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TAC2013 - Wanabe wants to learn Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Wanabe Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4338 days ago 18 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish | Message 1 of 8 21 January 2013 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well here goes!!
For those of you curious enough to read this log, I'm Craig, (Wanabe) on this forum because most of you here are more accomplished linguists than I am, at present at least. When I was in Junior High School (7th Grade) in the late 1960's, I recieved the only "U" (Unsatisfactory = F = Failing) grade that I was ever proud of. It was in Spanish !!!! As to why, you can check my profile but in any event, I never had to take Spanish again and I told my self that I never would. Famous last words huh? Fast foward a few short years and here I am. So why now? What's the big deal? Really, it's a combination of factors. The first being that I work in health care and I care about my patients more than I care about my past. Other factors are along the lines of recognising that many of my coworkers are Bi and Trilingual and one is even Pentalingual!! Yes I'm jealous but it's more than that too. In a way I want to prove to my self that I can still take on and accomplish an intelectually complex task such as learning a language. So here I am. I know next to nothing. How will I learn this language? What do I know now and what is my goal for the end of the year? HHHHmmmmm As I've said in other posts, I made an abortive start with Rosetta Stone but I didn't fall in love with it and couldn't find / make the time in my constantly changeing sleep, work, wake schedule to use it with any consistancy. I've retained nothing from the couple of lessons that I did do. A coworker told me about Pimsleur and since I have a verbal learning style it might be a better fit. After consulting with my CFO (my wife; :-) I decided to give it a try and at least so far, I believe I'm seeing progress with minimal pain. I've been able to find a consistent time for it and am presently, progressing at a rate of about 1 to 2 Units a week. Yes it's slow, but technically, I'm multitasking when doing so and I'm happy and surprised to be making any progress. So where was I? Before Pimsleur, I knew the words for Hot, Cold, Bathroom or toilet - I think, Pain, Blood, Little or a derivative of it, Water, and I could count to five easily and ten if I think about it. I knew one sentence which is supposed to mean "Don't move" and a pigeon way of asking, "Do you understand." Now, where am I? Now on Unit 4 of Pimsleur, I have words for hotel, American, Mexican, Columbus, Ecuador, Bolivia, where, is, here, there, I am, Mr, Mrs, Miss, Good, Day, Afternoon, Night, Restaurant, and, Speak, You, From, of, How, Are, Understand and Pardon perhaps there are more but at the moment I can't think of them. I can use the words in basic sentences and am already recognising different accents and pronunciations by the speakers in the program. This by the way is causing a bit of trouble for me as I'm unsure which speaker to emulate. The good news is that amoung my coworkers, many are Latin American Spanish Native Speakers and they are already proving to be a great help to bounce my rote sentences off of. Strangely enough they aren't correcting my pronunciation so either Pimsleur is doing a good job or I am or they are just being polite and glad that I'm making an effort. We'll see. So now, what is my goal? Where am I going with this for this years TAC challenge? I think it would not be unrealistic for me to complete Pimsleur II by the end of the year so that is the goal for now. If it appears that I'm able to progress further than I will revise my goal at that time. If you are reading this do you think it is reasonable? Sincerely, Craig Edited by Wanabe on 21 January 2013 at 7:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6622 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 2 of 8 21 January 2013 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll add you to the TAC list in my next update. It's still possible to join a team if you would like.
I'm just starting out in Spanish too. I had a bit in high school, but that was a long time ago, so I'm starting from scratch again. I'm trying to save money, so I doing it for as close to free as I can manage. So I'm using FSI. I wasn't sure at first, but I'm beginning to think it's pretty good. I've never used Pimselur before so I have no idea how realistic your goal is. I think the most important factor though, regardless of learning method, is the amount of time you have available to study. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Wanabe Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4338 days ago 18 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish | Message 3 of 8 21 January 2013 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi Brun: Thank You very much!! I thought about joining a team but my schedule is pretty bizare and often changes depending on my work and my ability to sleep. Accordingly I though it would be best to do this as an individual so that if something happened, I wouldn't hurt my team members chances of winning. I did a search on FSI when I first saw it mentioned a while back and came across this link http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Spanish Do you have it? From what I can tell the down loads are free. Pimsleur I has 30 Unit lessons, I'm on Unit 4 and plan to start 5 when I go to work tomorrow. Pimsleur II also has 30 Unit lessons so at my current rate of progress of 2 units a week I have a reasonable chance of completing both in 30 weeks. That gives me 22 weeks for slipage and if my speed picks up I could get a could start or maybe even finish the third level by the end of the year. As I said we'll see. Though it would would be nice...... Sincerely Wanabe P.S. I can see I'll have to resarch how to post a link on this board Edited by Wanabe on 21 January 2013 at 9:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 4 of 8 22 January 2013 at 3:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm looking forward to reading you, Wanabe. Enjoy the challenge.:-)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6622 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 5 of 8 22 January 2013 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||
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The FSI downloads are free and legal. (The government let the copyright expire.)
The Spanish ones at least, seem to be of pretty good quality so far. I've done up to lesson 8 in Programmatic and lesson 3 in Basic. The first lessons are pretty hard I thought, especially in Basic as they make you pronounce a bunch of long, unpronounceable words in order to practice pronunciation and stress patterns. I like the Programmatic better as far as that goes, because it builds things up a bit more slowly. The last couple lessons in Programmatic have been fairly easy, so I hope Basic will get easier too. Then I can go back to those hard bits and try again later. The reason you can't make links is that you haven't been here long enough. In order to prevent spamming, newbies aren't allowed to make links. I'm not sure how long you have to have been on the forum or how many posts you must have written before you can post links, but the only thing to do about it is to be patient. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5024 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 8 22 January 2013 at 8:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes your goals are reasonable! In fact, completing Pimsleur 2 by the end of next month is reasonable. How much time do you have for learning each day? Each Pimsleur unit is only 30 minutes long, so each level is designed to be done in a month. Although you may have to occasionally repeat a lesson. But of course it depends on your schedule and how much time you have.
Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Wanabe Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4338 days ago 18 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish | Message 7 of 8 29 January 2013 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
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When I last posted I was intending to move on to unit 5 of Pimsleur Spanish I gold with the next listening opportunity. I'm Glad I Didn't!!
Instead, I decided to give Unit 4 one last listen. When I did, I discovered that the Spanish L at least in "hotel" is different from the American one. To me it sounds similar to the L sound in the sound at the end of Fiddle or Griddle. I confirmed this with several people I know with different Latin Spanish backgrounds and spent a couple of days on it before moving on to Unit 5 yesterday. At the second listening to Unit 5 I've been able to understand the conversation but I tend to draw a blank or pause too long on the spoken side as yet. It will come though. My friends seem to like my pronunciation so far. I hope they aren't just being kind to the poor "Gringo." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Wanabe Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4338 days ago 18 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish | Message 8 of 8 31 May 2013 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow!!! Where has the time gone? Life has been quite busy lately. Though I'm presently only on Lesson 6 of Pimsleur, I must be doing something right. The other day, I deepened my voice and said "Good Day. How are you" in Spanish to a Hispanic coworker from around the corner of the hall. When she turned around and saw it was me she was really surprised. She said that I sounded Mexican!!! It made my day.
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