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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 169 of 175 02 October 2012 at 5:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I finished the passive wave of Spanish with Ease; I've still got 48 days of the active
wave. I have been making rapid progress lately. The big breakthrough, which hopefully will carry me up into the intermediate level, seems to be happening. I'm very pleased and hopeful. I've spent most of my time playing around with Michel Thomas Spanish Foundation this last week; I'm done with CD 7 and have one CD to go. Michel Thomas has really seemed to increase my risk taking, and therefore my fluency. Maybe I'll do the advanced course later. I've also experimented with Pimsleur; it doesn't seem to help as much by comparison; I think the first few lessons are too easy. Pimsleur has gotten me thinking about pronunciation again. I've also been reading _Easy Spanish Reader_; very easy, but with some pretty interesting content. It would be nice if I could get better at reading, with a bigger vocabulary before I take off into unmodified native speaker materials. I also enjoy answering the questions after each section. I find my batteries recharging about hitting the rest of Spanish with Ease, Spanish without Toil, and Using Spanish either before or after Platiquemos and/or novels. I think the simple review of grammar in MT adds the little bit of clarification I needed to get the most out of Spanish with Ease. The MT method involves a lot of building sentences up from individual words while doing some simple transformations. Even though I memorized much of Spanish with Ease; this was of limited value if I couldn't also build the sentences piece by piece... I needed a bit more systematic grammar presentation from Assimil for me to get a solid handle on this aspect of the language. If I was going to advise someone who was starting Spanish, I would encourage them to do Michel Thomas before starting or during the early part of Spanish with Ease. It might help them enough to get into Assimil the way that they should. Even on a week where my abilities seem to be rapidly improving, there are still reminders that I've got a long way to go. I was waiting for my wife in the car today and a couple of men came up to the car next to mine and started speaking Spanish. I think it was Spanish... I could only understand one word in 30. Total humiliation. I hope it was another language or at least a rare dialect of Spanish. It's one thing to understand someone who is trying to communicate with you, and quite another thing to eavesdrop on two native speakers. If the two of them were talking about secrets; their secrets are still safe. steve 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5714 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 170 of 175 02 October 2012 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | ||
Haha, no need to worry about that. I live in an area with the second or third largest population of Puerto Ricans outside of Puerto Rico, and the only thing I can say is that you should not let this in any way discourage you. I speak with Mexicans all day long without a problem (they speak just about the slowest and clearest Spanish there is) but speakers from PR have notoriously rapid, slangy Spanish and well.. I'm a long ways away from understanding all of it. Usually, after they realize I'm not a native Spanish speaker they slow down and things continue as normal. I suspect you'll have the same experiences and you'll find that most speakers will adjust to your level (the goal is to get to a point where they dont have to do that). Think about someone learning American English who hears a group of people from Jamaica speaking a rapidfire dialect of Jamaican English and you'll get the idea. And Spanish has even more variety than English. After you get a little more advanced and do some topical study of dialects (area specific phrases, words, speakers who "eat their S's," are specific grammar, etc.) you should be fine. BTW, I started off in German with Pimsleur and I had such a wonderful experience. I think it's a truly innovative program, but I also think you're probably too advanced for it. You'd be better off sticking to Platiquemos since it's the same basic pattern-drill type style but for more advanced communication. Also, as I previously recommended elsewhere, I think you should just go for FSI 1-4 since it will get you accustomed to rapidfire Spanish (like the type you heard in the car). Good luck and congratulations! This was no small feat you've accomplished. You should be proud. [EDIT] Just wanted to add, since I mentioned it, FSI has some starter courses (they're actually pretty extensive though) for a couple of different dialects if you're interested. PR Spanish is one of them. =) If you want to keep your poshy Castillian accent there's one for that too. =P I know firsthand that Latin American reactions to the Castillian accent can vary, haha ¡buena suerte! Edited by Rout on 02 October 2012 at 9:46pm 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 171 of 175 03 October 2012 at 5:37am | IP Logged | ||
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People on this forum sometimes like to argue about what it means to "speak a language."
There are many answers to this, but I tend to accept a lower level of skill as meaning that you "speak" the language. If you feel like you can say anything you really need to say to go somewhere where the language is spoken, live there without speaking English ever again, and learn the rest of the language without having to use English -- I say you can speak the language. To paraphrase someone (Churchill?), it's not the beginning of the end of learning the language, it's the end of the beginning. To my joy and amazement, I seem to about be there in Spanish. I have a *lot* of Spanish left to learn, but I'm getting there... steve 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 172 of 175 25 April 2013 at 4:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Well it's been about 3 months since I "finished" Spanish with Ease. With a little perspective, I would say that I missed some of the point of Assimil. I spent so much time memorizing and drilling Spanish that I didn't "learn" as much Spanish as I should have. I've recently been fooling around with Spanish with Ease again, not doing it as much as just reading through it and checking that I understand what is happening grammatically with each word, particularly verbs. I've been shocked and humbled at how much I missed. What good did it do to memorize "Deberías trabajar menos." if I didn't ever recognize where deberías fits into the general scheme of how verbs work. I kept waiting for things to "fall into place" and to "just understand" what was going on. It didn't happen. I understood what the sentence meant; I could repeat it with a good accent, but my overall understanding of Spanish grammar stayed superficial.
Maybe some people can learn a language and speak it without understanding what they are saying, but I have trouble getting a word out if I don't have a clue about how the sentence's grammar works. I actually *like* grammar; I didn't learn as much of it as I should have from Spanish with Ease. A lot of my effort was probably misplaced. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4713 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 173 of 175 30 July 2013 at 8:48am | IP Logged | ||
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What a great log, sfuqua! I just read the entire thing, haha. You should be very proud
of yourself for sticking with it through all the tough stuff! Your very last post made me curious, though. Had you just worked through a simple grammar (say Dover's Essential Spanish) in the middle of the course, do you think that would have done enough to solidify your grammar and helped you feel a bit better about it all? Or are you just someone who prefers a more substantial approach to grammar regardless? From saying some effort was misplaced, I wasn't sure if you meant maybe a little less drilling on the vocab and a little more grammar (even from outside) would have been better. Either way, good work! 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 174 of 175 30 July 2013 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the compliment on the log. I enjoy reading some of my old posts from time to time, to remind myself of how far I've come.
I think I foolishly chased after immediate perfection too much while doing Assimil. Despite what Assimil said, despite good advice I got, despite the training I had as a language teacher, despite my experiences as a language learner, I aimed for immediate perfection way too often. The only way to get immediate accuracy in output for a learner is to memorize, and memorization is not a very fast way to learn a language. It has its place, especially at the beginning, but it slowed me down later on. In my opinion, going through Assimil repeatedly, doing different sorts of waves, or supplementing it with other material would be a better way to approach things than grinding away trying to learn everything in one or two waves. I definitely needed another explanation of many of the grammatical points, and I just needed more time to learn the material than I had with a two waves of Assimil. Maybe, if I was living with my hypothetical Spanish girlfriend in Madrid, reading the newspaper and shopping every day in Spanish, and doing Assimil, two waves of Assimil would be enough. Assimil is great; it is the way I would approach another language if they have materials available, but I would allow myself to be less than perfect more often, and be patient, if I did it again. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4713 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 175 of 175 31 July 2013 at 5:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Nice. I appreciate the follow-up. I just started New French With Ease and am using a
heavy dose of shadowing as the centerpiece of working through it. I figure the active wave for me will consist of scriptorium and the exercises for reinforcement. Based off your log and a few others, I picked up a couple cheap small and medium sized grammar books and will take a few flips through them a few weeks in. Anyway, good luc with maintaining your skills! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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