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Can You Learn Using Only the Fun Stuff | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4052 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 24 15 June 2014 at 5:40am | IP Logged |
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So I'm in my 9th month of Spanish study. For the last 9 months I have "studied" every day for one to two hours. (I started by taking a Spanish I group class and have since done Michel Thomas, Synergy Spanish, Language Transfer, watched all of Destinos and other videos, worked on workbooks and worked with Anki) But for the last couple of months, I have not been able to motivate myself to finish Assimil, study Anki flashcards or word on my verb conjugations. Instead, I listen to podcasts constantly (I've been working through Casa Roja lately), I read books aloud to my native Spanish speaking boyfriend who corrects my pronunciation and I speak with my italki teacher and boyfriend's mom on Skype. I occasionally listen to audio courses (I've been listening to a vocab one from Spanish Obsessed) and I use Duolingo.
I'd love to get some perspective on this method. Do you think it will slow down my learning? (I would say that I'm an advanced beginner right now) Sometimes I do feel like I'm looking up the same word over and over or getting corrected on the same conjugation mistakes. I've been thinking of signing up for a group Spanish class to try to push me to improve my vocab and grammar as a motivator. What do you think? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4890 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 2 of 24 15 June 2014 at 7:47am | IP Logged |
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I think your method sounds just fine.
I think the formal study elements are important, but I don't think they need to be constant - as long as you are doing something in Spanish each day you are on the right track. What has really worked for my French is to mostly do the fun stuff, and every once in awhile crack a book (FSI or Assimil), or restock my Anki deck, or do one of the advanced Pimsleur levels. I keep an excel spreadsheet, and I just looked it over. Over the past two years I averaged three or four months of just reading, followed by one or two months of actual 'study.' This was very useful as I got more advanced - I had a better context to understand and assimilate the drills in FSI. I've had horrible luck with group classes, however. There might be some good ones, but I'm now skeptical of them. Edited by kanewai on 15 June 2014 at 7:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 24 15 June 2014 at 11:01am | IP Logged |
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Your method doesn't sound bad at all, even though I'd add a few points to it. I've been learning mostly through fun for some time as I am a bit of a lazy person (most of my Spanish from nearly the beginning, most of my French since higher intermediate, vast majority of my English from the beginning) so it can work.
However, careful with the group class. They usually don't push people, so it is matter of luck. If you want a way to push yourself, use either a private tutor (1 on 1 classes may be awesome if you choose the right teacher) or just set a goal for yourself. Preparing yourself for a journey, an exam, whatever. -podcasts are awesome. however, they are short. tons of podcasts cannot fail to make you progress, even though I believe larger chunks of material allowing you to immerse yourself are better. Just don't forget to add difficulty. I know people who have gotten so stuck on easy material they were disappointed in the end. -if you have finished Destinos, it may be time for a real tv series to get out of your comfort zone. They work like miracles -books are awesome. What are you reading? :-) And you can use them as a pronunciation practice while listening to yourself and being corrected, great! -sure, you can get the vocabulary, verb forms etc from pure immersion. However, when you find yourself repeating mistakes,as you describe, it is more efficient to just look it up, correct yourself and be done with it. There is little point in repeating (and saving deeper into your memory) a mistake you obviously struggle with. -so much conversation practice sounds totally awesome. And, given you've got an italki teacher and so on,I can see very little potential in joining a group class for you. -duolingo can be fun and very useful but I don't think it can lead you to high levels. You may have been near or past the end of its usefulness -I didn't like Assimil Spanish. I tried a few lessons and I was bored. It probably works