|
 |
Confidence crisis leads to review | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 10 06 March 2006 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
For some reason over the last week I've felt me confidence slip away. Haven't felt like I can understand or respond well enough. Part of this may be the situtations I've put myself in. Native speakers who know each other and don't speak like professionals. In reality, I don't think I've regressed, perhaps I'm just more aware of my short comings. I actually know that I'm understanding these speakers than I could a month ago. One man who I thought would be the hardest to understand is actually becoming one of the easier ones to understand because he always speaks with such sincerity. He uses a lot of vocal reductions though.
At times I wonder if I should get a tutor. That would be so much easier than understanding extemporaneous speakers in the wild. I do think that when I get to the point where I can understand these speakers, my comprehension will be very good. I just don't know how long that will take. Some days I write down words that come up frequently to fill in blank spots in my vocabulary/understanding. So although I thought I would go to unit 43 or 45 before reviewing, I turned around after unit 41. This weekend I reviewed units 1-5. That brought pronunciation back to my attention. Those units were hard to concentrate on because they are no longer challenging enough, although there was a response here and there that I didn't have down. This morning I decided to jump to unit 16 for the review. That one is easy enough to let me focus on fine points and not mind numbing. If it takes 2-3 months to get back to new material, that's not too bad for me. Earlier I had been thinking about just focusing on listening/understanding, but the situations I'm in are social enough that being mute makes me feel overly self-conscious, and therefore isn't an effective strategy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tuffy Triglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 7032 days ago 1394 posts - 1412 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 10 06 March 2006 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I'm not in the position to give any advise since I'm a rookie :) On the other hand I would say just to keep going. I'm sure this is one of those mountains that one day will seem as easy as those early lessons you mentionend. Just look back for a change and see how far you've come. If you see that, rejoice that you're so much closer too the top! :) However, you're just not there yet, so you can't stay where you are either. Just keep climbing until you're up all the way.
Maybe watching a LOT of tv and listening to radio will help. At the stage you are at that should be very helpful I gues. Training your ear to many speakers that way... And also letting you brain think/understand faster. It needs more practise with that perhaps? Buena suerte en todo caso! :-) 2 persons have 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 3 of 10 06 March 2006 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
You are probably a victim of your own success. It seems that you have progressed more than you realize and you are now judging yourself on an advanced level. Just remember, carrying a conversation with a group of native speakers is the most difficult thing to accomplish. There is no wrong answer either progress or review. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7101 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 4 of 10 07 March 2006 at 3:14am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Yes, I think everyone goes through this at some point or other.
That's why I think it's a great idea to go back and review earlier material - the fact that you now find the first lessons so mind-numbingly boring is progess in itself :¬) I quite often do the same thing as you've been doing - pusing forward as rapidly as possible followed by a quick reality check to ascertain where the gaps have been left - doing that's the only way you get to be aware of your shortcomings and the only way you get to work out a plan to address them. Perfectly normal and no need to let it drain you of confidence. Are you reviewing everying (i.e. drills etc.) or only the dialogues. What about a targeted review? Unit 30 of Platiquemos contains a General Review of Units 1-29. That should allow you to identify specific areas. You could then target those areas with the drills from the units concerned. I doubt then that there would be a need to wait 2-3 months before picking up new material again. Andy. 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 5 of 10 07 March 2006 at 5:22am | IP Logged | |||||
When I was doing units 1-5 over the weekend at home, I kept track of the drills I did correctly with no hesitation and removed them from the playlist. For unit 16 on, I'll be in my car most of the time, so it's not practical to keep track of which drills I did to my satisfaction the first time through. So for 16 on, I listen to the whole CD I made, and repeat a track until I'm reasonably satisfied with how that drill went. This way, the review is very broad. Lots of vocabulary used in lots of ways grammatically. Lots of time to practice doing things correctly. Also, I've skimped on the readings, so I'm planning to hit them too. I'm doing some editing of conversation stimulus exercises to create "role" based drill. I.E. if Smith and Molina are talking, I have a version with only Smith, and one with only Molina, so I can play either role in the dialogue. One piece that's important for me is getting comfortable with the Spanish speakers I'm around. It's like speaking Spanish is being vulnerable, so I want to do it in a safe environment. That led to the thinking about a tutor. There was a BBC program link a day or so ago about a guy learning Spanish and a psychologist talked a bit about the psychological challenges. Also the bit where the learner had trouble getting out answers like "I'm N years old", "I'm from ......", and the tutor was very patient, seemed like a cake walk I could use. Thanks everyone for the encouragement. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7101 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 6 of 10 07 March 2006 at 5:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, I started doing that too but in the end I decided I was spending too much time editing and not enough learning. What I've ended up doing with the Conversational Stimulus dialogues is to produce a version for review only which was the same as the "Dialogue for Fluency" (i.e. Phrase + Pause with none of the "pregúntele..." or "contéstele...") . I also strip out the "Dialogue for Fluency" from the relevant MP3 of the main dialogue recording. These I just Shadow. Those edited recordings together with N.24 Review Drills are all I bother with for Platiquemos revision. Andy. Edited by Andy E on 07 March 2006 at 5:55am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tuffy Triglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 7032 days ago 1394 posts - 1412 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 10 07 March 2006 at 7:38am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Maybe you could also train your comprehension and reaction speed by speeding up the mp3's?
Not with Mediaplayer because that's too slow. But with Cool Edit for instance you could double the speed and keep the pitch intact. You have to play with the settings a little but it worked ok for me with Pimsleur sometimes. If you can do/learn it at double speed, it means you're VERY quick in understanding and fluent in responding. And it also cuts your listening time in half so you can do the same lesson twice in the same amount of time :) I'm not sure but maybe this can be helpful (and you should only do it once you know what you're saying and how to pronunce it well). But maybe it's like training with extra heavy materials for the Olympic Games and then finding out you trained too hard... making the contest much easier then (saw a movie about that once :-) Edited by tuffy on 07 March 2006 at 7:44am 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 8 of 10 07 March 2006 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've edited out a lot of the pause for most of the drills, so there isn't much think time in the recordings. If I have to hit the pause button on my CD player, I don't have the drill down as well as I want to. I'm not suggesting this as a technique for others, as it is time consuming to edit the audio. In the end though, I do want to be able to go through just about any drill in the course accurately and at a good speed. The original FSI recordings don't need to be sped up, but there are some extra pauses in places. Platiquemos has one man, the guy playing Jose Molina, who I usually speed up by 20% or more. At least I did that in the earlier lessons.
Are you using shadow in the sense of speaking in unison with the tape, or the more common echo of what was said? You've got a lot of background in Spanish outside of Platiquemos, right? I'm looking forward to reading you language profile. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
