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TAC 2009: Spanish, French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5872 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 49 of 120 11 June 2009 at 2:13am | IP Logged |
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keith1569: Thanks. I have been studying Spanish about 8 months, though not always very consistently. I started studying French in conjunction with Spanish after .. between maybe 6 or 7 months? I haven't noticed any interference except when I've just spent a lot of time studying or writing in French and then switch to Spanish, but even then it is only for a moment and I know that the phrases that are popping up are French, not Spanish.
I ended up doing Pimsleur and MT at the same time and I'm glad I did, Pimsleur goes pretty slow so after having gone through the MT course a couple times I decided to stop Pimsleur (somewhere in the beginning of Level III). Both courses will leave you with a pretty small vocabulary, but I think MT covers a wider range of grammatical topics (by no means is it comprehensive, though). If you feel like sticking through Pimsleur, I would say go for it. I found that I remembered the things I learned in Pimsleur much better than those from MT, especially MT's advanced course which I had to go through several times. In the end, though, Pimsleur just progressed way too slowly for me. If I did it again, I would probably use MT as a foundation then work my way through either Assimil followed by FSI/Platiquemos or just go straight to FSI/Platiquemos. Oh, and I'd check Busuu.com for a penpal. I think the highlight of Pimsleur is the relatively long-term (3 months) daily exposure to the language and a lot of pronunciation practice. For MT: the relatively quick pace and in-depth (considering it is what, 16 hours or so of audio?) coverage of the verb system. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| keith1569 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5661 days ago 61 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Sign Language, Spanish | Message 50 of 120 11 June 2009 at 2:36am | IP Logged |
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Crush, thanks for the reply. I am glad to hear that you have not been getting French and
Spanish confused. Do you think that I should get the Assimil audio? I can get the book pretty cheap, but if I also get the audio part it just about doubles the price. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5872 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 51 of 120 11 June 2009 at 7:20am | IP Logged |
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I don't know, I think if you were going to use the book without the audio I would just download (or buy online used) one of the older books, which are said to be more comprehensive, and use it in conjunction with FSI or some other audiocourse. I don't think the audio is necessary, but I think it helps a lot in tuning your ear to the spoken language and in being able to decipher sentences pretty quickly without having to translate word for word. I've noticed that after a month of French study, spoken French sounds a lot clearer than Spanish did. It's made me excited to try out the L-R (Listening-Reading) method that Volte and others talk about a lot, and I've already set up a few audiobooks/texts (from librivox.org and gutenberg.org, such great resources for language learners!) to do this for Spanish to try and improve my listening comprehension and internalize the grammar.
But yea, if you can't get or don't feel like getting the audio, I think it will still help you a lot, especially for a language like Spanish where the pronunciation is comparatively simple. French pronunciation (and spelling!) has been a lot harder for me, so I'm glad I've got the audio portion. Also, check your PMs :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 6001 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 52 of 120 11 June 2009 at 12:16pm | IP Logged |
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I will be the first to go on record and say that Crush has been possessed by a Lang-8 posting tech-daemon....and this can only be a good thing. He's not been linking to them, but there have been many, and they are good.
Keep up the good work Crush. Thom. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5872 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 53 of 120 12 June 2009 at 3:21pm | IP Logged |
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Do people usually link to their posts? If you want to rip my posts apart, have at it! I'll post the links from now on. Apart from that, I'm on lesson 32 for Assimil and just started unit 40 yesterday. I didn't really do any of the FSI course today (well, about half the unit) but I did spend a lot of time trying to refresh old vocabulary and knock down the troublesome words that don't seem to be sticking so well. To try and help with this some, I started listening to a set of audiobooks on librivox.org (called Novelas Cortas). So far I've come across such important words as "el gitano" - the gypsy - "maniatar" - to tie the hands of - and "ahorcar" - to hang (like, with a rope around your neck). But hey, it really is quite an interesting story!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 6001 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 54 of 120 12 June 2009 at 4:39pm | IP Logged |
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No people usually don't. But I do. Let's start a trend.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5872 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 55 of 120 14 June 2009 at 7:34am | IP Logged |
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13 June:
Spanish: Went through Unit 40 about 4 times and did a lot of vocabulary work (on words I've already entered into Mnemosyne). I'm trying to get a much firmer grasp on my vocabulary, trying to get a better idea of the general sense of a word. I think I'm at a point where I could make all my flashcards all L2 (Spanish), but I'm not sure how to go about doing that (integrating it with the 2,000+ words I have already entered). I guess it wouldn't be too confusing, but I'm not sure if I want to go through with it or not :/ French: I reviewed Assimil lessons and added another lesson, I can't remember if it was 33 or 34. I'm also going to try reading an article on from the Deutsche Welle in Spanish and French, I'd like to do these little reading exercises more often but haven't quite committed myself to the idea yet. EDIT: Does anyone know of a good French dictionary? I've been using the one at wordreference.com, but I'm used to really nice (fancy/interactive) ones like Spanishdict.com for Spanish and http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/ for German :P Edited by Crush on 14 June 2009 at 7:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 6001 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 56 of 120 14 June 2009 at 11:08am | IP Logged |
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I use lexilogos and larousse their exact websites are very similar to their names, but I don't have them bookmarked on this computer. They are what I use when I Cant find a word on wordreference. Lexilogis is a bunchload of different dictionaries, I use it in french-french, larousse as well. But it can be used eng-french.
Thom. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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