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Perma-beginner stage Spanish. | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Principiante Senior Member United States lucasgentry.com Joined 6069 days ago 130 posts - 138 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 4 11 October 2008 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been studying Spanish for about a year now, but not really consistantly for any long length of time. I've bought lots of study materials -- each time I start, it's generally with some other technique, though I always seem to come back to flashcards, because I can do them any time and I don't need to block out a large amount of time. Through the year, I've picked up lots of different words, maybe somewhere in the 1500-1750 range, which seems to be enough to read newspapers, but not real books.
Okay, so I know you're not supposed to ever come to a stop, or you'll set yourself way back, so I have done well over the last couple months with making sure that I read the front page of BBC Mundo and read a couple full articles every day when I'm at work, and I've got maybe a few hundred sentences and phrases in my SRS program on my PDA that I go through, but other than that, I don't really do a lot. I feel like I'm stuck in the beginner stage. Here are the resources at my disposal. Do you have any recommendations for a course of action? (I've got around an hour or two a day that I can devote to it, but so far, my attention span has shown to be around a half hour long) * Lots of flashcards - around 1500, of which I know about 1200. * SuperMemo on my PDA, so I don't have to have a stack of paper always with me. * Assimil Spanish With Ease - though it's in Spanish Spanish, and I want Latin American. * About 25 childrens' books, set for ages roughly 1st to 4th grade reading levels. * Learn in Your Car Spanish - which I think has done the best for me pronunciation-wise * An Audio version of the Spanish Bible (NVI) - I'm hesitant on it, because I'm afraid that it's read by a robot. It sounds like a person, but it sounds like he stops at the end of every sentence, instead of reading paragraph forms, which makes me wonder if it's robot-read. I also have a Bilingual Bible, of which the Spanish potion is also the NVI version. I've read a lot about listen-reading, and it sounds cool and all, but I want a more neutral Latin-American (Mexican, for example) accent, instead of Spain or Robot. How can you tell where the reader is from before buying an audio book? Yeah, so... If you had those resources and felt like you were completely stuck in Beginner mode, what would be your course of action to break out? I wonder if it's just a matter of putting in the hours intensively, mattering less about what you do and more just doing it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6250 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 4 12 October 2008 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||
Sometimes you can't. Possible ways: - Google the narrator; you'll often be able to find biographical information on where s/he was born and lives. This doesn't help with the problem of human narrators that sound like robots, though. If you can recognize the various accents: - See if a clip of the audio is available (perhaps on the publisher's website) and listen. Also, search for 'mexican online radio' without quotes. If you want a Mexican accent, why not listen to Mexicans? If you like movies, find a place to rent/buy Mexican films. Etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6283 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 3 of 4 15 October 2008 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
I think it's something of a fallacy that books for children are easier than books for adults. Part of the advantage we have as English speakers learning Spanish is knowing a lot of the vocabulary, and that includes many advanced words. There was a bit in the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" (a really great book full of anecdotes written by Nobel-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman) where Feynman went to Brazil after learning some Portuguese. One time he had to say something like "So now I'm here in Brazil", and he realized he didn't know the Portuguese word for "so", so he ended up saying something like, "Consecuentemente, estou aqui no Brasil." The native speakers were impressed by such a large word, but of course it's a pretty easy one for a speaker of English! So, naturally, children and non-native adults have very different linguistic abilities, even in the early stages of learning a language. That said, I think children's books are still a lot more fun to read when you're learning a language, and they'll probably help you more with basic vocabulary. As for your problem, you're probably actually doing better than you think you are. You'll have a breakthrough where everything gets much easier, but still building on the foundation you've already established. At least, that's the experience I had... I stopped studying Spanish in 2001 and picked it back up in 2006, and now I understand how everything works much better than before and I started speaking the language better than ever almost immediately, despite the long break. Something -- I'm not sure what -- had just happened during that period that made things a lot easier. I imagine a lot of people have similar experiences (whether they take a break or not). Don't give up; just keep at it. :) - Kef 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Principiante Senior Member United States lucasgentry.com Joined 6069 days ago 130 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 4 22 October 2008 at 9:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh my, I think I'm well on my way to breaking out, and it's only been like a week since that last post. I ordered Michel Thomas's Speak Spanish for Beginners, and it is amazing. I had been spending all this time just trying to learn words, but not understanding the grammar at all, but with MT to help to link it together, my oh my, it is so helpful. I had last night off, so I spent some time walking around outside (I live far enough out in the country that the only thing that I have to watch out for is dogs - I can ramble on in foreign languages all day and nobody's around to hear it). I did the first CD and then crashed, going to sleep inspired. This morning, I have spent an hour and a half straight on Michel Thomas, and probably after a little rest time, I'm going to head back out and finish off the third (out of ten) CD. Two hours of Spanish in one day!!!
I had constantly complained at my attention span being only about 15-20 minutes, but with the all-audio, it's five times as much! (And I don't worry about not being able to read, because I've been working primarily with texts this past year, so everything he is saying is printing words in my head, which I'm reading as he says them) *swoons* Breaking out of beginner stage, here I come! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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