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How long to complete platiquemos? | ||
Tags: Platiquemos | Time to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| schmat Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4507 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: French | Message 1 of 16 25 January 2012 at 6:06pm | IP Logged |
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I am determined. I will spend 4-5 hours per day doing this, preferably 4. I don't want do be spending years on this
course. Ideally, I'd like to have it finished in 3 months. Is that possible? At the same time, I don't want to rush and therefore forget the things that I have learnt. I know that it's necessary to repeat but how many times on average? I already have a bit of a background in Spanish, taken a year's worth of classes and done Michel Thomas. I'm not amazing at all, this is why I have platiquemos now! So anyway, do you think I could finish platiquemos in 3 months with 4 hours of work each day? Willing to put in another hour if necessary. I have quite a lot of time to spare. Thanks all! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| schmat Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4507 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: French | Message 2 of 16 25 January 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged |
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Ok, I'll go for 4 months if need be...
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| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4819 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 16 25 January 2012 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
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I think that 4 months with 4 hours is definetly possible, but you would need to keep the momentum going every single day, and you would need to catch on quick.
How many times you will need to repeat is probably something you will have to work out for yourself. I like to be able to get 99% of the responses correct with almost no conscious thought at all. How quickly you are able to do this may depend on how strong your previous knowledge of Spanish is. I do each drill somewhere between 6 and 10 times, but others do far less. You should seek out irrationales Spanish log, he went through this course in roughly the time frame you are aiming for. He only went through each unit about 3 times though, and he skipped all of level 1, which is not something I would recomend. I have been doing this course for about 6 months, and I often pull 2 or 3 hour days, and I am only on unit 27. Thats partly becuause I spent a very long time doing a review of previous units though. Do you already know how to form all of the main tenses? If not, I would make sure you find something to use alongside Platiquemos to get a birds eye view of the road ahead, otherwise itl be ages before you even touch the preterite. Have you looked at the course yet? Its a monster, but dont be put of. Despite not even being half way through yet, I was able to have an imperfect, although flowing conversation in Spanish the otherday, which lasted nearly 2 hours. This stuff works! My biggest bit of advice would be not to get too hung up on finishing the course quickly. If you dont enjoy it, theres no way youl get through it. If I drill while driving or doing something active I find it very pleasant and engaging, but if I sit down and try to study then I get bored quickly. It helps to master 1 drill at a time, and to split your time into chunks throughout the day. Dont try and do 4 hours in 1 go! I would encourage you to keep a log on here as well, I think it would make interesting reading! Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5580 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 4 of 16 26 January 2012 at 1:09am | IP Logged |
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I did something similar not long since (just over a year) with levels 7 and 8 as I just
wanted to finish the thing and be done (it had taken me well over a year to finish level 6) so here's what I think: If you've completed Michel Thomas that will help because you do already know almost all the tenses and the most common irregular verbs, at least it helped me. If you must do it so fast do it in batches of 2 units at a time (2 to 2 and a half hours) and do these morning and night (for a total study time of 4 to 5 hours). Then if you do each batch of 2 lessons for 3 days you get 6 repetitions (which should suffice if you've done MT. Use day 7 in the week to go through the week's dialogues and review those drills (and only those) that you still found hard when you finished the unit. That allows you 4 units per week or about 18 per month, allowing you to "finish" in just over 3 months. Use the remaining 3 and a half weeks for a lightning review (once through every unit), which you may want to do with FSI to expose yourself to faster speech (I would have done this but that level of FSI Basic Spanish wasn't available at the time- it is now) and to do the readings. Good luck! Are you going to keep a log? Edited by Random review on 26 January 2012 at 1:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5172 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 16 26 January 2012 at 1:32am | IP Logged |
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The previous posters have given some great advice. If you know a good amount of vocab and are familiar with most of the general grammar I certainly think it could be done. The limiting factor I see is how boring that sounds... spending 4 hours a day on FSI drills. I do about four hours per week and that is about all I can handle. I get about 45 minutes into a lesson and I start doing the countdown to the end as I am doing the drills. It is a great course and if you can do it you will be pretty well off. I find it very rewarding. I strongly suggest some sort of routine like randomreview has suggested. You may even consider going through it in modified waves... for example, do only the initial dialogue sections and grammar notes for a month and then go back and work through the full lessons. Good luck and stay motivated.
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| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5948 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 6 of 16 26 January 2012 at 12:47pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks to this forum I kept detailed logs of all my language study as part of TAC 2008, TAC 2009 and TAC 2010. Looking over the spreadsheet for my Platiquemos study it came to about 365 hours for the whole course. However, I over learnt the material so it's probably possible to do it quicker. Note that some of the audio quality degrades in the later lessons.
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| chrisphillips71 Groupie United States Joined 5033 days ago 64 posts - 86 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 16 26 January 2012 at 3:02pm | IP Logged |
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I have made it to Unit 47 after studying a little over a year, but now I have seemed to
hit a brick wall. At around Unit 47 the material gets very difficult (i.e. the imperfect subjunctive), the recordings are very long for each audio clip making them difficult to memorize, and the recording quality is at times very bad. I mainly study Platiquemos in my car, which is part of my problem. I really need to sit down and read the materials at this point. Has anyone else had problems around Unit 47? I really wish someone would rerecord Platiquemos because it really is a great course. Also, is everyone doing the readings which start around level 6? I have yet to get into those, but they look very good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5580 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 8 of 16 27 January 2012 at 2:54am | IP Logged |
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@ chrisphillips71: The main reason they are hard (in my experience was the awful audio
quality of some of the drills (the ones Don Casteel didn't re-record). The new FSI Level 4 recordings (= Platiquemos 7 and 8) are much better quality thanks to the amazing work of the guys at http://fsi-language-courses.org (at least 2 of whom are on this forum). Edited to correct incorrect URL, thanks to chrisphillips71 for pointing it out. Edited by Random review on 27 January 2012 at 11:17pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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