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the old man and the platiquemos | ||
Tags: Platiquemos | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 41 of 91 26 December 2012 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think Platiquemos is one of the best courses for any language out there. What i loved about it is that as i went through each unit, i could actually FEEL the improvement. My method was a much more brute force method than yours, i did each unit (sometimes focusing first on the beginning dialog and moving on to the drills after. But essentially i did each unit 5-7 times, the first three or so times generally pausing quite a bit to formulate my answer but the by last few repetitions i could generally answer within the space on the recording. At the start of each new unit i always thought "I'll never get all of this down!", and it was really cool to notice how the unit got progressively easier.
It's also really cool that you were able to have a nice conversation (and a delicious taco) in Spanish! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5374 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 42 of 91 30 December 2012 at 2:35am | IP Logged | ||
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FSI/Platiquemos is great... your log is making me want to re-do it. Great experience in Carl Jr's... isn't that a cool feeling to really start using the language? The cool thing is you are having fun and that makes learning so much easier.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4764 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 43 of 91 01 January 2013 at 4:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Platiquemos/FSI drill 6.21.21
I've had distractions from Spanish the past few days; the engine of one of the family cars ate itself; we had to replace it immediately; my wife has been sick, and even a humble little New Years gathering requires preparation... I did some review of earlier lessons according to the schedule I mentioned, and then started on Unit 6 Unit 6 has been hard for some reason; perhaps it is just the regular learning curve of the course. I'm moving through it slowly, which might sound like it would be discouraging, but actually is quite exciting. I'm finding myself able to *hear* Spanish better, and after a few tries, it rattles out of my mouth briskly. After an hour or two of pounding the FSI, I find myself thinking in Spanish. The slowdown I have experienced in Unit 6 suggests that my review schedule may be too ambitious. I think I may do something closer to the Pimsleur review schedule, or even less. I want to make sure that I keep moving forward, and striving for permanent perfection is futile. Several people have complained that their listening comprehension was not up to speed after completing FSI/Plati, they could talk well, but not understand as much as they could say. This is natural since FSI Basic doesn't teach all of the vocabulary one needs for conversation at a C1 or higher level, but it looks to me like it will get the main grammatical structures up to a pretty good speed. The first clear impact I can see on my Spanish, however, is in listening comprehension. Yesterday I spent some time roaming around the mall in "deep east side" San Jose, where about 1/3 of the people were speaking Spanish. I have never been able to understand as much random Spanish from random conversations of people around me as I did during my walk around the mall. I seem to be able to hear the words in rapid speech better than I could a month ago. I feel that my general fluency in Spanish has improved also, but it is not dramatic. Of course I've only reached the present tense for -ar verbs in Unit 6. I'm trying not to get too carried away, since I have a tendency to think that whatever my latest project is is the most amazing thing ever invented. My enthusiasm for FSI/Plati is very high at this point. I can't wait to go through a few tenses with this course and see where my Spanish is. I wonder if there is a good way to combine FSI/plati with reading novels... I don't have time to do them at the same time, but I think that this course may give me the automatic speed that my Spanish has lacked. I still will have lot of vocabulary to learn. When I started studying Spanish a year ago, I thought that I might be able to eventually read Spanish novels; I have become more ambitious since then, but I am still interested in learning to read well. steve 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4764 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 44 of 91 01 January 2013 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Glancing at my post from last night, I wonder if it wouldn't be better just to keep blasting ahead through FSI/Plati rewinding back a minute on each error. This means I'm repeating each part of the lesson three to five times, generally; since I'm rewinding a minute each time, it means that I actually know each drill perfectly, at least for one moment.
Instead of reviewing a bunch as I go along, I wonder if it would be better to plan to do a completely different course to review material rather than repeating FSI/Plati at intervals. Maybe I could do programmatic Spanish vol I after Vol 1 of FSI/levels 1&2 of Plati. I could do programmatic vol II halfway through the whole FSI/Plati. I'm pretty hungry to get through FSI/Plati itself as quickly as I can (while learning it well). I suspect that I should put off major reviewing and other courses as long as I can, and keep moving forward... steve 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4764 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 45 of 91 03 January 2013 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Platiquemos/FSI Spanish Unit 7, right at the beginning.
