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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4822 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 49 of 271 20 June 2011 at 12:29am | IP Logged |
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Well, I am on passive lesson 96 of the Assimil course.
Once again, I have mixed feelings about really how effective this course is. It is a great course, with some great content. But my feeling is that if you did the course exactly as suggested, with no other study, then went over to a Spanish speaking country, then you would be completly lost. Well, maybe not completly, you would certainly know a lot of Spanish in some way or another, but I really dont think you would be very functional at all. I think perhaps if you had learned a language before, and knew what patterns to look for, it may be a different story. Again, I dont understand this perception of Assimil as being a course which doesnt teach grammar. There are frequent grammatical explanations, and the Spanish course explicitly tells you to refer to the grammatical tables in the back of the book. I suppose the key thing is you get exposure to a lot of language very quickly. Just dont pin all your hopes on the course and assume youle have a fanatic type experience. My feeling is thats actually quite rare. I havent had quite as much time for fsi this week as I would of liked, as I have been spending a lot of my free time filling out job applications etc. Even so, I moved on to Unit 8, and luckily, Its seems to have been the easiest unit so far, so much so that I havent had to spend much time with it. So I am starting with unit 9 tomorrow, which I have been looking forward to. I listened to a little of it today and it does seem much more challenging. I also recieved lots of new resources in the post this week. 3 of the practice makes perfect books( Grammar, vocab and verb tenses) Madrigals magic Key See it and say it in Spanish Easy Spanish Reader and Better reading Spanish. Il post my initial thoughts on these later in the week, as its getting late and I'm tired. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5529 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 50 of 271 21 June 2011 at 3:38am | IP Logged |
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Good luck in your studies, dbag.
Just wanted to stop by and say hello since you wrote a nice comment in my Spanish log a few weeks ago. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4822 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 51 of 271 27 June 2011 at 12:05am | IP Logged |
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Thanks Michael!
Its great when I see that some people actually read this. Well, Im not finished with unit 9 yet. Ive had less drives for work this week, so that has affected things on the fsi front somewhat. Ive got a good handle on the unit though, so it wont be long. I have been neglecting the conversation stimulus part of all the units, so I may line them up and spend a few days on them before moving on to level 2. Im currently on passive lesson 103 of Assimil, so it wont be long until my passive wave is over. This will give me much more time to intensivly focus on a active wave dialog. I think this is important, as I sometimes have trouble translating the text. I would say most of the problems come with Spanish word order. I have spent a few hours shadowing dialogs this week. which feels very useful. I will be doing this, and other things with the Assimil book for a long time after the active wave has finished. I will probably do another active wave at some point, but at a much faster rate than 1 hour a day. I am not too sure how best to incorporate my other materials into my study plan. I have done a lot of reading "Easy Spanish Reader" this week, as well as watched quite a few youtube videos in Spanish. I also listened to a few notes in Spanish podcasts today. The inspired beginners podcasts, while being very easy, and having far too much spoken English on them, do contain some useful nuggets. I think listenening to the intermediate podcasts is going to be incredibly helpful. I think I am going to buy the transcripts, although I am concious I am spending probably too much on materials. Instead of going to sleep listenening to Assimil dialogs, I may set my MP3 to play all of the notes in Spanish episodes. The Assimil tapes really are very slow. Edited by dbag on 27 June 2011 at 12:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4822 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 52 of 271 02 July 2011 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
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Major Milestone Post
Well, I have finally come to lesson 109 in the Assimil Spanish With Ease course, thus completing my passive wave. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I am actually rather sad that there will be no more new lessons for me to enjoy. On the other had, trying to balance two dialogs a day has become something of a chore. So now I will be free to fully concentrate my energies on just one a day, which I feel will be much more effective. I mean no disrespect to the likes of fanatic when I say this, but I really do feel that one needs to invest more than half an hour a day into the course if one is to do things correctly. There have been days when I have been tired, have left things late and not completed things correctly. This makes things difficult when you come to the active wave. That being said, I think if one had say, a passing interest in a language rather than a burning desire to speak it as soon as possible, and was prepared to put in just a few minutes a day, that person could pick up an impressive level over a long period of time. So, in about 50 days time I will have offically completed the active wave as well. After that, I am intending to read through the book quickly several times, shadow intensivly and complete transcription exercises, as well as perhaps a second, or even third active wave. These activities though will take second place to other activities like FSI etc. I am looking forward to using "Using Spanish" as well as "without toil". The Assimil method is a fascinating way of doing things for those who like to read. I guess you just have to find your own way of using the courses. On the one hand you have fanatic and loki (on youtube) who seem to achieve amazing results with very little effort, and on the other you have prof A who reccomends using the course for an hour a day for a year. Thats 365 hours!! I would have thought one would achieve diminishing returns long, long before 365 hours was up. Bearing in mind I have now been exposed to all of the vocabulary in the book, I find that much of it is of very little help when reading a newspaper. 365 hours of effort, and not being able to read a newspaper seems silly. So how is my level of Spanish after 109 days? Not geat, I would have to say. I would say that I know a lot of Spanish in some way but would be very hard pushed to use it in conversation. However, there is absolutely no way I would have been able to learn any where near what I have in that time frame without using Assimil. I look forward to pushing on with the active wave and continuing with my adventure into this beautiful language. Edited by dbag on 02 July 2011 at 11:49am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5175 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 53 of 271 05 July 2011 at 2:01am | IP Logged |
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hey dbag, congrats on the milestone. My feelings are roughly similar to yours in many respects. I think you will notice that things really start coming together with the active waves of Assimil. It did not really all come together for me until I did my second wave of Spanish With Ease. I do agree with you that spending just 20-30 minutes on the first run through With ease is very tough... especially when you are doing two lessons. I still remember those lessons at about 60-70 were killers and it would have been extremely difficult to do a passive wave on one of those and also do an active wave the same day. I have thought about Prof A's 365 hour estimate for an Assimil book and I think it is about right for me.
