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Can You Learn Using Only the Fun Stuff | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 9 of 24 15 June 2014 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree that this depends on what you find fun. Someone who doesn't like learning grammar, reading books nor being corrected will have to overcome one of these at least.
Try the various techniques described in the wikia. If you don't have a single base resource, you need to vary your fun activities as much as you can. Have you tried GLOSS and lyricstraining? :) Making your own exercises or playing with the vocabulary? As for not wanting to do Assimil/Anki/etc, it's important to figure out why exactly. Consider deleting some cards, for example. Some have said their motivation varies depending on the time of the year. As a woman I'm aware of some patterns in my monthly cycle too (more info in my log). It might also be that your routine for the Assimil lessons has either become overkill or you need to slow down etc. Tons of possibilities and only you know best. Edited by Serpent on 15 June 2014 at 11:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 24 16 June 2014 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
Your current plan seems great. When I was clawing my way from A2 to B2, my major activities were: 1. Speaking French with my wife. 2. Working 3 times/week with a tutor, who really pushed me to talk about abstract subjects and defend my opinions (which I needed for the DELF B2 exam). 3. Writing 100 words/day on lang-8 for 30 days, and getting corrections (this helped me with tons of minor problems). 4. Reading between 500 and 1000 pages, I would guess. 5. Spending three hours flipping through Essential French Grammar. So I made it from A2 to B2 in 4 months of very intensive work, but my actual official "study" time was about 3 hours. All the rest of my time was spent absorbing French, using French to communicate, and getting feedback from smart people who could notice my mistakes. Mind you, I learned a lot in those 3 hours—reading that book sorted out all kinds of stuff I half-knew, and to which I had already been massively exposed, but which I hadn't yet entirely figured out in detail. So, my thoughts are: 1. Fun stuff in massive quantities can take you very far. 2. Sometimes large quantities of fun stuff can prepare you for a short, intense period of actual studying that pays off dramatically. 3. It certainly helps to have sources of feedback: People who can point out when you're glossing over or messing up the details. Sooner or later, you need to start noticing gender and prepositions and other tiny choices made by native speakers, even if your brain would be happy to gloss over them.
There's a real risk that you might find most group classes demotivating. You're on track to become a fully fluent Spanish speaker, and a lot of your potentially classmates may never be able to pull that off. So if you choose the wrong group class, you might end up feeling pretty awesome but not making much actual progress. Of course, if you can a class of other dedicated students, that could be helpful. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4639 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 11 of 24 16 June 2014 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you love reading and don't enjoy Anki, absolutely read. Lets say for every hour you spend using Anki you
learn as much vocab as for 5 hours reading... What is Anki's selling point here? Smiling infomercial lady: "Anki allows ME to spend less time doing the things I love!" Edited by AlexTG on 16 June 2014 at 7:07pm 2 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 12 of 24 17 June 2014 at 12:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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That's not necessarily true, Alex. I find reading to be highly efficient for passive vocabulary. But when it comes to the active vocabulary, it is a much slower process where some words just won't be ready in my brain for immediate active use even after a hundred encounters in books and despite my need for the word. I find this to be less true about listening which just appears to be more closely tied with speaking.
And there is a second point: sometimes you need the speed. Why and what for? You may be dying of boredom with easy books, thirsty for complicated classics or whatever. You may be getting totally demotivated by the slow progress. Or you just need to progress fast before a travel opportunity, exam etc. So, there are advantages to combining the heaps of input with an SRS. But you can totally do without it, if you prefer so. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4910 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 13 of 24 20 June 2014 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
I couldn't disagree with you more. I started using Anki because I had to look up too much vocabulary even in an A1 reader. So there was no fun time, there was only frustration time. I now do anki for 15-20 minutes a day, which is a small proportion of my language studies, but every day I come across words on TV shows or in books that I have learned in the past week. The Anki study means my fun time is fun time because I don't have to spend much time looking things up. Here's my infomercial: "I use Anki because I want to make the fun stuff actually fun." 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| AmyinBrooklyn Senior Member United States Joined 4052 days ago 87 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 14 of 24 21 June 2014 at 5:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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First of all, thank you for all your responses. It's taken me a little while to respond because I've carefully read your posts and wanted to try out a few of your suggestion. But a big thank you for pretty much unanimously saving me the cost of a group class. I think, as suggested, it might serve to make me feel better about my level without teaching me much. I think I feel a little stuck at my level and wish there as an easy way to pull myself out. I think that what Iguanamon said is true, it can be easy to gloss over what we don't know and I certainly don't want to fall into that trap. (I think this is the reason everyone claims they can speak Spanish when in reality, they can order tacos in Spanish). James29, My goal is to master the language for the long term. I am not putting in all of the time just for fun. The fun will be when I can actually understand and hold a conversation with people. I think that's why I like the podcasts and the reading. It makes me feel like I'm really getting somewhere because I can understand what before just sounded like babble. But I am not ready to settle for the level that I'm now. I want to get better and I want to see some progress.
