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Mama acaba de morir en la bañera | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 28 18 November 2011 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Mother has just died in the bathtub - say what??? Assimil Spanish is trying to
take me to a dark place. Already this week I've been scolded by sarcastic postmen, heard all about Baldomero's acute depression, and been told that I would never be loved again the way that you once loved me. And now, it's only lesson 67, and mother has just died in the bathtub. These are surely the most gothic dialogues I've ever seen in a language course. ******************** This will be my third log of an eventual five over the next four years. I want to be fluent in five by fifty, and am actively working on French and Arabic already. I wasn't intending to log Spanish this early, but I'm heading to Mexico tomorrow, and I think it will be interesting to see how far Assimil has taken me. At this point I really do not know. ******************** I never took Spanish in school, and have tried the following self-study methods: 2002: Mexico City. I spent a couple months working on Living Language to prep for this trip. It's the first time I've tried to study a language in ten years. I'm surprised how well I do. I can handle the basics, although I totally fail when trying to flirt at a nightclub. But at the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán a little cutie told me I had nice eyes, and while that's all I understood, it was enough to make all that hard work feel worthwhile! 2006: Guadalajara. I don't touch Spanish again for four years, and now it feels like I'm starting from scratch. But I don't want to start form scratch. I do my own program, thinking I know more than I do, with a heavy focus on verbs, and buy books like Making Out in Spanish and Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish (Keenan). I love the Keenan book, but I end up over-learning the subjunctive and so everything that I said was clouded by a vague uncertainty. 2009: Buenos Aires. Is that really Spanish they speak in Argentina? It sounded more like Italian to me. I studied hard for this trip, and my studies failed me. I started with an Adult Ed night class, but it was atrocious. In the fourth week we were still playing "Go Fish" with a pre-school level deck of cards. platano ... banana! ... ooh I have a match!!! I think the teacher spent her study abroad year drunk in Cancún. I mean, my accent was better than hers. I through a hissy fit and stormed out of the classroom one night, and never returned. But I didn't care. I had discovered podcasts, and thought they were the most brilliant and modern (and free!) way to learn. But I was wrong. Podcasts might make a good supplement to one's studies, but they aren't structured enough for a beginner. I went to BsAs, and to my everlasting shame I had to rely on English. All that work, por nada. Spring 2011: The Yucatan. My buddy and I want to get off the tourist trail, and we'll need Spanish. I splurge on Pimsleur 1 and 2. (and the price isn't too bad if you buy it used, and sell it back to Amazon ... maybe $30 to $40 each in the end!). And this format is such a revelation! It's hard for me to learn orally, but what I did learn, stuck. And it showed - I was speaking Spanish right off the bat. Sure it was simple and basic, but it was correct!. I become a believer, and think that I'll do Pimsleur for every language for here on out. (I do moderate my opinion later, but that's for another language, another log). *********************** And now, Fall 2011. I was focusing on other languages, but this surf trip came up unexpectedly. I figured I'd slip some Spanish in with my other studies, but that doesn't work. I was doing my lessons in Assimil, but felt like I wasn't making progress at all. So two weeks ago I put everything else aside, and focused only on Spanish. I did two intensive weekends, and a lesson or two a day during the week. I also tried FSI Basic Course, but wasn't feeling it. Assimil Spanish is much more intense than Assimil French. It's faster paced, denser, and the lessons are harder. They throw a lot at you right off the gate. For the first 40 lessons I felt like I was retaining nothing at all. And then I started to chomp at the bit; my brain wanted more. I think that's the point, isn't it? For the next 20 lessons I felt like I was making great progress, like I was on the cusp of making big break throughs. And then it got hard again! Lesson 60 and on are introducing so much new material that it's hard to get a solid grasp on it, while the Active phase is now doing new tenses each lesson. I'm curious to see what has really "assimilated." I'll keep doing lessons down there, and realize that I'm only half-way through the course. Nonetheless, I'll report back when I'm home! Edited by kanewai on 18 December 2012 at 10:36pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 2 of 28 29 November 2011 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just got back, and my experiences with Assimil were very mixed.
