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NO PROGRESS IN Spanish!! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5992 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 17 of 27 16 August 2009 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | ||
Dear Cad40324, First of all, relax max, you're not alone. Basic fluency is a shy and spurious beast which some people attain faster than others. I've been studying Spanish, more or less, since December, and I am still a long way off. You've got some good materials there, I've got the same, except for the latin american stuff, but since you're only half way through them one would assume you're missing half of what you need to get to 'basic fluency' no? Even the completed passive and active wave of Assimil only gets you to a rough B2. So, it's no surprise that you're not there yet. But the emphasis is on the yet. Good work with the Anki, but 800-1000 words isn't as much as some members are making out. Really, try to boost that in what ever way you think works best for you. There's a number of vocab learning methods talked about in depth on this very forum. Also, the only way to understand Mexican TV is to watch it. It is going to be so different to pimsleur and assimil, MT and whatever other audio things you're using that it is definitely going to take some time to get used to. But that's life. Exposure is the key to success, so go and expose yourself to it. Also, the language that you 'learn' will always be slightly different to the language of the street, restaurant or tv. But you'll pick it up in time. 2.5 months is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Keep up the good work, and remember that you are not the exception, rather the rule. As to you're progress. Take a step back, think about where you were three months ago, and see how you have improved, I assure you that the progress will be there. Now, go and finish assimil or something. Thom. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 18 of 27 16 August 2009 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Reading your post, I had a few thoughts.
1) This is your first foreign language. I found -everything- a lot harder in my first "real" foreign language, as opposed to any subsequent one. 2) Not all audio is equally easy to understand. I can understand quite a bit of Assimil in some languages where I'd be entirely lost trying to watch TV... clarity of speech, use of slang words, etc, can make things a lot harder at first. TV varies from fairly easy to very difficult even in your native language - look at scenes where someone from another English speaking country is using really fast regional speech, or when someone is yelling over loud background noise, etc. I find the general order of audio progression to be something like this: - understanding material for learners - Assimil, slow news, ... - understanding simple TV / radio programs (news clips can be useful, although they'll also contain unfamiliar vocabulary - they tend to be spoken very clearly) - being able to almost understand everything a native speaker talking one-on-one with you says (... but there will always be exceptions: you probably know native English speakers who mumble too much for you to understand them consistently, for instance, and you will occasionally learn new words too - that's not the point). - being able to listen in on two native speakers (ie, while waiting in line or on a bus) - being able to understand more or less any TV show or movie - being able to fully interact in groups with multiple discussions in loud environments, such as bars. I only hit this level with Italian last year, after 10 years in an Italian-speaking area... it's easier with subsequent languages, though. This does NOT come automatically with even fairly decent levels of fluency; it seems to require some time to get ok at even in your native language. 3) Several things may be worth trying; if you do, please say which seem to help. - Listen to lots and lots of Spanish music. Try with full attention, entirely in the background, and listening for sounds; words like "and" should start popping out fairly soon. - As above, but other audio sources - TV, online radio stations, ... - Listen to audiobooks or news shows while reading corresponding Spanish transcripts. What you listen to isn't critical - being interested is, and having a transcript you can largely understand is also helpful. A lot of learners also seem to like things like "slow news", which has content in simplified language at slower speeds; I don't like it, but it may be worth a try. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alvinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 6232 days ago 828 posts - 832 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish | Message 19 of 27 16 August 2009 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Do you live in a place full of Hispanic people?
Can't you chat with them or do they avoid speaking Spanish because of the need to speak English? Edited by Rhian on 16 August 2009 at 9:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cad40324 Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5644 days ago 11 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 20 of 27 17 August 2009 at 12:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, the sheer amount of advice on this little thread is amazing. Muchas gracias a todos. I found everyone's comments and advice to be useful and motivational.
Crush: Yes, the vocab thing makes a lot of sense. I will definitely try to incorporate more vocab. study into my afternoon study sessions. I went to Half Price Books today and picked up a copy of the little Barron's Spanish Vocabulary book. It doesn't use any of the words in context, but it can't hurt! I will start loading my Anki with these words I find most useful. I have also discovered the Iversen word method. I have used that twice now, both with a set of 5 words, and have found that very effective for me. Thanks a lot! ccclemons: Thanks for the encouragement! artistscientist: An audiobook sounds like a great idea! I can get the audio and the book, and just listen and read. Does anyone else have an opinion on whether I should look up the words when I do this! ¡Muchas gracias! Aeroflot: Mexican tv i will watch, then! I will also check out that website. Thanks a lot, also. Alvinho: Now that school has started back, I have had the opportunity to practice my Spanish a bit with some of my latin-American friends. Unfortunately, school bureaucracy renders it almost impossible to actually talk with friends, so I do not have much time. I talk with one girl at lunch every day, which I take immense pleasure from. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ewomahony Diglot Groupie England Joined 5580 days ago 91 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French, Afrikaans | Message 21 of 27 17 August 2009 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||
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i would continue doing what your doing if im honest.
