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The platiquemos drills are killing me | ||
Tags: Platiquemos | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Birdoftruth Newbie United States Joined 4857 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 7 18 September 2011 at 6:20am | IP Logged |
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I am on Unit 6 and this has been a smiliar experience for the last two units. I spend the first 2-3 days on the
dialogue memorizing the vocab and I get to the drills and all of a sudden in the translation drills I feel like I'm caught with my pants down. By the time I'm 2/3 done thinking about what the Spanish translation of the English phrase is, the speaker is already giving the answer so it turns out to be a moment of panic. It makes me feel like I didn't learn anything. Should I expect this or what. p.s. I spend 1 week on each unit. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5025 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 7 18 September 2011 at 12:20pm | IP Logged |
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I think it might depend on how much previous learning you have done. Did you do any courses prior to starting this one?
Platiquemos is an awesome course, but I think it would be very hard to learn everything from scratch with it. I would say do some Pimsleur or Learning Spanish Like Crasy before hand , and maybe some Michel Thomas, which will make running through the drills much more pleasant. If you are starting from scratch, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that while a lot of vocab is introduced in the first few units, this calms down later on so you can focus on the grammatical structure. (Having said that, I have read that after level 4 they start reintrouducing a lot of vocab) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4935 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 3 of 7 18 September 2011 at 12:45pm | IP Logged |
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How about lowering the standard a bit? You do not need to get all the drills right to go on. By the way there is stop button in iPod. :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 4 of 7 18 September 2011 at 1:37pm | IP Logged |
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The idea is to repeat the unit several times, I usually did between 6 and 8 repetitions of every unit. The first couple rounds through you will inevitably be using the pause button, but after two or three you really should try not to use it, even if it means you can't respond in time. After a while you will almost have memorized all the responses and will only make a couple mistakes. For me, this was usually around the 6th or 7th time through, and I generally knew the repetition before that I only needed to go through the unit once more to complete it. You really need to be able to spend at least 2 hours a day or more on it (being able to go through the unit about twice). Also, certain drills were harder for me, so I spent more time on them, and sometimes if I knew I had for example three hours to dedicate to studying, I did each drill three times, then went through the whole unit once more, start to finish, before moving on.
Now it's been a while (two years) since I finished Platiquemos, but what it teaches you sticks. Starting a new unit I always felt overwhelmed, like I would never be able to master it, then magically after a couple repetitions I was responding to the majority of the prompts in time and by the end I felt like I had really learned something. For me, that was the best part about Platiquemos: completing a unit. I say, don't get discouraged. Some of the units ARE really tricky, if after 7 or 8 repetitions you still don't have everything down, just move on! The other units work in what you've already learned, so you continually get practice, and thinks just start falling in place. EDIT: Oh, and I didn't bother to memorize the dialogs, just listen and answer the prompts until I felt comfortable with it like I did with the rest of the unit. Edited by Crush on 18 September 2011 at 1:38pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5378 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 7 18 September 2011 at 4:57pm | IP Logged |
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FSI/Platiquemos is a great course. When I have a problem with one of the drills the next day I will simply read through that drill a few times and go over the answers... then I will do the entire lesson with the audio. When I get to that specific drill it seems much easier. For example, if I had a hard time with the response drill (which I usually do) on the first run through, on the next day I will simply go through the response drill and answers out loud using the book and then do the full lesson. This seems to work well for me. I agree with what dbag said above... that having some prior knowledge (I would suggest Assimil prior to FSI) makes FSI/Platiquemos much easier.
Good luck. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| chrisphillips71 Groupie United States Joined 5239 days ago 64 posts - 86 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 7 18 September 2011 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
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I think Platiquemos is great, but you do have to be patient. After a while, you will get
used to responding in the time allotted, something that I think is essential before you can have a normal conversation. If Platiquemos is too much, I agree that you should try something else for a while (i.e. Learning Spanish Like Crazy or Pimsleur). However, if you are serious about learning Spanish (i.e. not just spouting off a couple of phrases), I highly recommend that you come back to Platiquemos. In my opinion it is light years ahead of other Spanish learning programs. You have chosen a large mountain to climb, but you are not the first and you will see results if you stay committed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Birdoftruth Newbie United States Joined 4857 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 7 22 September 2011 at 3:43am | IP Logged |
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wow guys thanks for the kind words of encouragement. I stuck it out and I am now killing it in session 6 for the
most parts with a few sticking points like getting the ahi and esta down quick enough for the speech. I have had two years of Spanish in high school and I spent all of august in Costa Rica so a learned a little Spanish there. I admit I was being a little harsh just because each new session seems like so much and it is but it becomes demystified very quickly. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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