I ran into problems early on ... on the flight over! I had a very long journey - 3 plane rides and a 4-hour bus ride - and I figured I could pass the time studying a couple of the Assimil lessons. But around Lesson 70 things fell apart. There was too much new material being covered too rapidly, and I wasn't retaining anything. I could do a lesson just fine, but if I listened to it a day or two later I would have almost no recall. The lessons also took an even darker turn than before - Baldamero's creditors paid for him to see a psychiatrist after his girlfriend Remedios threw herself into the river. In the end, I managed to work through maybe one active and one passive lesson - far less than my ambition! And even worse, my speaking skills sucked. I think they were at an even lower level than this past March when my only source was Pimsleur. I ended up making a good old fashioned conjugation sheet of the most common verbs, and used that when going through the lessons. I also slowed my pace down a lot. Instead of 20" on the passive phase and an extra 5" on the active phase, as Assimil recommends, I would spend about two sessions on the passive phase alone, making sure I really understood each tense that was being used. I went back and started the active phase from scratch, and only moved on when I had gone through an entire chapter with 100% accuracy. Instead of ten lessons a week, my pace slowed to two lessons a week. And honestly, I think this is the right pace when you reach the active phase. Assimil seriously misrepresents their program by claiming that the active phase "only adds five minutes" to your studying time. I've run into this before: I reach a certain level in self-study, but find that I need to move back by 2/3 once I'm actually in country. e.g., if I make it to lesson 15 of a book at home, I end up going back to lesson 5 when I'm actually immersed. So far Pimsleur has been the only program I've used that takes you to exactly where they say they will take you - and it's the only one that had me speaking well (albeit with a limited vocabulary!). With Assimil I definitely had a far more comprehensive grasp of the Spanish language, and could read it quite well, but my speaking skills were extremely poor. Assimil promises more than they deliver. I can't judge how I would have done if I had been completely immersed for the whole trip. As it was, I had four days of near-immersion, and then a week in Puerto Vallarta where everyone I met seemed to speak English. Moving forward? I don't know yet. In the long term I'd like to learn Spanish well, but it's not one of my current target languages. This was a bit of a diversion! I think that I would probably finish Assimil - I do like the system - but would plan on taking six months or so to finish. I would also probably need to supplement it with a good program that focuses more on listening and speaking. Edited by kanewai on 29 November 2011 at 9:35pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 3 of 28 30 November 2011 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
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My God. I've never heard such of such a morbid, disturbing, and yet fascinating lesson in a language course.
Of course, you can only say the title of this log once in your life, if that many times, but the material sounds very engaging. I too find that Pimsleur is very useful, but only in a limited way. If you want to be able to speak using a limited vocabulary, have a good accent, and be able to listen, Pimsleur is a great start. Buena suerte con sus estudios... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5189 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 4 of 28 30 November 2011 at 8:01am | IP Logged | ||
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It shouldn't be taking you more than an hour to do the passive and active lesson, and you should be able to put away one pair of lessons per day -- even between lessons 60-85 which I remember to be the hardest part of Assimil Spanish. One thing I did do was supplement with some Iversen word list work to help learn the vocabulary. Certain lessons do introduce a lot of new words, and I felt the best way to learn them was via the word list approach. Also, don't feel obligated to get down each lesson totally cold. Learn each well enough to do a decent job on the L1->L2 written translation and exercises, and then move on to keep things from going stale.
