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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 1 of 668 02 January 2011 at 1:21pm | IP Logged |
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I am writing this as a basic log to track my Spanish progress for 2011 (and keep me motivated). I feel great about 2010 and I accomplished all of my goals. In 2010 I completed the following. Pimsleur 1-3, Michel Thomas 1-2, Destinos, Madrigal's Magic Key and Assimil Spanish with Ease. I also read a considerable amount of the New Testament and watched many Spanish TV shows. I have a primary method that I work with every morning for 30-60 minutes and then secondary methods that I do at other times of the day when I have the opportunity (which is not too often).
Right now I am doing Living Language's Beyond the Basics and like it. I am using it like Assimil. I am going to go through it once in a passive way and then do a second more active wave. I want to do Michel Thomas Advanced again, but after that I don't know what I will do. I am having fun and learning Spanish is quite rewarding to me. I have no deadlines or firm goals so I will do whatever I feel like. I hope to update this log about once a week to track my progress. Edited by James29 on 30 December 2014 at 3:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 3 of 668 10 January 2011 at 1:53am | IP Logged |
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My primary method right now is Living Language Beyond the Basics. I finished lesson 11 today. I did one new lesson every day since my last post except two days. One day I had a very long drive for work and simply listened to Assimil dialogues for about an hour. The other day I did a review of the first 8 LL lessons (there are no review lessons in LL like in Assimil).
It is hard to believe that I have done more than half the lessons already. The lessons are taking me longer to do than the Assimil lessons. The LL lessons have longer audio and they speak faster. All lessons are the same "difficulty." I put all 20 LL dialogues on one disc and it is over 60 minutes. It is very difficult for me to fully shadow a lesson due to the speed of the speech. I do not even try to shadow a lesson without the book because I have a hard time keeping up with the book. With Assimil I would usually complete the lesson by shadowing it a couple times without the book. The vocab in the LL is not too challenging after Assimil and I can usually understand the majority of the lesson on the first run through. I like the setup of LL better. The translations appear directly under the Spanish so it is simple to see. I also like the grammar rules and examples LL gives after the dialogue. The quality of the LL recordings is better than Assimil and the voices seem better also. The LL recordings are much more recent so they use vocab and terms that seem much more up to date. The topics of the LL dialogues are not bad, but they are certainly nothing like Baldomero or the guy who slipped on the bannana peel in Assimil. LL is not as "interesting" but I feel like I am listening to very common usage of Spanish which seems more realistic to me (this is, of course, the trade-off for getting unusual vocab in the dialogues). All in all, I feel LL BTB is the exact right thing for me right now. It is a great consolidation of what I have already learned and it is getting me used to hearing a Latin American accent at a fast pace. I am not doing the exercises (I simply do not have enough time), but I hope I will do them when I do my active wave. I am quite satisfied with LL BTB and recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good resource after Assimil. I do not feel LL is as good a product as Assimil. Every day when I close the book, however, I still get the same good feeling I did with Assimil. I just feel quite satisfied and like I really accomplished a mini-milestone. In terms of my secondary methods it was a great week. Out of the blue I decided to sign up for a local night Spanish course that meets once a week. The first course was quite good. It is just the right level for me. I am not crazy about homework and answering questions in front of the class, but it will give me some speaking practice and listening practice (to real people) which is exactly what I need right now. I also tried Skype for the first time this week. This is amazing. I spoke with a native Spanish speaker for one hour (roughly half/half). It was a blast and I learned a lot about my skills. I could communicate quite effectively and that made me feel good. When we could not understand each other I actually felt like I should be speaking in Spanish to explain myself even though my partner's English was better than my Spanish. I do definitely need practice speaking. Going forward I think Skype could be an extremely useful tool for me because there are very few native Spanish speakers around here. The big problem I am going to have is finding someone who can speak