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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 1 of 73 27 July 2008 at 4:29am | IP Logged |
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Hello!
Situation : Like many of you, I have completed Pimsleur 1, 2 and 3 and am hungry for more Spanish. I am currently able to hold a basic Spanish conversation on the high mid level. I started Pimsleur 3 months ago with absolutely no background in Spanish (or any other second language...yes I'm American :)). Goal: I want to become totally fluent with a vocab of at least 6000 words. I want to be able to hold advanced conversations, hypothesize/philosophize, use finer shades of ideas, and speak more rapidly and fluently, all of which I am unable to do at this point. I want to reach this level in 3 months...its not a race, but I'm really eager to speak and converse. Motivation: I work around Spanish speaking people who are really great and I consider my friends. They don't speak English very well (they are about the same level in English as I am with Spanish), so I want to be able to reach them on a more personal level. Another motivation is of course, to learn for its own sake, and to be able to get more immersed in the Latin American culture here in the US. Method: Besides Pimsleur 1 2 and 3 completed, I just purchased Platiquemos, which is what I'll be using mainly. I have Living Language 6000 Useful Spanish words and 2000 Verb books. I use www.spanishdict.com frequently. And, of course, I have 4 native speakers with whom I frequently converse everyday (in Spanish and some English, but more and more Spanish these days). So....here I go and wish me luck! If anyone has any comments, questions, constructive criticism, feel free. Edited by irrationale on 18 December 2008 at 5:25am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 2 of 73 27 July 2008 at 4:37am | IP Logged |
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Two days ago, I decided to start with Unit 10 in Platiquemos, because the first 9 seemed unnecessary and too easy. There are A LOT of words in Platiquemos! This is the first thing that surprised me. This first time, I'm going to have to choke down some vocab that Pimsleur didn't cover; it seems overwhelming right now with all of the new words.
On the brightside, the drills seem really easy to me...perhaps I'm doing them wrong? I'm not exactly sure when I'm supposed to move forward, but it seems that I have everything down except the clitic pronouns, which I still have to think about before I answer... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 3 of 73 28 July 2008 at 10:43pm | IP Logged |
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So yesterday I "finished" Unit 10. I use quotes because I'm still not quite sure how this whole Platiquemos FSI drill thing is going to work, as in, whether I'm simply rote remembering the answers or I'm actually learning something...or both. I did the drills until I could answer every question perfectly..so I guess I'm moving on to Unit 11?
I have some compunctions about the conversation stimulus though. I could translate all the sentences more or less, but not always exactly the way FSI wanted them. For example, "well.." they use "el fin", whereas I used "pues", and other differences like that. I wonder if they should all be perfect and totally spontanious translations before I move on. Same thing with the illustrations. There is a lot that is confusing me about FSI at this point. I would say it took about 3 hours to "complete", more or less, over the course of 3 days. I have to admit that it is tougher to keep the interest with FSI, so I'm going to try to do 2 hours a day from now on. The Spanish clitic pronouns took most of that time...I really found some difficulty in my mind with the clitics for some reason, something to do with the word order compared to English. Everything else was a breeze, besides all the damn words I had to memorize (thanks Pimsleur). Well here I go with Unit 11. Edited by irrationale on 28 July 2008 at 10:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 4 of 73 29 July 2008 at 6:11am | IP Logged |
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Finished Unit 11 already; only had to redo some drills once more to answer every question perfectly. Extremely easy unit for me, probably because of Pimsleur's good training in the area of possesives and negating verbs. I really can't wait until I start learning some new, harder material, like Past II, conditional, etc.
One thing I have to note though...what is the deal with the male speakers in FSI? What are we in a 1920's speakeasy or something? Extremely fast, slurred speach doesn't exactly make sense to a novice learner. I'm not a novice anymore and I can barely hear what one of the speakers is saying sometimes, he constantly slurrs his "ss" (you guys know the one). I so much look forward to hearing the women speak! I feel sorry for anyone just starting with FSI...what a nightmare. Oh and I discovered Anki through this forum! Thanks to this place for that. I'll be putting it to good use with all of FSI's vocab. Here I go with Unit 12. Edited by irrationale on 29 July 2008 at 6:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 5 of 73 31 July 2008 at 2:31am | IP Logged |
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I think I finished Unit 12.
Mastered the drills, and all the concepts, but made sporadic errors during the conversation stimulous. Not sure if I should "master" the convo stimulous (i.e. answering everything exactly per the instructer when there are multiple ways of answering) before moving on...perhaps I will review again tonight. Still not quite sure how you are supposed to tell when to move on in Platiquemos, or when a sporadic error is a major or minor deal. Time well tell I suppose. Here I go with Unit 13. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 6 of 73 02 August 2008 at 1:43am | IP Logged |
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Finished Unit 13.
Starting Unit 14, but with some confusion about what the purpose of the Units actually are (posted question in forums). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 7 of 73 04 August 2008 at 5:47am | IP Logged |
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Finished Unit 14. Extremely easy; Pimsleur really drilled the pariphrasic future into my head already. I'm ready and excited for Unit 15, because its about indirect clitics, an area I need to definitely get better and faster at.
Starting Unit 15. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 8 of 73 08 August 2008 at 4:38am | IP Logged |
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Well, I had seemed to hit some sort of brickwall in Unit 15. Its funny, because the first part of Unit 15 wasn't too bad, but the second half or so left me unable to do the drills.
It was all about indirect clitics, so the topic didn't change, but what DID was that the ones that gave me great difficulty were the clitics involved with the present perfect tense "haber" forms. Appearently there had been a gap in my Spanish around the present perfect, and the processing power of my brain was choked when I was asked to traslate present perfect and add a clitic and some other nouns, taking away my fluent speach and causing me to work out in my head. So, unfortunately (but fortunately I noticed the gap) I have to return to one of the units I skipped, Unit 9, and throughly master the present perfect. So returning to Unit 9, presently. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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