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Which course took you furthest? (B1+) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| DevonAero Newbie United States Joined 4004 days ago 34 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 51 15 June 2013 at 7:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I know this question gets asked a lot, but I'm new here also a newb in language learning.
I have 3 months (summer vacation) to become at least a B1-B2 in Spanish. My goals are to understand TV, news sites, and songs. Currently my course is Assimil. I put down Michel Thomas and Pimsleur, while they're good courses I feel like they're too slow for me. Assimil is a little slow as well, but I've been hearing I could finish it in 3 months and land at a B1 level vs. 1 year+ of FSI. If you guys could give me help on this it'd be great! Side question: After Spanish I'm thinking about picking up Brazilian Portuguese, but I can't find any courses. Help? Thanks again guys. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4529 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 51 15 June 2013 at 10:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil and FSI took me the furthest. I went from 0 to B1 Swedish in 3 or four months
with FSI Swedish. I have also used Assimil Romanian for three or so months now and have also reached an intermediate level. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4831 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 51 15 June 2013 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Combination of classical courses, more advanced monolingal ones, grammarbook with exercises, srs and lots of fun (tv shows, books, pc games) got me the furthest.
Assimil is a good core but I think you'll need to supplement it with other things to get to B1+. And your progress depends on more things of course. Do you have any previous experience with Spanish or other languages? How much time a day can you put in it? Good luck and, most importantly, have fun. P.S. Perhaps you could consider writing a log about your progress? Your plan sounds like something I'd love to read about. :-) P.S.2 And welcome to the forums! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5084 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 51 15 June 2013 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the forum, DevoAero!
So B-1 in three months? You're going to have a busy summer! Reaching B-1 in Spanish 3 months is doable, but it will take a heck of a lot of work! I don't think any one course will allow you to achieve your goal. There's a recent thread discussing the merrits of Assimil here: HTLAL B-2 Realistic with Assiml?. That's for you to decide. Though Assimil is usually the first recommended course here on HTLAL, it isn't for everyone. There are alternatives and or supplements available. The free to download public domain FSI (Foreign Service Institute) Spanish Courses and DLI (Defense Language Institute) Spanish Courses are quite thorough. These courses have several hours of mp3 audio and the books are in pdf format. They are best utilized on a tablet. Pimsleur and Learning Spanish Like Crazy may be available from your public library. If your branch doesn't have a copy, ask for an inter-library loan. Online- I'd recommend that along with whatever course or courses you choose that you supplement them with the free Exercises from the Centro Virtual Cervantes Aveteca the exercises range from A-1 to C-1. Also, don't forget listening, the news in Spanish (native speed) with transcripts is available at Democracy Now.org and at NHK World Spanish. The advantage of the news is that it gets you used to listening at native speed and introduces new vocabulary. You can listen/read first in English. Even make your own short bilingual texts. Course-world is different than the real world. Real people tend to speak Spanish at natural speed and have different accents. The quicker you can accustom yourself to this the better. If you want to know more how to use this resource, let me know. Destinos- An Introduction to Spanish is a video series teaching Spanish through a telenovela format. There are 52 episodes. The books can be found on ebay or by searching, in pdf format. Most importantly, as soon as you have the basics down and a modest vocabulary, you should speak to people. You can either do this online via voip (skype) or in person. You can do this at italki and several other language exchange sites. You can also write on lang8 and get corrections from native speakers. The more reciprocal and helpful you are, the more help you will receive. The advantages of using multiple resources are that the gaps in any one method tend to get filled in earlier. You get the benefit of synergy. You see/hear a word or phrase in your course. It pops up again in your exercises. You see/hear the same thing in a newscast or listening and reading. Someone uses the word or phrase in conversation- you're more likely to remember it and incorporate it into your Spanish. As to Portuguese, there are plenty of resources available, the free FSI and DLI courses are a good place to start. If I were you, since you haven't learned your first second language yet, I'd try to get as far as I could in Spanish before even thinking about Portuguese. I wouldn't be satisfied with B1. Just a tip from someone who once was where you are. ¡Buena suerte! Edited by iguanamon on 15 June 2013 at 1:55pm 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5197 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 51 15 June 2013 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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How many hours a day are you willing to put in?