but it is dry and lacks some of the Assimil qualitites, compared to German or Swedish ones. So your lack of motivation to continue with it may be just that, not liking it enough, and not a need to abandon structured courses entirely. The catch about learning mostly (or entirely) from fun sources (extensive reading and listening etc) is that you need vast amounts of fun material. And that sometimes, it is faster and more efficient to supplement it with a more classical workbook or something. And, who says that textbook kind of material can't be fun? If I were you, I would consider these changes: 1.Join the Super Challenge, if you haven't joined yet. Give yourself a goal. A high and reasonable one, to make you push yourself harder through hours and hours of input. 2.Leave your comfort zones. Switch to increasingly more difficult podcasts, get a real tv series (my first tv series in Spanish was dubbed Once Upon a Time=Erase una vez and it was quite accessible). From what you write, I guess you are more than ready for such a change. 3.If you wish to be pushed harder from someone on the outside, don't join a class, they often work entirelly the wrong way when it comes to motivation. Most group classes' goal is not to push the students as hard as they can for their best results possible, it is to move them slightly forward at a comfortable pace that won't scare anyone away and will mean more semesters of income from each student. Ask your Italki teacher instead to push you harder. If they can't do that, either supplement them with someone else or just switch teachers. 4.I find good quality workbooks to be part of fun learning. However, you need to choose good ones as the market for large languages is full of crap. Workbooks that can supplement your other input, cover the gaps, explain tricky points, give you more examples, let you practice in a kind of sandbox with key to exercises. What workbooks have you been using? 5.What level is Synergy Spanish and Language Transfer? If they are for real beginners, just like MT (which may be awesome at giving you the basics but probably not at getting you to high levels), you might be just bored of repeating the same things over and over again. Structured courses may still be a nice suplement for you but you'd probably need to choose something leading higher. But they are totally not necessary for your progress. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 4 of 24 15 June 2014 at 11:25am | IP Logged |
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Yeah anki. While I find it to be the easiest and most versatile srs available, there are other choices. With more kinds of exercise, wih point awarding, fancy looks and in general more gamification. It might be a welcome change for you to try quizlet or memrise.
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| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4145 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 24 15 June 2014 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
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What Cavesa said.
What you're doing - reading, having Skype conversations, listening to podcasts - is exactly what I would suggest you do at your level! But add in a TV show, preferably an addictive TV show, without subtitles. I base my grammar study almost entirely on how I feel during Skype conversations. I find that I go through a confidence-frustration cycle. When I'm feeling confident during my conversations, I don't study at all. I just read, watch and talk. Then, when I hit a wall because I'm missing an important chunk (like, for instance, right now: I need to be able to say things like "Had I known you were there, I would have come"), I crack open the books just for as long as I need to say what I want to say. I do keep up with anki, though, since I drill a lot of grammar using anki. My Spanish anki decks are manageable and take me on average between 5 and 8 minutes to run through. At this point, I only add new words when I come across something that I love, or when I've just learned a new grammatical structure. I don't *love* doing anki, but I don't hate it either, and I definitely see the value in it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 24 15 June 2014 at 2:53pm | IP Logged |
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Cavesa, kanewai and Stelle have given excellent responses. My technique is a variation on both of them. I don't use anki, memrise or quizlet though. "Podcast" encompasses a wide range of audio. I prefer non-learner intended audio. One of my favorite radio programs available as a podcast is Nómadas Radio 3 RNE it's almost an hour long.
