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Platiquemos Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| bakerww Pro Member United States Joined 4997 days ago 8 posts - 10 votes Studies: English* Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 16 30 May 2012 at 12:21am | IP Logged |
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I have been reading this website for a while now and figured I would start a log, hopefully gaining more
motivation to finish Platiquemos. I started on Platiquemos a little over a year ago in April 2011 and have made it to Unit 35. Looking back through my notes it looks like I have spend almost exactly 10 hours per unit without distractions plus another 2 to 3 hours per unit of review in the car. I am a little of 400 hours into this program in study (not counting other programs I have done). I have to admit, by this time I thought for sure I would be able to hold conversations with my wife (a native Spanish speaker) in Spanish, but I am not even close. I have tried most methods in the forums here related to using Platiquemos. There really is allot of great content here on ways to use Platiquemos. After various trials and errors, I usually do each unit 10 times through, plus one or two times in review. I start by memorizing the beginning dialog completely (adding all new words to ANKI) and then run through the drills one after another until I am answering 100% correctly. So basically I go through the lesson once a day trying to use the book as little as possible. Then I move on to the next unit and review the past unit while driving to and from work a couple times. Lately I have started reading through the lessons more, just to try something different. I still do not know if it helps or not. I have no problems with grinding things out, so FSI seems to be a perfect match. However, sometimes I wonder if I am not just memorizing the lesson at the end of the day. It seems to me there is a fine line between "over-learning" and memorization. For example, sometimes my wife will here me studying the conversation stimulus section and comment on how much better my Spanish is (I know its because I have done this same drill 10 times over the past week). Then she will try to talk to me in very basic Spanish and it will take a while for me to respond (if at all) and usually with a couple errors. The most frustrating is when talking to native speakers and I seem to know all the words they are using but just cannot put it all together. I know I need to spend more time listening and speaking, For the past three months I have added watching 3-5 hours of novelas a week with subtitles and have definitely seen improvement of my listening comprehension, or maybe just my reading. Though I am still not where I thought it would be at this point. Before I started Platiquemos, I did all 5 Rosetta Stone Spanish courses (before I started reading this website :) ), then did FSI Programmatic volume 1, and Pimsleur 1 -3 over the past 3 years. So I had a decent base before starting Platiquemos. All of this is in hopes of getting to a point where I can start conversing with my wife only in Spanish and using only native Spanish materials to continue learning. It seems to be the consensus here that this is where the results really start to show. For now I am concentrating on finishing this course and moving on in my language learning journey. I know most everyone here has hit a plateau during their language studies. I feel I am definitely right in the middle of one now. I would love to hear any comments or suggestions. Or thoughts on where you were as far as being able to use the language around Unit 35 for those who have used Platiquemos. Thanks! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| AndrewW Newbie United States Joined 4818 days ago 29 posts - 60 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 16 30 May 2012 at 7:21pm | IP Logged |
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You're at a point that I think is one of the hardest and most frustrating. All you can do is keep working
through it, and eventually you'll start to see progress again. My only suggestion, or comment at least, is that between FSI Programmatic and then Platiquemos, that's a lot of work on very similar material. I think you could benefit from mixing it up a bit. Seeing the language in a structure different than the normal FSI drilling. Watching TV is great, but maybe some reading too? Pick something you enjoy doing, and try to start doing a bit of it in Spanish. At some point, you have to throw yourself into Spanish only materials. If you understood them 100%, it wouldn't be learning. People get stuck in a loop of doing language programs because it's comfortable. Sometime you have to take the dive. Good luck :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 16 31 May 2012 at 12:19am | IP Logged |
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Very interesting. I am only a little further ahead of you with Platiquemos (Unit 42),
and have spent a similar amount of time on each unit (I think). I was on Unit 35 only a few weeks ago. So where am I? Well, I would say I can discuss common, simple topics with reasonable "fluency" (by which I mean not too much searching for words, responding to questions pretty much automatically etc.) if a conversation goes in an unexpected direction, I can use circumlocution strategies to keep the conversation going. Often, people are surprised that I have only been learning for 18 months. This said, I am still using very simple language, and probably sound like a child. My accent is terrible. However, I think this is solely to to the fact that I have had relatively little real life practice, and if I had someone to speak to regularly, I would be able to handle nearly any topic with ease. In fact I am quite confident that I t won't take to long to get to this level once I can meet with people regularly for conversation exchange. I put this down almost entirely to fsi drills. They have really helped build automaticity. What do you feel holds you back when trying to speak to your wife? Mainly grammar or mainly vocabulary? Or something else? I predict that one day soon, you will suddenly be able to have full conversations, because that knowledge should be resting just below the surface somewhere. Regards, listening, that is a skill that can be built very quickly, using a mix of native content and intermediate/ advanced podcasts. I will provide some links when I get a chance. Definitely add in more native materials, but don't stop studying. A lot is written about " jumping in to native materials" but to do so entirely at this stage seems to me to be very inefficient. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 4 of 16 31 May 2012 at 3:59am | IP Logged |
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Wow, 10 hours per unit! It does seem perplexing to me that you are doing the units without the book, but are having a difficult time talking. I would say I was roughly at the same level as dbag when I was finishing lesson 35. My strong hunch is that things will really come together for you at some point soon and your speaking will come more naturally very soon. Have you tried reviewing the lessons at all? I would think if you took a few weeks and simply did one day on each lesson that would help tie things together. Anyway... good luck.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5676 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 5 of 16 31 May 2012 at 9:17am | IP Logged |
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Really, there is a lot of material left for you to learn. When i did Platiquemos, right around the time i started the parts on the subjunctive i still had trouble with conversations. But once i really started talking to people, it all came together really quickly. I think you know all the information, but it's still pretty stale. Once you start speaking in free conversations and having to form sentences, conjugate verbs, etc. it will all come together pretty quickly i think. But honestly, you still have a lot of really important structures to cover. I'd say it was somewhere around Unidad 35, maybe slightly before, that i stopped needing to use a dictionary when chatting in Spanish online. Actual speaking took me a while longer to be comfortable with mostly because i never had or took advantage of opportunities to speak Spanish until i had finished the course completely, but i was really surprised how easy it was for me to jump into conversations and how quickly i found my feet in Spanish after completing Platiquemos.
