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FSI/Platiquemos Progress at various stage | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| keithbc Senior Member United States Joined 7092 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 10 02 November 2005 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was wanting to hear from some of you about how you improved at various points in the course.
For example 1. How good you could read 2 talking on phone or in person in the language 3. Expecially how well you could understand ppl in the language 4. How well you could chat and how often you were looking up words. How did you improve in the previously stated items at variuos levels in the program IE End of level 1 and 2, etc and after completing the course. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 10 03 November 2005 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm beginning to review unit 24, and I've studied up to unit 31. I've also done other supplemental studying along the way. After finishing unit 15, I could speak pretty easily on a topic I had thought about in advance. For instance, a description of "my family", or other introductory remarks. I definitely didn't (and still don't) know all the grammar, so I may have said things in the indicative mood that perhaps should have been said in the subjunctive. I could talk about immediately obvious things with sympathetic listeners. Not much stumbling around, just a very limited vocabulary.
Reading is introduced in unit 16. Things I'm familiar with or have read before in English I can read with pretty high comprehension. I can get the gist of newspaper articles. Vocabulary limitations are probably the biggest obstacle for comprehension. When I listened to non-professional extemporaneous speakers after unit 15, I could only make out a few words. Of 15 speakers talking over the course of a couple of hours, I probably only got a reasonable gist of 3 of them, although I knew in a general way what topics they might be discussing. At the moment, I'm still not focusing much on vocabulary per se. I'll do that after I finish the FSI course. I'm doing more work with audiobooks/transcripts though, and that helps my comprehension a lot. It's also easier for me to develop at least the passive vocabulary with audio and transcripts than by doing flash cards. (although I used flash cards at one point in my studies). With repeated listenings, I become more and more familiar with the story even though it was pretty much over my head when I start the process. (I.E. I may have listened to 500 words, and could only say a couple sentences about what the story was.) As time goes on, I can understand pretty much the entire story without referring to a translation, even if they are speaking normally/quickly. I get the gist of TV as well. I'm not proficient enough to where reading or watching television are effortless. They require concentration. I think you will notice improvement as you complete each level. I believe the ILR/FSI proficiency estimates on the Platiquemos site for various levels are reasonably accurate. If you particularly like some activity, such as reading, you will probably progress in it faster that I have. By way of analogy, each unit is a color in a painting. As more colors are added, the picture gets clearer and more detailed. With 8 colors, you can make out what some of the paintings in the museum are. With 16, even more. With 32, some paintings become beautiful, but there are still many more colors to be added. Edited by luke on 30 December 2006 at 5:03pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 10 08 July 2006 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Eight months later I've studied FSI Basic Spanish/Platiquemos up to unit 46. I've also dabbled into Assimil and audiobooks as supplementary material. I haven't done justice to all of the FSI readings. During some review I hope to plow through them. The review of units 24-30 in my previous post continued for about 2 months after that post. So level3 and a review of units 16-41 took me 6 months.
