Simultaneous Spanish and Esperanto (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

Simultaneous Spanish and Esperanto
Tags: Esperanto \| Assimil \| Japanese \| Spanish
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14 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

magic9man2
Diglot
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149 posts - 153 votes

Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French, Cantonese, Russian, Korean, Taiwanese, Arabic (Levantine)

Message 9 of 14

25 December 2007 at 7:55pm | IP Logged

Making good progress. You'll know all the Joyo kanji in no time. GL
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snozle
Newbie
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16 posts - 16 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto

Message 10 of 14

29 April 2008 at 10:55am | IP Logged

I haven't posted in a long time. I got past 800 kanji in my studies before break ended then never resumed once classes started. I was a bit overwhelmed with classes my first year and my time management skills weren't good enough to incorporate Japanese into my studies. My progress with Assimil and other non-character related studies was a bit better though.

Anyway, I will be heading to Spain this summer to take a basic Spanish language course. I will be staying with a Spanish family so I wanted to have some foundation before I go even though I will be taking a beginner course. I started with Michel Thomas Spanish yesterday, doing about 45 minutes worth. Michel Thomas is, on my first impression, amazing. I have used Pimsleur for Japanese, but it doesn't compare with MT. While doing Pimsleur I would get easily distracted, however with MT I was engaged for the entire duration. I will be doing about 30-60 minutes of MT a day. I have the regular (8 hour) course as well as the advanced. Does anyone know whether I can go to the advanced course right after the basic one, or should I wait until I become a little better?

Assimil Spanish with Ease is coming in the mail today. I was a huge fan of it for Japanese so it was an easy choice to begin my Spanish studies. Not having to learn a new character system is nice because I can start entering the lessons into my SRS directly. I hope to complete at least one lesson a day until I leave.

I've heard good things about FSI, but my understanding is that it's Latin American Spanish and I wanted to stick to Castellano Spanish for now.

Regarding Japanese, for now my studies have been slightly postponed. I was getting discouraged and not seeing much progress. I feel that by studying Spanish, which, compared to Japanese seems trivial, I will hopefully progress relatively quickly and be encouraged to return to my Japanese studies when I get back from Spain. I really want to become multi-lingual and I feel that I should tackle an easier language as my second language. Once I get to conversational level, then I can start with more difficult languages with the knowledge and confidence that I can learn a foreign language.

By the way, is there a way to rename this thread topic?

Edited by snozle on 29 April 2008 at 11:02am
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kealist
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Studies: Uyghur, Mandarin, Shanghainese

Message 11 of 14

29 April 2008 at 1:36pm | IP Logged

snozle wrote:

By the way, is there a way to rename this thread topic?

If you edit your first post, you should be able to change the topic.
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snozle
Newbie
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Joined 6306 days ago
16 posts - 16 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto

Message 12 of 14

04 May 2008 at 10:26pm | IP Logged

I have been doing Michel Thomas and I can say that it's absolutely amazing. At first I was a bit skeptical of all the seemingly quixotic praise it was receiving, however it has thus far managed to live up to it.

I have been loosely following somewhat of a regimen. I do half of one of the CDs per day, usually at night. I find it is best to do this while sitting on my bed, relaxed. I use the pause button amply and make sure that I say everything out loud when prompted. Also, I repeat whatever they say multiple times even when not prompted.

The following day I review the lessons I have done the previous day. I generally do this while walking to and from classes and find that I don't need to devote my full attention to the course like I do when I first encounter the material. I also don't pause and repeat as often and if I do repeat I don't say it out loud but simply mentally recall it. I am amazed at the amount I am able to recall the following day which serves the purpose of solidifying the knowledge and also affirming my progress.

I'm not studying too intensely and I find this a good pace for now. Once I finish the Michel thomas fundamental course I will probably move onto the advanced course and do that concurrently with Assimil.

On a side note, my roommate and I have decided to learn Esperanto. We study with lernu.net everyday and plan on doing it for the remainder of this year and over the summer. Hopefully by that time we will be fluent. Presently, I don't find any issues with learning Spanish and Esperanto simultaneously but if I do Spanish will take priority.