I averaged between 6-7 hours (well, repetitions, so longer units took a little more) a unit as i found that's when i was starting to memorize all the answers, but i was also studying about 3 hours a day. I'd say you should be starting to feel comfortable reading and writing "conversational" Spanish (forum posts/chatting online), speaking might still be difficult (i always felt uncomfortable speaking until i finally threw myself in), but within the next month or two you'll probably start to feel Spanish really sink in and find it much less painful to communicate in Spanish. You might also want to start adding in more vocabulary, i went through Routledges 5,000 most common Spanish words right around this time, too, and after finishing that i was reading (and understanding!) simple Spanish books. My entire Spanish study consisted of Platiquemos and the frequency dictionary, after that all i've used are native materials. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Wes84 Newbie United States Joined 4359 days ago 1 posts - 2 votes Studies: English | Message 6 of 16 13 June 2012 at 2:35am | IP Logged |
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I have been trying to add to this post for for two weeks now. This was my original post, but I updated my email
account and for some reason they de-activated my forum membership and still have not activated it. It is not automatic anymore from the link and I could not find any contact info. So finally I just created a new account with my work email address. Anyways. Thanks to everyone for you words of encouragement and advice. There seems to be no better advice than from people who have learned or are learning Spanish recently. AndrewW- Since your post I have been trying to add in some reading, even if just a little, everyday. Mainly just news articles from CNN Mexico and prensa.com. At this point I am really concentrating on finishing Platiquemos by the end of the year and then hopefully move on to more/only native materials. It might not be the best idea, but after 14 months on it, I am ready to complete it. dbag - I think it is a combination of a lot of things that hold my conversations back with my wife. Grammar and vocabulary are definitely part of it. I find that our conversations get limited really fast and we either end up talking about the same thing everyday or switch over to English. If we are very patient, we can usually have a 20- 30 minute conversation. But, during the week when we are all busy, that never happens. It is just something I have to keep pressing. I think my accent is good, mostly because I have someone to imitate and correct me all the time. I know that she is by far my best resource and that I need to fully take advantage it. I would very much appreciate any links to podcasts, etc you will share. I am thinking about starting to listen to podcast during my drives to and from work. Crush- I think adding more vocab would help. I am trying to add words from the TV shows and conversations that come up frequently that I don' know to my ANKI deck instead of looking them up (or asking someone) and then forgetting by the time it comes up again. Thanks again to everyone that commented. Its nice to know people were in similar spots while using Platiquemos. I am curious to know how you guys use/used the conversation stimulus and basic sentences parts. I go through the basic sentences until I have them completely memorized. Usually seven times through and then 10-15 times through on the dialogue for fluency part. All the other sections I just go through once a day, instead of repeating each section many times until I have it down. I know a lot has been written here about different ways to use Platiquemos, but was curious if you guys had any different methods that have worked better for you. Since my first post I have finished Unit 35 and 36 and am about half way done with 37. I have been studying Platiquemos on average 1.5 hours a day with another hour of watching TV. I have also made more of an effort to talk to my wife in Spanish at every opportunity. Some days its 30 - 45 minutes, somedays its 10 minutes total. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| LtM Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5671 days ago 130 posts - 223 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 7 of 16 13 June 2012 at 6:32am | IP Logged |
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It looks like you've got a good learning plan set up, Wes84. Try not to be discouraged. In my experience progress in conversational skills is made by steady practice, but it's only obvious in the long term. Give yourself more time, and as you look back you'll see how much progress you've made.
Regarding your forum membership, I remember reading something in the Technical Forum about a glitch that came up when people tried to change their email address. Perhaps if you wrote the administrator you could reactivate your previous membership, since I see you had a pro membership. RNE (Radio Nacional de España) has a huge number of podcasts available. A good short one is Ciencia al cubo (around three minutes). If you're not used to the acento castellano it may take a bit of time before you can tune your ear, but RNE's podcasts are very well done, and I recommend them. http://www.rtve.es/radio/podcast/ Edited by LtM on 13 June 2012 at 7:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bakerww Pro Member United States Joined 4997 days ago 8 posts - 10 votes Studies: English* Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 16 15 June 2012 at 10:25pm | IP Logged |
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Today I finished Platiquemos unit 37, other than reviewing a couple of sections I am still having problems
mastering. In total, I spent about 11 hours on this unit over 7 days. On to Unit 38... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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