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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| stevesayskanpai Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4495 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Italian | Message 1 of 11 11 August 2012 at 1:15am | IP Logged |
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Hi all, I completed Michel Thomas (MT) Italian Foundation and Advanced, but since then
have moved on to deciding that Spanish (!) is the European language I want to get up to scratch first. Therefore my first aim is to complete the MT Spanish Foundation and Advanced courses. The problem I found with Italian was that I had a lot of structure but not much vocabulary - e.g. I could remember the past conditional tense but couldn't ask simple questions. I'm wondering if anyone else has had the same problem, and what online / book resource they found best for continuing their study after MT? One (grammar) book I've had very strongly recommended is the Talk BBC Spanish Grammar: A Clear New Approach. I want something I can mine in Anki for after completing MT. Thanks, SSK 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5224 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 2 of 11 11 August 2012 at 8:23am | IP Logged |
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SSK - you will find the same limitation in the MT Spanish - the vocab builder gives you at little more but not much. The transcripts are on the MT website if you feel the need to cut and paste into anki but I found that unneccessary.
I found it useful and listened in the car driving the car 97 miles to work and after a couple of iterations I had it down. Vocab: I built wordlists from a simple Spanish reader I downloaded, then from HP 1 & 3 I bought in Madrid for a couple of euro each. Once I'd written them manually (easier than typing while reading for me) cross referenced with a big dictionary online - I use Collins, added similar words and then typed them into anki I almost always had them down on the first iteration too. I picked up the Barrons Mastering Spanish Vocabulary (and the french one too) for about £5 from amazon to flick through while watching TV. Grammar: I use "A Spanish Learning Grammar" by Muñoz & Thacker - it's thorough and easy to use. The exercises were useful. For more advanced I use "A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish" by Butt and Benjamin which delves more into differences between Iberian Spanish and Latin American Spanish(es). Anything else I can help with, let me know. Buena suerte 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5570 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 11 11 August 2012 at 9:59am | IP Logged |
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With its CD of all the words spoken in each word group this is a great word list:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Spanish-Vocabulary-Audio-M P3/dp/1438071558/ref=sr_1_1? ie=UTF8&qid=1344671860&sr=8-1 Dare I say, after MT (which does the job of priming you for the language remarkably well, IMO) get Assimil Spanish With Ease? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Theodisce Octoglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5891 days ago 127 posts - 167 votes Speaks: Polish*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Czech, French, English, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Slovak, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Portuguese | Message 4 of 11 11 August 2012 at 11:01am | IP Logged |
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By the time you finish MT advanced (and possibly Vocabulary Builder), you will have acquired enough vocabulary to read Spanish Wikipedia, which is what I recommend. You may also benefit from exploring "Spanish for Reading: A Self-Instructional Course" by Franco and Sandberg. Among various audio resources available on the Internet "News in Slow Spanish" podcast is the one you can start with.
I'd like to put emphasis on the Spanish Wiki. It's free and rich in content. Plus, it enables you to pick up many vocabulary items relevant to subjects you're interested in. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 11 11 August 2012 at 11:04am | IP Logged |
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Use native materials, perhaps with aids like at http://lyricstraining.com/ or http://gloss.dliflc.edu/
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| stevesayskanpai Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4495 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 11 11 August 2012 at 11:49am | IP Logged |
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Hey, thanks everyone for the suggestions there's more than enough here to get me going.
maydayayday, someone has already created both a Spanish: Foundation and a Spanish: Advanced Michel Thomas shared deck in Anki - very useful for quickly whizzing through all of the language points once I'm done with the MP3s I think. I'll let you know how I get on! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5788 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 7 of 11 11 August 2012 at 1:43pm | IP Logged |
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I second the suggestion of Elexi to move on to Assimil's Spanish with ease. I also
agree with Maydayday about Butt and Benjamin but I would leave grammar for a while now! Michel Thomas has taught you more than enought to make it through Assimil and by then you'll have a foundation to start looking at grammar books. If you start reading about grammar now then Michel Thomas warned that (because traditional grammars break the language up differently from him) it may confuse you. I used grammar books straight after MT, it did initially confuse me and I didn't improve my Spanish much in that period. Assimil sentences work well in srs; but please don't put sentences from MT into srs software, not even from the vocabulary course...these are not normal sentences (he was teaching you grammar) and I think you'll regret it! In summary: I second the suggestions of Elexi and the suggested grammar books (I have used both his suggested books) of Maydayayday, but in that order and I hope you don't srs the MT vocabulary course (though you can do so with Assimil). Edited by Random review on 11 August 2012 at 1:44pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 8 of 11 11 August 2012 at 5:24pm | IP Logged |
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As you are in the UK, you might look into the Open University beginners course. It's
essentially a distance-learning course, and you will be assigned a tutor, and tutorials would almost certainly be done over the internet. There are also written assignments. That course is supposed to take you to around GCSE level. Although notionally it is a tutored course, there is a large element of self-study to it. I'm a big fan of the OU, although unfortunately, they have had to put their fees up quite a bit in recent years because of funding cuts etc. :-( http://www.open.ac.uk By the way, you don't of course need to be studying for, or intend to study for an OU degree. The beginner's course is part 1 of a 2 part Certificate course, and if you take the following course, you can qualify for a Certificate. After that there is a 2-part Diploma course. You can of course combine all of these modules with others towards some sort of OU degree, should you want to at some stage. It's all highly modular. The Spanish beginners course used to be known as "Portales" and the follow-on was "En Rumbo", but it might have changed by now. (They also do, or did, French and German beginner's course, and were just beginning to start Italian and Welsh ones last I heard, although I'm a bit out of touch these days). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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