with me at very specific times because my schedule simply does not give me much flexibility other than one hour in the morning. I also watched another episode of El Internado, a popular Spanish mystery/drama series. It is really a great show. I can follow the basic storyline quite easily, but I am sure I miss some of the sub-plots. Someone somewhere on this forum recommended it in a thread on telenovelas and I am grateful for the suggestion. It is way better than a telenovela. The only problem with it is that the episodes are each about 80 minutes which makes it tough to find time to start one. Hopefully I will finish the entire series this year, but if I don't that is o.k. also. It is just for fun. Lessons learned for this week are as follows. I need to practice speaking in conversations. I can read and write much much better than I can speak. I can understand the spoken language much better than I can speak the language. I should have done Michel Thomas Advanced before Assimil or during it somewhere. I am now realizing how much stuff in Assimil I simply missed or went over my head. If I would have done MT Advanced first I would have gotten much more out of Assimil. I will do another active wave of Assimil when I am done with LL. One interesting thing I realized in my Skype was that I have never used a dictionary in over a year of language learning. I never really thought about it, but with the resources I use I simply don't need one. Right now my plan is to do Michel Thomas Advanced again after LL and then do a third wave of Assimil. After that... who knows. I feel like I really should so Using Spanish. I will decide when I get there. I never want to lose that good feeling when I am done with my lesson for the day. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 4 of 668 16 January 2011 at 1:51am | IP Logged |
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This week was another good week. LL BTB is still my primary method. I finished LL lesson 16 today. I did a lesson every day, except one day I did a review. Another day I had a long drive and reviewed all the lessons again. Today I ran the audio on my computer and slowed it down to 80% its regular speed. This was much better and I may continue to do this. It allowed me to understand the lesson better when I was shadowing instead of focus so much on keeping up with the pace. I still like LL and will almost certainly finish the first round this week. I will do another round with it, but I may go through MT advanced again before doing LL for another round.
In terms of secondary methods it was another good week. I did two skype sessions. These are really valuable. Today I briefly experienced "fluidity" in my speech for the first time. My Spanish words simply flowed out naturally without thinking about it. I just happened to be using very common words that I was very comfortable with and once I got talking it just continued to flow. I also cracked a few jokes in Spanish. Skype is quite fun particularly if you are speaking with someone nice. It is just what I need for my speaking. I have learned that my vocabulary and writing ability is quite good, but I really need/want practice speaking. I definitely want to continue with my primary methods until I advance a little further, however. I feel like the reason I have advanced so far and so fast is because I have spent so much time with programs like Assimil. I also watched another episode of El Internado this week. I realized that I really don't understand a lot of the words but I can totally follow the story. It may not really be helping too much but it is a fun show. I would prefer watching something good with shorter episodes because it is quite difficult for me to watch a full 80 minute episode. I did my night course also this past week. I think it is good for a class, but I am really not a class guy. I don't like having homework assignments and being asked questions in class. It is not bad, I just don't think it is really for me. I will continue with it because I am picking up some stuff and it is good to converse with the teacher. I can see why nobody gets fluent through high school courses. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 668 23 January 2011 at 2:18am | IP Logged |
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Well, I finished LL BTB on schedule earlier this week. I did the last several lessons with the audio slightly slowed down. That helped a lot. I also did two review sessions. Today I did not get a chance to work with LL so I missed a day. All things considered I am very happy with LL BTB. It has a long gramatical appendix I will likely read through. I also think I will do a second wave with it. I don't know if I will translate it from English to Spanish due to the fact that the translations are not literal. I also think I am going to take a short break from it and work through MT advanced next week. Anyway, other than one missed day with my primary method it was a good week.