Update: I decided to log the amount of time I've been spending studying with a site called trackulous, which is a research project in my department at university. I just updated the values for the past week today so they're rough estimates, but I will be doing this every day in the future. A link is below.

Time Spent studying Spanish

Edited by snozle on 05 May 2008 at 12:55am
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snozle
Newbie
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Joined 6306 days ago
16 posts - 16 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto

Message 13 of 14

12 May 2008 at 2:05am | IP Logged

I have become absolutely enamored with Esperanto over the past week. There is something about studying it that has become addicting. Perhaps it is the short lessons on lernu and pacujo which tend to highlight your progress. Or perhaps it is the palpable community at lernu.net. Maybe it is the email correspondence and the enthusiastic feedback I have gotten from both sites. Most likely it is a combination of the aforementioned and the nature of Esperanto itself. I have, in one week, felt tangible progress and was able to use a combination of my knowledge and the built-in lernu dictionary to decipher and respond to a message sent to me from a friendly counterpart in Ukraine.

I have found myself having to tear myself away from Esperanto to do things I have to do. It is exciting and at the same time relaxing. When I am tired from my classes I can look to Esperanto for solace and excitement. I feel that, given enough time, I can decipher just about any text using the built in dictionary, which is very exhilarating.

I realize that this post, which was initially intended to report my progress has become somewhat of an ode to Esperanto, but the fact that I had to tear myself from studying Esperanto simply to type this post is a testament to how much it has invigorated me.

Getting back to practical consequences of learning Esperanto. It has piqued my interest in language altogether and I feel that I have created an insatiable thirst to tackle more languages. I am concurrently learning Spanish in anticipation of my summer program in Spain. The Esperanto is detracting some time from my Spanish studies, but again, I am taking an introductory Spanish course while there. Furthermore, I feel that by the time my course starts (slightly over a month from now), I will be much better at Esperanto, which will help me comprehend Spanish better than if I were not to have learned Esperanto first. I recall reading about a study in which two groups of students were attempting to learn French to fluency at university. The first group studied French for three years while the second studied Esperanto for a year and French for the next two years. The second group was at least, if not more fluent than the first group at the end of the study. I am hoping that this will translate to my Spanish studies this summer.
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snozle
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Joined 6306 days ago
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto

Message 14 of 14

04 June 2008 at 3:04am | IP Logged

Quick update on my progress. I've continued to do Esperanto and Spanish simultaneously, using lernu.net and Assimil respectively. Initially I planned on going through multiple Assimil lessons per day until I got to the active phase, all while inputting the sentences into Anki to keep them in my memory. However, after reading many posts on using Assimil effectively I have decided to stick with one lesson per day understanding that I will not finish before I go to Spain. While in Spain I plan on continuing to use Assimil to supplement my studies of Spanish.

The instructions at the beginning of the Spanish with Ease are severely lacking so I searched the forums extensively to see how others are using it. One of the more interesting methods appears to be the "shadowing method" however, I think I will try to integrate that into my studies later on. For now I plan on following the instructions Reltuk outlines:

reltuk wrote:

I'm afraid that the reason no one on these forums is able to answer your specific inquiries into the use of Assimil to learn Japanese is likely because no one on these forums has done it yet. The English-based "Japanese with Ease" course just came out in late March, so it is likely that you're one of the earliest adopters amongst us =).

That being the case, at the risk of turning yourself into a guinea pig, you have an exciting opportunity to try the course out and tell us about the effectiveness of it =). If you've never used an Assimil course before, I would suggest starting with Assimil's prescribed usage, and only deviating from that when you identify problem points or things that you think you can make better.