Three months to get to B1/B2 might be pretty tough depending on how much time you are going to put in. Certainly FSI will get you further than any other course. The problem with FSI is it is hard to do for more than an hour or two a day and would be difficult to complete in three months. If you have the willpower to do it thoroughly (4+ hours a day) within three months that would be your best option to achieve your goal. I don't recommend that however due to the fact that it would almost certainly lead to burn out. Assimil coupled with Michel Thomas Advanced would be a good option too. I am now just thinking out loud and thinking how I would approach this if I was in your situation and had three hours a day. Here is what I would do: First month: target to go through Michel Thomas foundations twice, Michel Thomas Advanced twice and Assimil passive and active waves. First half month: one hour of Michel Thomas foundations each day followed by two hours of Assimil. This should allow you to get through MT foundations twice and most of Assimil's passive wave at 20 minutes a day per lesson. Second half month: one hour a day of Michel Thomas advanced each day followed by two hours of Assimil. This would allow you to get through MT advanced twice and finish the passive wave and active wave of Assimil assuming 20 minutes each passive day and 10-15 minutes each active wave. Second and third month: Spend three hours a day on FSI doing each new lesson twice and one lesson from the previous day. This should be do-able after completing MT and Assimil and should not be too tedious. With 60 days you could also finish FSI this way. I am sure there will be plenty of people who disagree with this approach, but what you have asked is a tall order... and I think this would be a reasonable (and feasible) way to accomplish your goal. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5084 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 51 15 June 2013 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't want you to get the wrong impression from Tarvos' post. I don't think he really took into account that you are a novice language learner. He was just giving his honest reply about what those courses have done for him. My hat's off to him. Don't forget though that Tarvos also spoke the related languages of English, Dutch and German before taking on Swedish. I'm sure his French was some help (along with his vast experience in language learning) to him as well with Romanian. You're just starting out. You only have the benefit of knowing your own language, English, to help you. You have to learn how to learn and what works best for you. You'll have to learn how languages work. A quick refresher read-up on English grammar wouldn't hurt- parts of a sentence, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjugation of verbs, verb tenses and when to use them, pronouns, agreement, etc. Despite what any course says you don't learn a language with ease, but with a lot of hard work. The way to accomplish your goal is with dedication, persistence, consistency and perseverance. Don't forget humility too. Learning a second language, especially your first, can smack you down hard. Being humble helps you to laugh at it when that happens, dust yourself off and try to figure out how to get over that hurdle. Your second foreign language is easier because of the benefits you will have acquired learning your first foreign language. Then you'll be like Tarvos- working your way through courses with much less difficulty because you will have learned how languages work and what works for you in learning them! To accomplish your goal is going to take a lot of work. James29 and Cavesa have also given good advice. I agree that you should start a log. A log can help you be accountable to yourself and receive help and advice from other learners. Even if the three months expires and you haven't quite reached your goal, as Benny says, there's nothing wrong with aiming for the stars and landing on the moon. Edited by iguanamon on 15 June 2013 at 2:30pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5687 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 7 of 51 15 June 2013 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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First, why 3 months? And why do you have to reach B1-B2? If you can't continue studying during the school year you'll just forget what you've learned over the summer, especially if you've crammed through your courses.
The most thorough course you can do to actually speak well would be FSI, but even then you'll be lacking vocabulary. I did FSI for about 3 hours a day and it took me around 8 months to complete. The Assimil courses (With Ease and Using Spanish) are good, but i think you'll find your listening is much better than your speaking. With FSI you won't even have to think when conjugating complex tenses, things like "I'd help him if he hadn't called me a jerk for not giving him money when i was sick" will slide off your tongue as if you'd spoken Spanish all your life. Your grammar won't be perfect, but you'll know what you've learned really well and actually be able to use it. I'd stick to one course as that way you'll get through it more quickly. The two Assimil books are pretty good, so i'd either work my way through those or the FSI (or Platiquemos) course. I'd also try to start learning vocabulary, i used Iversen's wordlist method to learn enough vocabulary to start reading and talking online when i still actually studied Spanish. With FSI, i'd say around halfway to two-thirds of the way through you can probably have conversations online without needing to rely on a dictionary anymore. But i'd plan to spend at least three hours a day on actual study plus another few hours talking online, listening to the radio, watching movies/TV, etc. As for watching the news, the news tends to be spoken much more slowly and more clearly than normal speech and is more formal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6051 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 8 of 51 15 June 2013 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you are going to do a "3-month self-immersion", why don't you check out the AJATT site for tips. Do everything
possible in Spanish over the summer. Change all your computer settings to Spanish, change the on screen TV displays to Spanish, watch only Spanish TV etc, etc... I agree, the FSI Spanish courses are really good. The FSI method works really well for me. I know its not for everyone, but if you have the attention span to get through the drills, the trickier aspects of Spanish will become second nature. Buen suerte! 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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