In terms of my secondary methods it was a good week. I did a couple skype chat sessions and they went well. I can really communicate effectively. I am definitely rough and my speaking needs a ton of work. My partners are polite and helpful. I find myself using "tricks" from Michel Thomas like stringing together infinitives or always using voy a for doing something in the future. I note that I have a hard time using the past tense for some reason. I watched an episode of El Internado. Good show. It is strange because I feel like I am following it, but when I think about it I really do not understand many of the words. I tried to find episode summaries so I can read up on what is actually happening and see how much I am really following, but I cannot find episode summaries online. My night class was cancelled this week. When I think about it I feel like the class was not really worth the $75. When I compare how much I got out of the $33 I spent on Assimil Spanish With Ease or the $8 I spent on LL BTB it is not even close. Tomorrow I will spend another day with LL BTB and then on Monday I will start MT advanced for another go around. After that who knows... I will decide when I get there. I have decided that I definitely want to do Assimil Using Spanish this year. I think it will bring me to a new level and if I don't do it now I will likely never do it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 6 of 668 30 January 2011 at 1:42pm | IP Logged |
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Well, this week I did Michel Thomas Advanced again. I am glad I did it again. I also had a long drive one day and simply listened to all the LL BTB dialogues. In all, it was a good week for my primary methods and I probably spent much more time learning Spanish this week than I usually do.
In terms of my secondary methods it was good as well. I have been slowly working through the 75 page appendix in LL BTB. It is about as good as can be for an appendix of grammar. I should finish it in a couple days. I also had a good night class. I got to class very early and had a 15 minute conversation with the professor entirely in Spanish. It was great. She could understand everything I said and I felt I could generally say what I wanted to say. I have a little bit of a hard time understanding her because I am not as used to the So American accent, but I am getting better with that. The class was pretty good also because I got some practice speaking and listening. I have come to the conclusion, however, that classes are probably not too worthwhile unless they are very small and all students are at the same level. It was kind of fun because the morning of the class I had covered the same topic with Michel Thomas (his cha-cha dance for the past tense). The way MT taught it was really helpful and when I was speaking in class I found myself thinking of MT doing the cha-cha. I also did a ton of skype this week. I probably did about 4-5 hours. There was one conversation with someone that lasted 90 minutes and was mostly in Spanish. She spoke very fast (I had to keep asking her to slow down), but I think I still understood most of what she was saying. I realized it is much easier for me to understand certain accents (people from Madrid are easier for me to understand than So Americans). I think skype is great to the extent it has helped me speak and "spit out" the words and comprehend regular speech. I feel like I need to spend some more time learning grammar and the structure of the language. I am not sure what I will do this week for my primary method. I am not even sure what I will do today. This does not really matter because I am still having fun. I don't really feel like doing an active wave with LL BTB like originally planned because I feel like it would be a better use of my time to go back to Assimil. The LL BTB book does not have literal translations so I am not sure how useful it would be. I think I will probably do a short/fast one week review of LL BTB and then do a third wave of Spanish with Ease. I feel like I should be getting more into native materials. I have a short audio book of short stories (cajas de carton) which I would like to read but I need to buy the books in print first. I have also found a series of economics classes online at a So American University. They have all the classes online and many of them have transcripts (in Spanish) of what the professor is saying. When following along with the transcript I can understand the general theme of the professor and I find it quite interesting. Eventually I would like to watch all of these classes, but I am not sure when to do that. I would like to get a lot out of the classes so I think I would like to advance my Spanish a little further before watching them. I still feel like I should do Using Spanish. The audio I have is from an old library cassette edition and it is not the best quality. I wish I had the CDs, but it does not seem worth it to buy them considering I already have them on tape (actually I transferred them onto CDs, but the quality is still poor). Edited by James29 on 30 January 2011 at 1:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 7 of 668 06 February 2011 at 10:19pm | IP Logged |
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Well, it was a decent week, but I was busy with a lot of other stuff. I missed one day of Spanish and I had two short days. I am doing an active wave with LL BTB. I go through and shadow the lessons a couple times then I translate from English to Spanish. I see the benefit of the literal translations Assimil had. I am not spending too much time translating... just enough to read it and paraphrase the sentence then check the Spanish and note any words I need to remember (it still does, however, take quite a while to do the entire lesson like this). Then I shadow the lesson again a few times and do it twice without the book. I am amazed that I can now shadow these lessons without the book. When I started this book I thought the dialogues were incredibly fast, but now I don't have too much of a problem keeping up. I am also doing the exercises. I am quite pleased with the exercises in this book - they are quite helpful and do not seem like "work." This active wave is really taking a long time for each review. It takes me more than an hour to review each lesson which is simply too much time for me. I think I will stick it out and finish up. I can probably be done in about another three weeks (I am doing a review after each 4 lessons). Anyway, I am very happy with this book.