The text of the instructions for utilizing the courses vary from course to course, but they all say basically the same thing in my experience. Unless your Japanese with Ease course differs significantly from the standard usage instructions, I would follow them. My understanding of standard usage for the passive phase includes the following points:

1) work with the course at least 30 minutes a day; do not skip days.
2) go through the course at a rate of one lesson per day.
3) every seventh day, read the grammar note summaries for that week's lessons, review the previous seven days' lessons by listening to each dialog at least twice.
4) for a regular day, with a new dialog, do the following:
   1) Listen to the dialog attentively two or three times; listen for interesting things in the pronunciation, intonation, rhythm and flow of the dialog; listen for words that you already know the meaning of, and try to identify what unknown expressions might mean.
   2) Read the dialog and it's English translation, possibly a couple times, so that you know the meaning of what you're hearing. Listen to the dialog two or three more times, with the book open. When you hear each phrase, think of the meaning for the phrase and read the English translation if you need to.
   3) At this point you have a reasonable familiarity with the dialog and it's meaning. Go through the dialog at least twice, pausing the audio after each numbered phrase/sentence. Repeat the phrase you just heard. Try to do it without looking at the book and while thinking of the meaning of the phrase in your head.
   4) At this point you have repeated the dialog and listened to it at least 8 times. Read the notes associated with the lesson. Look for all the phrases that exhibit those grammar points in the current lesson. Try to think of phrases from past lessons that exhibit those grammar points. Assimil consistently exposes you to grammar that they don't explain for a number of lessons, in order to give you a chance to pick up on the rule yourself. If this dialog references a note that appears in the weekly summary for this set of dialogs, flip ahead and read that note at this time. Try not to read any of the other grammar notes that appear in the summary, despite how tempting it is =).
   5) All of this will have taken somewhere between 15 to 20 minutes. Take the next five minutes to do, either mentally or on a separate piece of paper, the secondary exercises. People on these forums generally don't like the secondary exercises, but Assimil puts them there for a reason and until you determine for yourself that they are useful, I think you should stick with them.
   6) For the last 5 or 10 minutes of your study time, listen to the dialog and repeat the phrases (chunked by their numbering) while thinking of the meaning.

When you get to the active phase, you will need a couple more minutes a day (up to 15) in order to go back to the previous dialog for that day and translate/practice production.

I admit that the above course usage method isn't entirely to be found in any one Assimil book, but it's a combination of descriptions from a number of Assimil books and some of my own anecdotes derived from some passing familiarity with a couple FSI courses. It stays within Assimil's description of how to use the course, while elaborating on a couple details of the process.

Above all, try to have fun and stay relaxed. Realize that Assimil designed the course so that you could learn Japanese from it. There are some bad Assimil courses, and they are bad to varying degrees and in various respects, but the majority of Assimil courses are quite good. In general, Assimil courses manage to live up to end of the bargain, which is to provide you with graduated exposure to the language as it is naturally used and spoken. Don't be constantly stressed out about if it's going to work, how to best use it, etc. Especially in your moment of study, when you're actually sitting with the dialogs and the book, it's important to be relaxed and excited about the learning process.

As the course progresses, it will be important to evaluate the methodology and your progress. Do not do this while you are studying. Do it at a completely separate time, outside of your studies. Do not be too hasty in your judgments of failure either: Assimil explicitly removes the burden of language production until after your first two and a half months of exposure to the language; they do this for a reason and you agreed to such a constraint when you signed on for the course.

While you are in the passive phase of Assimil, you should be judging your progress in the language based on what you have been practicing, namely you're ability to listen to and understand the language. Things you should be asking yourself are: Can I understand the dialogs when I go back and listen to them? Can I hear nuances of pronunciation that I couldn't hear in the beginning? Can I repeat the dialogs after hearing them with reasonable pronunciation and intonation? Am I able to chunk my repetitions by the numbered phrases? If you're meeting success in these regards, then the passive phase is working and this is what you signed up for.

This is not to say that you should not attempt to generate the language on your own during the passive phase. If you have access to native speakers, or feel inclined to write in your target language, or simply want to dialog with yourself outside of the Assimil scripts, by all means feel free to. But while you are in the passive phase, do not judge your progress in the course by your ability to do these things effectively. Assimil has given you a course which they claim will allow for these things in time, but that time is during the active phase, and you have intentionally not been practicing these things within the context of the course yet.

Above all, keep a language log, so that we can all see how you're using "Japanese with Ease" and what the courses strengths and weaknesses are!

I look forward to reading it =).

-- reltuk

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