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B2->C1 ASAP on one hour a day | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 1 of 9 02 June 2013 at 2:57am | IP Logged | ||
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If you only had one hour a day to get from B2 to C1 in your language how would you do it in as short a time as possible?
Also, my language is Spanish and if there are any resources you could suggest for meeting this goal I would appreciate it. 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 2 of 9 02 June 2013 at 5:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Give up on English. That's the only way.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 3 of 9 02 June 2013 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for your response. Are you suggesting immersion for that one hour a day or really giving up on English? I have no option but to use English for nearly everything I do (work, family, etc). Am I destined to be stuck at B2 if I only have one hour a day to progress?
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 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 9 02 June 2013 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||
No. I've been investing a bit less than an hour a day into French (not counting casual conversations with my wife) for almost a year now, starting from B2, and I've been enjoying myself, not pushing to reach C1 as fast as possible. And despite the smallish time-commitment, I've made significant progress, and I can fake some C1-level skills on a good day. Still, there's a real tension between "one hour a day to get from B2 to C1" and "a short a time as possible". At B2, you do pretty much anything you want to do, but you're allowed to do quite a lot of it badly. But at C1, you're expected to deal with professional and academic situations comfortably, fluently and with few errors. This is a big gap, and some days it feels like a chasm. One solution is to make the problem smaller. Why, exactly, do you need to reach C1? Do you need a diploma to qualify for an educational or professional opportunities? Do you need to be able to do your job in Spanish? For example, if you only need the diploma, you can neglect popular and slangy language and practice only those skills demanded by the exam. If you want to do your job in Spanish, you can do a lot of role-play focusing on just those skills. And so on. And in any case, I would definitely try to steal some extra time. We all know the drill: Anki reps while waiting in line. Easy audiobooks in the car. Hobby reading, TV and leisure reading in your target language. Internet radio. Thinking in the language whenever you can. So much of language learning is figuring out how to exploit low-quality time efficiently, and fit the language into the little cracks of our life. 7 persons have 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 9 02 June 2013 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||
3 persons have 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 6 of 9 02 June 2013 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Don't accept that you only have one hour. As emk says, I would take advantage of Barry Farber's "Hidden Moments" strategy.
His advice is also (in the context of utilizing hidden moments)- when you can listen or read, read. Save listening for the times when you can only listen. Since Farber's book was written pre-internet, the smartphone and tablet revolutionized portable media. You can now carry a library of books and audio with you wherever you go. While you can't get away from English because your life requires it, you can "sacrifice" your free time for a while by avoiding it wherever possible and changing as much as you can to Spanish. Read a newspaper everyday? Switch to Spanish. Listen to music or news in the car? Switch to Spanish language podcasts. Watch a dvd film at home in English? Negotiate with your family to allow Spanish subtitles. Better yet, introduce them to Spanish language films, with English subtitles- at least occasionally. Try to make your reading more native based and transition away from translations from English. Try to make your listening more active by writing reviews of the telenovela episodes, films you watch and posting them on lang8 for correction. If possible, hire an online tutor from Guatemala for about $10/hour to help you with your conversation. Just one session a week, or even every two weeks, with a paid tutor will do wonders for your Spanish. Refuse to believe that your time is so limited. Steal it wherever and whenever you can. A good way to do that is to become an early riser. This helps me a lot. Lastly, take advantage of the monolingual C1 exercises from the Centro Virtual Cervantes as a supplement. I don't think you can do a Benny style mission to make yourself C-1 in an hour a day in three months, but you can aim for that goal, steal time wherever and whenever you can. You'll surely make a heck of a lot of progress towards that goal and be all the better for it. The "sacrifice" isn't forever, just until you are, in some way, satisfied. Good luck, James! If just one of my pieces of advice helps you, I'll be happy. Edited by iguanamon on 02 June 2013 at 5:26pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5186 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 7 of 9 02 June 2013 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you, all. This is some good advice. I do, indeed, have some time I can do things in Spanish other than the one hour... and I do. I have a good hour for doing serious Spanish every day (early in the morning when everyone else is sleeping :) and then whenever I can I do normal things in Spanish.
My goal is to really be able to do my job well in Spanish. I think "professionally proficient" is my goal. I don't need or want any sort of certificate. I like the idea of role playing for my job. Maybe I will try that. I have seen emk's log and various statements that seem to suggest having a native speaking spouse does not really help as much as people think. I find this amazing as it seems like it would be ideal at this level. I also like working with a formal structure so maybe I will finally take a closer look at those Cervantes exercises. Is anyone aware of any other monolingual Spanish courses/exercises for the C1-ish level? It really seems like a long haul to get from B2 to C1. Sometimes it is quite discouraging when I think about how long it will take... at least I love the journey every day and am having a lot of fun. 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 8 of 9 02 June 2013 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I also recommend this book - you can read it by email or RSS on dailylit.com, in small chunks every day.
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