In terms of my secondary methods it was a decent week. I have read about half of the appendix in LL BTB. It is a worthwhile read. I have also done a few skype exchanges (probably about 3 hours this week). With one of them I was quite pleased with the flow of my Spanish. I was comfortable and able to talk almost effortlessly (using pretty basic vocab and grammar). My partners always say they can understand everything I say... but I often have a difficult time understanding their Spanish. I also listened to the first short story in my Cajas de Carton audiobook a few times. I could kind of understand it, but not enough to make it enjoyable. I purchased both translations on Amazon so I can read the text. I will definitely be able to understand it with the Spanish text. I want to go through the entire book so I can have something interesting in Spanish to listen to during my long drives for work. My night class was cancelled this week (and I did not really miss it). I am pleased with my abilities, but I don't yet want to totally dive into native materials. I will finish this active review of LL BTB and then either to a third wave of Assimil Spanish with Ease or read Cajas de Carton. I may also just decide to move forward and do Assimil's Using Spanish. Right now I feel like 2011 will not be a success unless I complete Using Spanish. I feel like I should finish it and then go entirely into native materials. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 8 of 668 13 February 2011 at 1:49am | IP Logged |
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I feel like every time I sit down to do my weekly entry I am repeating myself when I say... "well, this was another pretty good week." I am doing an active wave of LL BTB and it is pretty good. I am not really doing an English to Spanish translation like I did with Assimil because the LL BTB translations are not literal. They are good translations, but I simply find it better to read the English and then try to paraphrase it in Spanish and I don't worry about whether I am getting it exactly right. Then I just look real close at the words and try to learn any that I have forgotten. I also like the exercises. I did have two days in a row where I did not have as much time as usual so I covered the same lesson those days (it was a long lesson). I am pleased with my progress. Today for my shadowing I slowed the audio down to 80% speed and it felt too slow and I felt 100% was just about right. I remember when I first started with this book I felt 100% was way too fast.
In terms of my secondary methods it was a good week also. I read quite a bit of the appendix in LL BTB. I am almost done with it. It is a good review. I think this book will be good to pick up in a year or two for a review because it is not a beginner book like Assimil with Ease. Everything in it assumes you have a basic understanding of Spanish. I will definitely keep this book around for a long time. I did not do any skyping this week. I did do a couple text chats. I don't think they are too useful for learning. It was kind of neat to write with people from exotic places, however. Skype is great (and text chatting can probably be good too), but I am realizing the hard part is finding a good partner and then finding a mutually convenient time to talk. My class was pretty good this week. It is growing on me a little bit. It is just a nice way to practice Spanish in a different context. The teacher really takes it seriously which is good. I received Cajas de Carton and its English version, The Circuit, in the mail this week. I have already read more than half of The Circuit. It is simply fabulous. I am not a reading or literature type person so I think this is a real compliment... this is a really touching book and it is quite well written. I feel a little silly saying this, but there have been a couple places that made my eyes water up a little. I am really looking forward to starting the Spanish version. I think I will start it when I am done with LL BTB. I don't really know how to go through it yet. I will need to ponder that. Right now I am thinking I will simply use it like an Assimil book that just has a few very long lessons and I will do one story per day and listen/read each story 3-4 times when I do it. Anyway, I feel really good about finding this audio book and its translations. I feel great that this is going to be the first Spanish book I read. I also picked up a bilingual version of Pablo Neruda's 20 poems (with a song of despair) for $1 at a used book store. I don't know if I will ever do anything with it, but it is kind of neat and I once saw the audio for free online. When I was at a different used book store while on a trip I noticed an 1800s learn Spanish book. It looked quite good and extremely thorough. I regret not picking it up. I wish I could remember what it was. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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