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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Matty Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5285 days ago 31 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 17 of 18 27 February 2011 at 9:49pm | IP Logged |
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Assimil arrived last week! Since then, Pimsleur has sort of gone by the wayside. Emmm.
But Spanish has certainly not gone by the wayside. First of all, I used Audacity to take out the blank spaces from Assimil. As much as I possibly can, I have my MP3 player stuck in my ears with Assimil on repeat. My approach to Assimil is influenced heavily by Arguelles's approach to Assimil and "All Japanese All the Time." Overall, I have probably been averaging at least 4 or 5 hours of concentrated study every day. During periods of concentrated study, I more or less start by using the L-R method, reading along in English and looking over at the Spanish whenever I can, to figure out basically what it . Then I repeatedly shadow the lesson while looking at the Spanish text. I keep doing this until I can shadow (or almost repeat) the entire lesson at full speed. I have found that if I do this, go to sleep, and then come back to it the next day, I can then shadow the lesson pretty well. I am currently in the intensive shadowing phase for lesson 80, and have done minimal (e.g. 1 confused time) L-R for all the lessons. I also try to go through all the lessons that I have already done every day at least once, shadowing it until I am comfortable that I am shadowing it pretty well and understand more or less everything in the lesson. In addition, I have had a number of other hours of non-concentrated study (having Assimil on in the background). No matter what I am doing, if I can possibly have my MP3 player stuck in my ear, I do. I am trying to really "assimilate" Assimil as much as I can. I also tried having Assimil play while I sleep for one or two nights. I am sort of skeptical about how much this achieves. On the one hand, I think it helps to some extent when I am going to sleep and am still awake. To some extent, I think it may be helping me to dream in (or at least about) Spanish. But it also seems to make it harder for me to go to sleep in the first place, and I think I sleep less soundly while listening to Assimil. Also, I changed my keyboard layout to a new custom layout. I normally type on a DVORAK keyboard rather than a QWERTY keyboard, which makes things more difficult - I couldn't simply switch to a built in Spanish, German, or International keyboard. But I found an international DVORAK keyboard layout and ¡ám üßíñg ít ñöw! ¿? Now it is much easier for me to type ú, Ö, ß, ¿, Ñ, etc. ¡! I have started adding Spanish sentences to Anki and have about 200 so far. I am going to start adding all sentences from Assimil, and am going to try to avoid using English (or German) answers in my Spanish anki flashcards. So far I have only added sentences from lesson 1 of Assimil. Anyway, back to lesson 80! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Matty Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5285 days ago 31 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 18 of 18 23 April 2011 at 1:14am | IP Logged |
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I have not updated in nearly two months!
I have kept on going with Spanish - I have listened to Assimil pretty much every day. Admittedly, I also spent a lot of my language time watching German TV, which has taken away from Spanish. Still, I have kept up doing at least something every day, have started watching some Spanish TV/movies, and now have 2,300 Spanish sentences in Anki. My goal has evolved beyond my initial desire to be able to communicate and understand simple basic things. I can do that now. I am not sure exactly what my goal is now, but it is now at least basic fluency. I am at the point where I can watch TV without subtitles and effortlessly understand a good amount of what is being said (although I am still missing a lot). But I am very happy with where I am, given that I am less than 4 months in! In a couple of weeks, I think I'll be ready to switch myself to "intermediate" status! Edited by Matty on 23 April 2011 at 1:15am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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