As per your suggestions, I added some TV time. I just picked one of the telenovelas that is streaming on Hulu - Que Pobres, Tan Ricos. It's pretty good and has Spanish subtitles but while I understand what is happening generally, a bit does go over my head and I do miss specifics. I'm assuming that's normal and I should press on. I know many people have found dubbed American shows helpful but I couldn't seem to track down the right link for Buffy or Friends. Cavesa, I tried to find the series you mentioned but instead I just found a cartoon... Was your show a cartoon? I have read the Telenova method but honestly, watching the same episode over and over is not that appealing. Don't get me wrong. If you tell me, that in order to speak at a higher level, I should use that method or I need to Assimil, I will do it. I just might not like it. Iguanamon, I love the idea of writing reviews of the episodes or trying to explain what happened and share them with my boyfriend or my italki teacher. I do feel like I still need another podcast. It's nice to have a podcast to listen to while commuting of doing other things around the house. I really liked Casa Rojas and am searching for something else - I like hearing people talk average things in Spanish speaking countries. I loved Notes in Spanish and Spanish Obsessed was pretty good (but I am not a fan of the Columbian girl on that show). My italki sessions are usually just a conversations. I used to write something that we would read and go over, but now we just talk through the day. Or I show her photos from my past and tell her about them and answer questions. She's pretty good about correcting me, but I don't know how much this process helps. It's not like we talk about past tense and then practice past tense - past tense just comes up automatically in conversations. But I do stumble on conjugations... With my boyfriend's mom, we do more of an language exchange - 1/2 English and then 1/2 Spanish. Any suggestions on how to get more out of these sessions is definitely appreciated. As far as books, I have been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory aloud to my boyfriend but he sort of hates it - but we're committed to finishing it. Maybe I'll give the Hunger Games a shot. (I want to clarify that I don't spend that much time on Duolingo and don't really find it that useful but the completest in me just wants to finish it) I think one of my issues (amongst many!) is automaticity in speech. I've thought about giving FSI a shot at this point just because I do really like audio courses. I think I've done all the Michel Thomas courses (Synergy Spanish was the first thing that I did so it's pretty basic and Language Transfer was pretty basic too). I did play around with my Spanish Verbs (From the Practice Makes Perfect series) but in the end, I feel like an audio course is better because I like hearing the language and trying to conjugate in my head vs only writing. Per the suggestions here, I started trying to work again with Anki. I do think it's a good idea. It's just a bit like taking my medicine, but I agree that if it makes reading more enjoyable. Perhaps, I should also bring back writing. I used to do some writing that I would share with my italki tutor but now we are just conversing. I could post it online and get corrections or read it to my boyfriend... And if I'm not doing a group course, maybe I should save my pennies for an intensive somewhere. (Although, I do live with a native Spanish speaker so we could try a little more Spanish at home) 2 persons have 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 15 of 24 21 June 2014 at 7:45am | IP Logged | |||||
Do the intensive! I've never done one, and have always been curious about the experience. I read trip reports on Thorn Tree (before BBC bought it and it started sucking) on language immersion trips, but I don't recall many from HTLAL. And there's a link Jeffer's posted ... somewhere ... about a couple studying Hindi with the Foreign Service. The gov't splits couples up for the study groups, which is something to consider. Save the husband / boyfriend for the fun Spanish stuff you both love, and do the hard work on your own or outside the home. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4145 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 16 of 24 21 June 2014 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think that is the *best* way to use an italki tutor. Going over the past tense and then practicing the past tense are things that you can do on your own. Your time with your tutor - when things "just come up automatically in conversations" - is how actual communication works. Sure, if you want to practice past tense, let her know and then tell stories and answer questions about what happened in the past. But I think that having someone teach you verb tenses over Skype is inefficient. Your goal is to communicate naturally, so I think that natural conversations are the best way to improve. I do recommend that you jot down notes for vocab and sentence structure that you struggled with during your sessions. Afterwards, you can look them up and add them to anki.
FSI works for automaticity. I did it as a an audio-only course while taking long walks. I don't think I would have made it through if I'd been sitting at my computer. The beginning is probably exactly the level that you want: lots of practice for verb tenses (including irregular verbs) and pronouns. I started at lesson 3 and just went through them sequentially (until I came home from my trip to Spain, tried to pick up where I left off at lesson 48, and my brain went into full revolt). FSI is interesting. It isn't exactly "fun", and yet I found it motivating because I could see my progress. I think that how I use FSI - as a purely audio course, used away from my desk - is best suited to someone who already has a background in Spanish. I used FSI to practice, not to learn new stuff. I had to pause a few times so that I could catch up in my grammar book before continuing with FSI. For grammar, I also used Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses. I've found it very useful. I still have a few chapters to complete, but I'm taking a break from active study right now and focusing on using the language instead. I'll probably crack open the book again someday - and probably even finish those last 8 FSI units. Edited by Stelle on 21 June 2014 at 1:42pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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