Being in the active phase of Assimil, it's time to think about what to do next, such as acquire more levels of Pimsleur since you seem to like their approach. Also, I would suggest getting some verb/pronoun/grammar workbooks because neither Pimsler nor Assimil provide nearly enough such drills. Finally, what about skype language exchanges to improve your conversation ability? Maybe make friends with some porteños and get comfortable with their speaking style? :) Edited by tibbles on 30 November 2011 at 8:02am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 5 of 28 30 November 2011 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
How is this possible? In the past ten lessons they've introduced the conditional, two types of subjunctive, another past tense, and the future tense. I did a lesson a day, and was retaining about ten percent of each lesson. It was all becoming a bit of a blur. I can see picking up the pace again after this hump - I was doing ten + lessons per week in the beginning. But this middle section really does demand more time. And getting 100% on the "active phase" hasn't been that hard. Yet, I should add - I'm only on lesson 20 of the active phase! It takes me a couple tries to get through a lesson without a mistake, but that's not bad. I'm not sure where I'd move on to next. While I admire Pimsleur for what it does, I think it's only really helpful for the first stage of learning. I've heard that the payoff in Pimsleur decreases after the second level - that the third really isn't worth the effort. I'm thinking either Perfectionnement Espagnol (Assimil, but in French) or the FSI course, along with dual-translation novels (I have Don Quixote ready!). But I'm open to other ideas. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 6 of 28 25 July 2012 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I listend to the fist CD of Harrap's Michel Thomas Espagnol Débutant this morning. It was fun doing a Spanish refresher with a French base, though it helped that I knew the Spanish vocabulary already and was just using it as a warm-up.
I'll be doing audio work with Spanish the rest of the summer, just to get my ears used to the language again, and then start in earnest this fall. I've studied Spanish off and on so many times over the years; this time I intend to keep at it for a year and not stop until I'm at a solid level. I've just spent a year bringing my French to a decent level, so I have a much better idea of what this entails! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 7 of 28 09 August 2012 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Spanish Take Six (and a Six Week Challenge)
We found a great deal and my buddy are off to Guatemala in November - so that was my impetus to start Spanish earlier than I intended. And just in time for my first six- week challenge! The last three weeks have been about trying to reach my highest prior level, so it hasn't been active learning so much as a hard-core re-learning. Sometime in September or October I should transition into newer and more interesting territory. I'm surprised how much the Challenge is pushing me, and at how much extra I'll do just so that I can log it on twitter. I need that extra psychological push; I want to get past this early drudge work soon. I made it to 12th at one point last night, which is my highest rank of the week. I was in the field a lot on Tuesday, and had hours and hours of driving. I don't think I'll have free time like that again, so that might be the highest I get. I'd love to break into the top ten at least once, though! Pimsleur - Previous: Pimsleur 1 and II in the Spring of 2011. Current: Level II, Lesson 20 (I skipped Level I this round). It's not too bad doing Pimsleur fast. I think I'd be dying of boredom if I stretched this out over a month. FSI Basic - Previous: nada. Current: On Lesson 5. I found FSI French to be extremely useful, albeit also challenging and tiring. FSI Spanish seems to follow the same format, but with fewer drills and a faster pace. Each lesson is divided into two parts, totaling 45 minutes each. By contrast, each lesson in French had about 3.5 to five hours of recorded conversations and drills. I thought I'd read here that this was one of FSI's better courses, so I'll stick with it. Assimil - Previous: to lesson 70, Fall 2011. Current: I plan to restart from Lesson 50, maybe in September, and see how that feels. Edited by kanewai on 09 August 2012 at 11:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5020 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 28 09 August 2012 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, Guatemala. A friend of mine spent 15 months traveling round Central America and
said he could see himself living in Guatemala, he enjoyed it that much. If you like the Pimsleur style of learning you might want to track down Learning Spanish Like Crazy. It's like Pimsleur, but moves at a much faster pace, has far more vocab, and as far as I know covers all of the grammar. Platiquemos is also well worth finding if you are going down the FSI route. Its much more user friendly in many ways, for example, each drill is on a separate track, which makes repeating drills a lot easier, and the audio is a lot cleaner. Both are awesome courses though, seriously. If you work hard through the course it will be hard not to be at least conversationally fluent. Good Luck! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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