On the reading front, I see progress. I'm not a big reader. Books on familiar topics of interest are penetrable. There is still some grammatical points (past subjunctive, etc) and vocabulary that I don't understand. I have a book of mediations that was difficult to understand when I was around unit 30. Now I generally understand it well. It's not as easy as reading English, but today I don't need the English translation to understand the reading. Over the last few months I've not had a lot of opportunity to practice speaking, though I occassionally surprise myself with an eloquent outburst. My nature is extreme introversion and shyness. One fellow at work who is from Colombia had thought I was a real beginner because he'd throw something at me like, "Today is Monday, what was yesterday? What is tomorrow? What is the day after yesterday? What is the day after tomorrow?" It probably would have been smart at the time to go ahead and wrap my mind completely around that conversation so we could move on. That conversation wasn't interesting to me, so it wasn't until later when we were having a real conversation about his family, usage of t�, etc, that he realized I was actually reasonably advanced. Sometimes he'll talk to me in the hall at 90 miles per hour in Spanish and I can generally understand him pretty well. There's context around that sort of conversation. TV and radio I can understand fairly well if I find the program interesting. Unfortunately for me, most of them aren't all that interesting. Perhaps I'm just preoccupied. Overall, my comprehension of TV and radio is noticeably better, but not effortless and no where near where I want it to be. A couple times when I was bored with FSI drills, I thought, "I could probably just start listening to the radio and learn a lot". That's encouraging. Since I've only completed 3/4s of the FSI course, I don't want to abandon my formal studies yet. In fact, I plan to continue formal studies for some period after completing the Basic Spanish course. Although I don't write much in Spanish, the phonetic nature of the language makes that facet of the language not particularly challenging, versus an Asian language, or even a Cyrillic alphabet, or Arabic. When I finish the course, I plan to review it. I'm looking forward to completing the course. I think my other studies will seem easier and more fun in comparison. I've been able to complete the last 3-4 units at the pace of 1 per week. Starting with unit 47 I may do a unit over 2 weeks. Several of the units from 47-55 are longer than average. As long as I complete the course (sans review) by the end of the year, I'll be satisfied with my progress. These are just my experiences. A more gifted student may be much further along at the same point in the FSI course. The FSI course has been an effective tool for learning Spanish, but if you don't approach the learning process with some discipline, you may not get to where you really want to be. Perhaps one can compare language learning to physical fitness. There are those gifted athletic types who don't have to work at it to be in good condition. Normal people have to put in consistent effort to maintain an elevated state of healthfulness. Edited by luke on 19 August 2006 at 11:28am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 4 of 10 08 July 2006 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've also noticed that at times Spanish syntax has silently crept into my English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rafaelrbp Pentaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 7011 days ago 181 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English, French, Italian Studies: German | Message 5 of 10 08 July 2006 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well Luke, I think it's time to move your "Spanish" profile to at least "Basic Fluency". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7090 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 10 08 July 2006 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, but once you are in shape you don’t have the excise as hard to stay fit. I think the same thing goes for languages, similar to the analogy of learning to ride a bicycle. Edited by Farley on 08 July 2006 at 3:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 10 08 July 2006 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Since both you and Farley have mentioned that, I'll take your counsel.
I've heard that's true. It will be nice to get to the point where a maintenance mode of just using the language is sufficient to continue making progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Learning_spanis Newbie United States Joined 6913 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Studies: Spanish, English* | Message 8 of 10 16 July 2006 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am currently in the same lesson that Luke was in a couple of weeks ago- platiquemos 47. Before I started with FSI/platiquemos, I had taken through the second year of college Spanish (standard US college courses) and worked with Pimsleur through level III.
I don't talk Spanish very often. When I do, I can usually say enough and well enough to induce native speakers to start talking well beyond my capacity to understand. I can get a lot of what they say, but not enough to feel utterly confident that I understood them properly- after all, the difference between an affirmative statement and a negative one can often be simply a word or two! I can get more out of Spanish-language radio than I used to, but it still takes great concentration, and I still only get the gist, not the details, of what is being said. I can express myself fairly well in Spanish, but I am sure that a lot of what I say will sound odd (although understandable) to a native speaker. I also do it slowly- it definitely takes me a while to put together what I want to say. I use the platiquemos recordings, and mostly just glance at the text. However, my reading seems to have improved a great deal as well. I can read straightforward text without much pain, although certainly much slower than I do with English (my native tongue) and without 100% comprehension, particularly of nuances. In a way, platiquemos seems like it will get me through the beginning stages of learning Spanish. I don't mean this in the way that "beginner" is often defined in language instruction. But it appears that it takes the whole course toI encounter the various grammatical forms, the structure of Spanish phrasing, etc. I don't see how I can be at anything but a beginning stage when there are still verb forms that I don't know. SO platiquemos seems like a great foundation, but I will by no means be able to use the language with any ease without a great deal more work. Or so I imagine. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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