I spent some random moments looking at the DLI Spanish courses today. They look similar, but enough different to be interesting to someone doing FSI Basic. They might be a good alternative if I reach a point where I can't stand to look at FSI/Plati, and I need a break. It seems that the DLI courses emphasize comprehension more than FSI does. The earlier DLI Spanish Basic course, which appears to be the same generation as FSI Spanish Basic, only claims to take learners to FSI level 2. The later DLI Basic Modular Spanish (same generation as FSI programmatic Spanish; it even includes some of the programmatic Spanish course in it) goes to FSI level 3, just like FSI Spanish Basic. I've known people who went through FSI and DLI courses; they were awesome. When I was in Peace Corps back in the 70's, I lusted after these courses; now they are available on the net for free, and I have grey hair. Times change. I just finished Unit 6; it was time consuming, but not impossible at all. I need to decide before tomorrow if I want to review earlier lessons a little before I start Unit 7, or if I just want to charge into it. I'm within sight of the end of level 1 of Plati (after unit 8). Right now I think I know: 1) I have no particular problem due to being a sneeze away from 60 years old. Maybe I would get through this faster at 20, but I think having a family and a job have a bigger impact than the extra 40 years. Unless some sort of organic problem exists, there is no reason why this sort of course wouldn't work well at any age. 2) I probably don't have any amazing talent for learning languages. I learn languages because I don't quit. 3) Learning a language in a non immersion situation is different from my earlier experiences, and I need to be humble, listen, and learn. 4) FSI rocks for those of us who don't have huge opportunities to interact with native speakers. This course is burning Spanish into my brain in a way that Assimil didn't. As I said earlier, I think Assimil is a great introduction to a language, I think that using only Assimil leaves a normal humans with a bunch of the language in their head that they can't get out of their mouth fast enough to communicate with a normal, impatient native speaker. FSI burns the language in. Small success story: Yesterday, my order was messed up at a restaurant. I told the waiter the problem; he repeated it into the kitchen using exactly my words, then handed me my corrected order, and I thanked him. There was no comment on how I was trying to speak Spanish and how cute it was, or refusal to reply in Spanish. A small success. A small failure story: I speak Tagalog all day with my family. My daughter came up to me while I was drilling Spanish, and needed to ask a question. She asked in Tagalog, and *I couldn't answer her immediately in Tagalog* I finally answered in Spanish; she struggled a bit to understand, told me "si, Papa." and I went on with the lesson. I was thinking later, is Spanish really messing with a second language I've spoken for 29 years? I know that I have more trouble speaking Spanish if I've been speaking a bunch of Tagalog; is there a way I can keep both on the tip of my tongue? Now, back to my glass of port... steve Edited by sfuqua on 03 January 2013 at 7:11am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5711 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 46 of 91 03 January 2013 at 9:44am | IP Logged | ||
I run into this problem from time to time, but usually it's me wanting to replace longer, less "efficient" utterances with "syntactically dense" utterances (i.e., syntactically equivalent, but in less words) in the other language, and only realizing after the words have left from my mouth that they were in the wrong language. I've found two ways to combat this. The temporary solution is to listen for a few minutes to whatever language you're trying to speak before you try to speak it. The second, more permanent way is to translate between languages. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, comparing and contrasting languages helps with not mixing them. It actually (to me) seems like a great way to learn languages in its own right. It's like there's a L1 part of the brain (English), and an L2 part of the brain (other), and when you translate back and forth between L2's, you're strengthening the "other" part of your brain and helping to organize and compartmentalize your knowledge and abilities. I've only ever tried it with thinking (i.e. silently), but I suppose you could also consciously try self-talking, switching back and forth between languages in 5 minutes intervals, using a timer. You might end up finding out some surprising things about yourself that you never knew. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 47 of 91 03 January 2013 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | ||
1) Absolutely! Cut yourself some slack. Yes a job and a family definitely affect how much time and energy you have to devote to learning a language. The Barry Farber "Hidden Moments" philosophy is one that I take advantage of whenever possible. Smart phones make it so much easier to carry your language learning with you. Some of my best learning comes during the time I am having my daily walk. Other activities such as driving, cooking and cleaning the house are useful to some extent. They're not ideal but it's still better than nothing. Another thing to try is to become an early riser. 2) Neither do I have a great "talent" for learning languages. If I may paraphrase Barry Farber, the author of How To Learn Any Language: A noted polyglot was once asked how he learned so many languages. He answered- I started learning languages when I was young and was just too lazy to quit. There's a lot of truth in that statement. Persistence is one of the most important keys to learning a language, in my opinion. 3) Yes! It is very different. You have to internalize the language in a different way. I would best describe what I do as "psyching myself out". When I am engaged with a language I pretend that I "exist" within its context. I rely on a bilingual dictionary as a last resort to find the meaning of a word with which I am unfamiliar. I rely on context, asking people, a monolingual dictionary and google image first. 4) Assimil has been hyped so much here on the forum that people believe that it is the only way to learn a language. It isn't. Sadly,many people are put off by FSI and DLI's emphasis on drills. They're not "fun" to them. They find the courses "dull", "dry" and "boring". It's part and parcel of our instant gratification society that people don't see the value in these courses. I find the drills useful and, yes, even fun, especially when I get them right. My fun comes from using what I've learned whenever I engage with the language in its natural habitat. I keep my eyes on the prize. I used the DLI course for the drills when I was learning Portuguese (along with a multi-track approach- reading, speaking, listening) and found it quite useful. Which leads me to this, I think you are missing one key element in your learning. It appears to me, I may be wrong here, possibly, that you aren't utilizing people enough in your learning process. Remember, when FSI and DLI created these courses, they were used along with a teacher- usually a native speaker in a classroom environment for a pretty full day. The student would go back to the barracks and do the drills listening to the tapes and then have that information reinforced with classroom activities. The student would also get valuable feedback. This is the missing element that you have to, somehow, some way, provide for yourself to really take full advantage of these amazing courses- a new Spanish-speaking friend, a free skype exchange, a paid tutor (relatively cheap via skype- two sessions a month would be less than a couple of pizzas). Still, I've been following your progress for quite a while and I am impressed with your dedication and effort. After finishing this course you will have definitely improved your Spanish. To really get to where you want to go, you're going to have to use it, regardless of your imperfection. Perfection is your biggest enemy. As to your "small failure", that's common fallout from your study intensity. I see it as a "small success" because it shows that you are internalizing the language. Switching between two second languages is a different animal than switching between just English and one second language. It takes effort, as Rout says, and can be learned. His advice is excellent. Keep up the good work, Steve and be too lazy to quit. Enjoy your glass of port. You've earned it. Edited by iguanamon on 03 January 2013 at 2:05pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4764 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 48 of 91 03 January 2013 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Rout; I'm sure that's good advice. I can remember having a little trouble getting English out of my mouth after a few months of not speaking it. Just a stumble or two, but it is strange to stumble in ones native language.
Thanks for the kind words, iguanamon :) I'm going to try to get a tutor on italki today. I took a look and it seems pretty simple. I'll try to find somebody who looks kind and gentle. steve 1 person has voted this message useful |
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