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Reading first? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4576 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 18 11 October 2012 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been thinking about doing Platiquemos next. I'm probably a A2 active skills B1
passive skill kind of person, which is frustrating, but apparently pretty typical. I don't have time to do Platiquemos *and* another course, other than my daily telenovela or two. After Assimil Spanish with Ease and Michel Thomas Foundation and Advanced, I'm trying to decide what to do next, and it looks like Platiquemos may take a year to do. I'm trying to decide what to do next. If it takes a year of Platiquemos to get me there, fine, but I wonder if I wouldn't get up to intermediate skills faster if I just start doing reading, starting native materials immediately or with a little ramp up in graded readers. I'm really hungry for native speaker reading, and Platiquemos would delay me getting to this, simply from a time standpoint. I do want to speak as well as read, of course, but I wonder if that wouldn't come along eventually if I keep talking to native speakers and build my reading up to the point where I can start to enjoy some novels. I think I could be reading novels and enjoying telenovelas with pretty complete understanding long before I could complete Platiquemos. Hmmn... Doing this post, I almost talked myself into "reading first." It's probably better to do what seems more exciting first. What do you think? steve 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5073 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 18 11 October 2012 at 4:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Steve, congratulations. Your hard work has shown results, but you still have a ways to go to get to where you want to go. I'm going to suggest that you don't do any more courses. You've sucked about all you can out of Assimil. Another course could help consolidate that knowledge but I think your percentage of diminishing returns would be too high to really benefit you compared to the amount of effort you'll be expending.
Yes, start reading. You're ready. Create your own "course". If you still need direction there are some resources online to help you. I can suggest some links if you're interested. Find a copy of Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish by Joseph J. Keenan. The book is not a course but more of a guide to help you along your way to the next level. It was written by someone who was once where you are right now. Check out emk's log French: Taking it to the next level from page 1. I believe that emk has outlined pretty well what needs to be done to go from your level to the next. There's one factor that he has that you won't have- his wife is a native French-speaker. That fact doesn't invalidate his other advice and tips. They are spot on and definitely apply. Obviously, adjust his techniques as needed. For speaking practice you should start either a free language exchange with a native speaker over skype or (I hesitate to recommend this again because I know economic times are tough) hire a private tutor from Guatemala for about $10 an hour. One, one hour session a week or, even every two weeks, would be a huge boost to your Spanish. Definitely start reading native materials that interest you. Supplement your reading with a good grammar book. I don't think you'll be that much better off with another course. It's time to take off the training wheels and ride that bike. Edited by iguanamon on 11 October 2012 at 12:59pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 18 11 October 2012 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've really enjoyed following your log, and your intensive use of Spanish with Ease inspired some of my efforts with Egyptian.
One of your enormous strengths as a language learner is your consistency and your ability to plow ahead where others would give up. Of course, like any good thing, this tenacity also has a few potential downsides: You risk getting fixated on a single tool or approach beyond the point of diminishing returns. So I'm going to take a random, half-baked stab at the question and offer you a dubious suggestion. Please go right ahead and disregard it. :-) This is based on my own post-Assimil efforts to improve my intermediate French, so it doesn't necessarily apply to anybody else. What one weakness frustrates you the most, today? Do you wish you could speak more comfortably? Do you have problems with clitic pronouns? Do you wish you could read more easily? Does gender give you a major headache? Do you want to understand Spanish TV shows or movies? Do you just want to soak in Spanish for a while and start building a feel for it? If you can figure out what your biggest obstacle is, there's no reason you can't try one or two things to target it directly, make some rapid progress, then move on to the next problem. FSI Platiquemos might be part of the solution. But at least for me, the intermediate level has been all about a mix of activities focused on specific, personal goals—and not about following somebody else's roadmap. As for reading, I totally think you should go for it. My first book in French was a 450-page non-fiction history of the French language, and it started out as rough going. Within about 6 weeks, I was sailing right through it (relatively speaking). Along the way, I underlined unknown words with a mechanical pencil, and then went back once or twice a week to add them to an SRS deck. This gave me an extra 1000-odd words of vocabulary that made a huge difference. (Today, I'd just break the DRM on an ebook and copy the sentences into Anki using the clipboard, adding definitions from an online dictionary as I went. But that's personal taste.) Anyway, I hope you find a promising plan and make great progress in Spanish! 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5241 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 4 of 18 12 October 2012 at 6:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Although you certainly can't go wrong with reading, some thought should be given to what is the right kind of reading material. My experience with Spanish (and actually most languages) is that the literary language is very different from the spoken language. This is particularly true in Spanish where there is so much regional variation. So, if speaking is a priority, look for the material that is closest to the spoken language. This would probably be comic books.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 18 12 October 2012 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Or just a modern book with a lot of dialogue. I prefer books written in the first person in the beginning:)
Oh and see this article about reading strategies. If you read various kinds of texts and apply various strategies, you'll learn more. Edited by Serpent on 12 October 2012 at 1:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5523 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 6 of 18 13 October 2012 at 4:40am | IP Logged | ||
You can get one for even cheaper than that. I've seen professional teachers from countries like Spain, Mexico, etc. for either side of $5 on italki.com. Like you said, it's a tough economy so you can work that to your advantage (25% of Spaniards are unemployed and they all speak Spanish :) ). Besides, if you save your pocket change, $10 a week wouldn't be all that much to scrape up in exchange for someone suffering through your terrible, ear-wrenching Spanish as you crawl along the road to fluency. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4576 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 18 13 October 2012 at 5:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Well said, Rout :)
My Mexican students say things like, "Your Spanish sounds really good." They say it in English :) My Spanish isn't that bad... :) steve 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5523 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 8 of 18 15 October 2012 at 3:06am | IP Logged | ||
Oh, sorry, haha! I didn't mean that your Spanish was ear-wrenching. I just meant this as a general comment, that even if someone did have really poor Spanish(if, for instance, you'd only been through some written course and you knew *how* to speak but couldn't get the words to come out), then one of these guys/gals could help extract it from you until it became decent. And you wouldn't really have to feel bashful or concerned, since you're paying them for a service. I'm sure your Spanish sounds very good from all the shadowing. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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