ive been studying Spanish at school for 3 years, doing approximately 2 hours 15mins a week plus an hours worth of homework. after the 1st 2 years not much hapened but this year something clicked & now i think ive reached basic fluency. id advise you to a) focus a little more on grammar, its key. b) watch mexican tv as its 1 of the most productive ways of learning, although it doesnt seem so. c) percevere, as youll succeed! buena suerte! :] 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| amethyst32 Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5647 days ago 118 posts - 198 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, French | Message 22 of 27 18 August 2009 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||
I am also a beginner in Spanish; I've been learning for about 3 months and I put into it as many hours and minutes every day as I possibly can. The OP's post could have been written by me because I had felt as though I was getting zero return on all this effort, but I have to say that this above quote is the single best piece of advice that I've tried so far. I listen to the News in Slow Spanish podcast, but I wasn't even able to keep up with that until I stopped trying to understand it and instead I just listened to each sound. I was understanding about 20% of it when I read this thread yesterday; today I am understanding 80% and I now actually believe I will be able to learn this beautiful language one day. Muchas gracias, Splog! =) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5863 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 23 of 27 19 August 2009 at 6:00am | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6078 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 24 of 27 19 August 2009 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Alright guys
Okay, I have 2 experiences of building up a listening ability, both which started the process with almost no listening ability. The first one was for my very first language, Cornish. The results of this may be a little amplified as I did about 30-45 minutes (average) conversation per week overall, but the basic principle still stands. My Cornish listening ability wasn't great at all, a lot of the time, speakers had to slow down for me, and pronounce everyo word enunciating everything and seperating it all, "as if I was talk ing to you like this speak ing with ever y sin gle syll a ble and ever y sen tense" A friend of mine started releasing music podcasts, all in Cornish. Itd have some music, some chatting, some comedy, some news etc. and, being a friend, i listened to it. It was about 20 minutes long or so. As it happens, I ended up listening to it while i was in the shower, it would play while i was there. None of this was intended as specific listening practise, rather just enjoying myself. There was this one episode, which i really liked, with good music etc. and I ended up listening to that lots. What ended up happening was not that I could understand every single word (which would be amazing, but obviously you must learn the vocab for that) but i was able to pick out every single induvidual word that was said. It's strange, so while I didnt understand the words, it changed from a garbled mess of some things I could understand, misxed in with a lot of incomprehensible jabber, into distinct words, that I could not understand, but knew the words were there. Asif**waswrittenliketh**sentence****nogapsand****words***don 'tknow (which you have no chance of understanding, even if you know all the words) and changed **** a sentence like this, broken ** and comprehensible, *** still with some unknown ***** I hope that you can understand my explanation. I now have, what I would call (with good reason) a perfect Cornish listening ability, I can pick out every induvidual word spoken, and I can keep up with any pace of speech, obviously after years of practise and the training i mentioned, which lasted a matter of everyday (you have a shower everyday so..), for weeks and weeks, possibly up to 6 months. My other experience was with the beautiful Spanish language itself, in which I downloaded lots of podcasts and listened to it constantly for about 4 or 5 hours, and the same thing as above happened. Didnt understand every word, which wasn't my goal, but i did hit my goal of being able to pick out most words. This skill didnt stay with me as long as the Cornish one did (probably due to time spent), but by the end of the day, I could distinctly make out every word, whether i understood it or not. Therefore, in summary, my advice to you is this: 1) Download some podcasts, perhaps those which I used (beginners speeds and vocabulary - native level) at Notes in Spanish (google it) 2) Put them onto a phone or something that has speakers (as opposed to headphones) 3) When you have a shower (which I hope you do everyday :p), put it on, if you forget (as i often did) dont worry about it, its not a strict sorta schedule. 4) Im not gonna tell you how to study them, but what i did was to listen to 1 at a time, everyday, until I got to the point where I could distinguish most words. The programme was released fortnightly, so on the day of the release, id download the new one and listen to that that day. So I worked on induvidual items, while still getting max exposure to new material 5) Always enjoy! I know this is always said, but do not listen to them because I said so, nor because itll improve your listening abilities ... listen to them because you enjoy the subjects they are talking about! For the music, for whatever reason, just as long as it resorts to wanting to listen to it. Don't like a certain episode? Chuck it! Delete it! It doesnt matter, no ones gonna do or say anything. 6) I would also back this up with real live speaking at something like SharedTalk, like I did :) You should notice an improvement in your listening ability pretty soon Best of luck TEL PS. Forget about these hour things, to me they mean nothing. Im young (15) and i might learn a bit better than my grandad, who takes lets say 300 hours to get to X point. But thats my granddad! Not me!!! We all got different ages, personalities, thoughts, abilities, methods ... you cannot put a number on how many hours. So ignore all that talk, and work at it until you get there!! No disrespect intended to anyone who's mentioned hours, but i think my point is valid, and that although there are certain guidelines similar to what yous have set out, you canNOT put a number on it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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