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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6063 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 1 of 2 22 February 2008 at 10:42pm | IP Logged |
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I studied Spanish in school (junior high, high school, college), for about 7 years total, and cannot hold a conversation to save my life. Its embarrassing for me to say that - especially on this forum where I read about all the gurus who learn languages in 6 months - but I think thats the case with most Americans.
There has to be something wrong with foreign language education here in the United States, because I don't know anybody who has attained any level of fluency in a foreign language by completing their requirements in school (or by any means). Generally, the only people who speak multiple languages are recent immigrants, and their children. By contrast, other countries completely put us to shame as far as polyglottery goes. For example, I was amazed at how fluent in English everybody in the Netherlands was; all the young people I met(even children) spoke English. Whats wrong with us? Anyway, I told myself I would finally learn Spanish in 2008 through self-study. I figured taking a course would be a waste of time and money, since school has never helped me before, even though I always excelled in Spanish classes. The only problem is that I'm terrible at sticking to things, and will have to force myself to keep it up. I started Barrons Mastering Spanish Level 2, and so far so good. Now on tape 7, I find that pronouncing words is more natural, whereas in the beginning my jaws would get physically tired from struggling to articulate sentences in a lesson. I've been skipping over the conversation stimulus dialog, and the reading responce drills because I'm not sure how to use them (i'm pretty sure you need guidance from a teacher to utilize those). Other than that its great, and I think its helping me internalize grammar, instead of calculating it. In addition to Barrons, I've started reading "Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal", which I chose because I thought a pre-teen book would be the right difficultly level for an "intermediate" second language Spanish learner. Other things I've attempted to read (adult books, and newspapers), have either been so difficult to understand that I couldnt get through a page, or so boring that I didnt care to. Harry Potter, while not advanced reading, its still difficult for me, and slow going - in the first chapter (14 pages) I had to look up and make flash cards for 70 words - but its such a great book, I'm compelled to continue the tedious process to see what happens next. Hopefully my Barrons, and Harry Potter regimen will pay off, and improve my Spanish greatly in the coming weeks... Edited by tritone on 23 February 2008 at 12:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6382 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 2 23 February 2008 at 3:18am | IP Logged |
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Good luck! I hope your Spanish goes well.
By the way - language education, especially in North America, has been critiqued many times on these forums; the general consensus is similar to what you've said. The one thing that's helped my Spanish most is listening to Spanish audiobooks while reading a corresponding text in English; you may want to give that a shot with "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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