I 100% agree with Cavesa. It's time for a series. Since you have already watched all of Destinos, there are a lot of good telenovelas available on US cable TV, if you have it, and online as well. The Telemundo website has episodes available with accurate Spanish subtitles (and English as well). I'm hooked on "La Impostora" right now, a Mexican telenovela set in Acapulco. Instead of a "narco" focus, this one has an arms trafficking underlay. The advantage of a series over films is that series have generally over 100 episodes of about 40 or so minutes (without commercials. You have time to get used to the characters' voices and accents. There is a lot of repeated speech. Speech is conversational. The stories, if you can find a good one with high production values, are engaging. I'm hooked on "La Impostora" right now, a Mexican telenovela set in Acapulco. Instead of a "narco" focus, this one has an arms trafficking underlay. There are several ways to use telenovelas and audios intensively. My advice would be to listen first without the subs. Take notes in order to write a "review" of what happened in the episode. Be sure to write down unknown words and ask your boyfriend or his mother what they mean. Online works best for this because you can go back and forth with the audio many times. I find that it is more convenient to download the episodes using my Firefox Flash Video Downloader add on. Alternatively you could look the words up using tubabel for informal, slang, language and the RAE Diccionario for everything else. If your boyfriend and his mother are cooperative, you could then tell them what happened in the episode for maybe half an hour, asking for corrections along the way. Obviously, this works best if they would watch the same episode as you. Alternatively, if they aren't interested, there are detailed online reviews of telenovela "capítulos" available you could use as a check. For more information, you could also have a look at The Telenovela Method and the book is available from Amazon for $10. If you don't have a kindle or dedicated e-reader, now's the time to get one. My "study" is more along the lines of kanewai's description. I find that a good grammar book helps a lot with "massive input". I may, from time to time, look over a chapter on a particular point when I feel the need. Lastly, though you have a great resource available in your boyfriend and his mother, working with a good online tutor at least once a week would do wonders for your Spanish. There are several available from Guatemala for around $10 an hour at PLQE Online and italki. Using only "fun" methods, can leave you incomplete, as we tend to gloss over what we don't understand and then think we've "understood" when we're finished listening. Adding in some intensive activities along with the "fun" can turbocharge your learning. Cavesa talks about leaving your comfort zone. I couldn't agree more. Challenge yourself with what's uncomfortable and it will make your Spanish better. Yeah, it might make it less "fun" but to me being able to speak and understand better is more fun. ¡Buena suerte! Edited by iguanamon on 15 June 2014 at 4:08pm 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 7 of 24 15 June 2014 at 4:31pm | IP Logged |
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I think it is really important to know what your time horizon is. Are you looking to really master the language long term or are you looking to just keep practicing it and having fun for a year or two?
Also, how do you find your basic grasp of grammar? Can you do the entire Michel Thomas "Advanced" course without mistakes? If not, I'd really suggest putting in the time and effort now on getting a good solid structure to the grammar and how the language really works. If you first builid a solid grasp of the grammar and structure of the language you will be much better off long term and then later when you put more time into Telenovelas, books and other "native material" you will really get more bang for your buck because things will just fall into place and you won't be learning the structure/grammar through a haphazard method. I just don't think it is very efficient to learn the structure of the language through the "fun" method. I think of the language as a huge collection of books... if you build the bookcase first you won't be having a lot of fun with the books, but later it will be simple to organize them and keep them well organized once you have the solid bookcase built. Or, you could over time look at the books one by one and put them in different piles on the floor. Probably a bad analogy, but it works for me. One problem with "fun" things is that they often don't really challenge you and they don't force your brain to use the language. Podcasts are cool, but do something that requires you to do active thinking/use of the language. Doing the active wave of Assimil or doing FSI works wonders for language development. They may not be "fun" but they definitely work. One caveat... whatever you do, don't stop. If you need to do "fun" things to keep going... definitely do it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 24 15 June 2014 at 6:22pm | IP Logged |
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Don't take my advice too seriously, because I'm not really ahead of you.
You've also got to consider what you find fun. I actually enjoy shadowing things. I use audacity to slow it down where the voices start to drawl, practice until I can do it, then I speed it back up and shadow it until I can do it at full speed. I enjoy pretending I'm the character I shadow, sometimes looking at the mirror while I do it. A dubbed Al Pacino in the Godfather being shadowed by a 61 year old science teacher is hysterical. Maybe I should put one on Youtube. I know I'm weird, but shadowing is fun for me. Sometimes, I get an image of somebody on the computer screen, Barack Obama for instance, and then I read aloud to them. I look up occasionally to see if they are enjoying the story. Weird, but I find it better than reading aloud to a blank wall. One foreign language teacher I had recommended reading aloud to yourself in the mirror, glancing at the book and reading a few words and then looking up and saying them to yourself in the mirror. Anyway my point is, even with really dry material, working by yourself, you can have fun if you are a little creative. Theater/acting courses have a bunch of things you can do with language way beyond listen and repeat. edited to correct bad native language grammar :) Edited by sfuqua on 15 June 2014 at 7:07pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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