Good luck with the studies. I am interested to see how you do with FSI. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4822 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 54 of 271 06 July 2011 at 12:22am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the comments. Its reassuring that your experience has echoed mine. Inded lessons 60-70 are very tough. They are very long and begin introuducing more complicated elements like the subjunctive, and false friends.
I will be wrestling with these dialogs next week. Tomorrows lesson is "Baldomero tiene problemas" which is full of new and complicated vocabulary. Perhaps I will rush straight to thesse lessons before starting my third wave. Looks like your studies are coming along nicely. I am glad to see you are continuing to enjoy without toil. Best of luck with everything! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4822 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 55 of 271 08 July 2011 at 10:55am | IP Logged |
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The good news is I have accepted a new job, which I will be starting in a months time.
The bad news is I will be earning far less money, as I will only be working 24 hours a week. It is a fantastic posistion though, with quite flexible hours. What has this got to do with language study? Well, its going to mean that I have a lot more time for it. It also means that I will NOT be travelling for an extended period in a Spanish speaking country. I see these as positive developments. I am happy with how my Spanish is progressing, but feel like I could learn a lot, and fast if I had the time to really pursue what I feel has become my obsession. I have been treading water in a way for the last few weeks. I am learning new things, and consilidating some of the basics, but I feel that one needs to put in perhaps 3 hours a day to really progress fast. I dont think I will be able to consistently put in this amount of study until maybe September. By then I should be in something of a routine with my new job, and the nights will be drawing in. Nice weather is so rare in the UK that one has to take full advantage of it. Winter seems like a natural time to stay in doors and study. I need to work out a decent study plan to make best use of this time. I want FSI to form the core of my program, but other activities will be important as well. I have been doing some of the practice makes perfect : verb tenses book, which is really helpful. I actually feel that at this stage it helps more than Assimil. I dont much like the grammar or vocab books, although it appears that they where written by a different author. I am thinking of picking up the prounouns and preposistions book pretty soon though. Easy Spanish reader is a fantastic resource. I often read for an hour or so when I dont feel like "real" study. I have learnt a very rough outline of the history of Mexico entirely in Spanish, which is hugely satisfying. The book does of course use very simplistic constructions, but it is a good start. I have found some other graded material online which is going to come into play. I will post the links when I have time. I wont have much time for study at all over the next few days. This is a shame as I am on some of Assimils toughest lessons at the moment. Oh well, I can always go back to them at the end of the active wave , which isnt really to far away. I think my next post is going to be about other languages I might like to study in the future , and how I might like to go about that. I think its a topic that most people who wind up on this forum spend time thinking about. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4822 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 56 of 271 12 July 2011 at 1:05am | IP Logged |
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Ok so as I said in my last post, I guess that a lot of people who end up spending some time on this forum, probably also spend time thinking about which languages they may like to study in the future.
I am no different. I guess the languages I am most interested in fall into two camps, Romance languages and Asian languages. I suppose what really makes me contemplate learning other Romance languages is reading about this "discount" which has been discussed a lot on here. I love the thought that one would have to invest significantly less time to learn each subsequent language after the first. Because I have managed to learn a reasonable amount of Spanish in quite a short amount of time, having no previous language learning experience , and investing only a moderate amount of effort most day, I truly feel that after a few years at the same pace, I could become quite compentent in Spanish, Italian, French and Porturguese. Out of these four, Spanish of course, would always be my true love. If I never even touch another language in my life, my goal is to achieve and maintain advanced fluency in Spanish. I love the thought that I will be able to accsess the culture of over 20 countries with just this one language. Not only that but there is something about the language itself which I just love. The heavy similarirty of several words to English somehow makes me feel as if I am meeting old friends for a second time. That doesnt really make sense, I know, but I dont really know how else to express it. No other language I have looked at has really gave me the same feeling. In fact, I have always felt a strong affinity to the language, and have wanted to learn it since I was a child. The next language in this list which attracts me would have to be Italian. I think it would give me the same feeling in a way , as to me it looks and sounds like an exotic form of Spanish almost. It feels to me like it should be a very easy language to learn, although there seem to be less advanced materials available than for French or Spanish. There is no advanced assimil volume in English, and there is no basic FSI course. There is however a Learning Italian Like Crazy which I would love to check out, although it doesnt go as far as the Spanish course. If I did decide to take up another Romance language after Spanish, it would most likely be French.This would be for several reasons. Firstly, as it has a reputation of being a reasonably difficult language, I like the idea that knowledge of Spanish would make it easier. Also, there are several things I would now do differently when learning a new language. Something like French would be a great testing ground for new ideas. It seems like an all round useful language, but I doubt, if I am honest , that I would ever have the necessary passion to learn it. It just doesnt strike me in quite the same way as some languages. It would fully open the world of Assimil though... Lastly, portugese seems like a requirement if you know Spanish well. I would love to travel in Brasil. I suppose the attraction of these languages is that they are all doable. As I stated earlier, I really think one could learn all four quite well at my current pace of study, particulary when taking into account the "Romance discount" and the fact that ones study methods would undoubtedly grow more efficent with experience. This is opposed to studying one of the major Asiam languages, which look like they would require intense obsesssion over a very long period of time. I'm tired right now, so perhaps il discuss those another day. Night. Edited by dbag on 24 July 2011 at 11:24pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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