing lately: 1) Lesson 15 Shadow, reading L2, shadow reading L1, blind shadow 5X 2) Lesson 1-15 blind shadow 1X 3) Lesson 8 Assimil passive wave activities (read aloud, repeat sentences aloud, read notes, do exercises) 4) Lesson 1 Assimil active wave activities (read aloud, translate L1->L2read notes, do exercises) I am still down at the A1/A2 level. I make a lot of mistakes, but my active skills are growing explosively. B1/B2 definitely seems possible by the end of Spanish with Ease. C1 by the end of Using Spanish? That would be *so* cool... Spanish is ringing in my head all day long. If I had this course to do over again, I would precede both my active and passive waves with several days of shadowing. For a "slow" guy like me, shadowing seems to be a magic ingredient. 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 67 of 175 23 March 2012 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been doing language exchange emails with some patient people, and chatting with random people I hear speaking Spanish. You have to be careful not to offend people in the US who speak Spanish, most of them have excellent English skills, and you don't want to imply that speaking Spanish to them is needed for communication. I've had a couple of frowns... The construction guys working on our apartment are amused by my random Spanish comments.
steve 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5534 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 68 of 175 23 March 2012 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It can be hard to speak with bilinguals when you're down at A1/A2, because (1) it's
generally more work for them than using your L1, and (2) your speech is typically very bare and raw, without polite chit-chat and graceful transitions. I think the best strategy is to focus on (2): Add some graceful transitions, and find a way to politely ask people to speak Spanish with you. For example, in French, I might say:
It's OK if you make some errors, and it's probably best to write it out yourself using the Spanish that you already know, so that you can say it semi-naturally. I think that if you have a repertoire of several phrases like this, it might help reduce the whole "Why is this person speaking Spanish to me?" factor. :-) 3 persons have 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 69 of 175 23 March 2012 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Excellent idea!
Back in my Peace Corps days I used a book called LAMP:language acquisition made practical. It was oriented toward Peace Corps Volunteers and missionaries. One of the techniques of the book was walking around your neighborhood, assuming it was and L2 community, and talking to as many people as you could every day. The first day you would say: My name is Steve. I'm learning (say)Samoan. This is all I can say. Later you would add more, asking people if they have time to talk to you, thanking them for their help, asking them to correct your grammar or pronunciation, apologizing for your weak language skills, saying how interested and excited you are about learning the language, etc. The book also introduced the usual A1/A2 topics also. By the time I got the book I was already probably up at B2 or something, but I remember adding the polite conversation fillers about language learning to my repertoire of conversation starters. If nothing else, in those far away days of bachelor youth, they made good lines for starting conversations with pretty girls. While Assimil does not explicitly cover many of the language learning or A1/A2 topics, when you look at the lessons, they do sneak a lot of it in. I'm going to implement your suggestion immediately. 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 70 of 175 23 March 2012 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I just scored B1 on an online test I took during lunch. I'm not sure how seriously to take this at all, but I did understand most of it. In playing around with these tests, I find I do better if I just pick "what sounds right" instead of doing a lot of analysis. I'm certain that I am not a B1 in my productive skills, but I am making progress. Could I be a real B1 in my passive skills? Perhaps.
I need to find a copy of the self description questions, which I suspect would be a better measure of what I know. I can't wait to do my lesson for today. 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 71 of 175 23 March 2012 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Somehow when I searched for the self description questions for the CEFR, I couldn't find them online before. This time it was easy and I found them in about 5 seconds.
My best guess is that I am probably A2 on a good day in my productive skills and B1 on a good day with my receptive skills. On a bad day... I've got a lot of work to do. steve 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5534 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 72 of 175 23 March 2012 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
From Wikipedia, a description of the
Basically, A1 is "human phrasebook", A2 is enough to scrape by in well-known situations, B1 is enough to travel using mostly L2, and B2 is enough to enter college as a foreign student (at least in France). I think that B1 is a pretty typical result for finishing Assimil With Ease, based on previous discussions on this forum. I was probably somewhere between A2 and B1 when I finished it without shadowing, scriptorium, or any especially intensive exercises. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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