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Spanish without Trying | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4558 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 15 02 December 2013 at 1:36am | IP Logged | ||
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No, this isn't a new Assimil text.
I dropped off the forum for a while. I found myself spending too much time on my Spanish and on browsing the forum. I never stopped studying Spanish, but started to regulate the time I was spending on it. I found writing these logs to be useful, whether anybody reads them or not, and I've gotten some wonderful feedback from the people who have taken the time to read my random thoughts. I learned two languages pretty well in my 20's and 30's; both of them were learned in the countries where they were spoken, so it was easy to be "immersed" in the language. I also got a Masters degree in Second Language Acquisition during this timeframe. About two years ago to the day, I started studying Spanish. I did it more as a form of mental exercise, than out of any real belief that I could actually get anywhere with it. I'm 60 now, so I wondered if it was possible for me to actually learn anything. From my background and training, I had a pretty good idea how I wanted to approach things. I have learned two big things over the past couple of years, one encouraging, one discouraging: 1) There is little difference between a young brain and an old brain as long as there isn't any disease condition. The big difference is the amount of time and energy a person with full time job and family responsibilites can apply to learning. Fatigue and responsibilities can have a big impact. 2)If you study by yourself, in a nonimmersion situation, you learn how to do what you practice doing. If you read, you get better at reading; if you do spoken drills, you get better at speaking. There is less transfer between skills than I thought. In an immersion situation, you wouldn't notice this as much, since simply living in the country would keep up skills. Here's what I've been up to lately... I've learned that I can keep a pretty big anki deck up to date studying it mainly in little moments where I would just be waiting if I didn't have anki. I have about 3000 cards, mostly words and verb conjugations, that are in various stages of learning and I add 20 more each day. L-R has a rapid impact on comprehension. Eventually, I plan to spend most of my time shadowing and L-Ring books. Simply reading English while listening to a Spanish audiobook improves global comprehension, but doesn't seem to have a big impact on productive skills. When I spent 49 days doing this with Cien Años de Soledad, I probably actually lost some speaking skills, at the same time that I could feel an absolute veil being lifted when I listened to the radio or read a newspaper. I hope that by doing some shadowing along with the L-R, I could achieve some improvement in productive skills while enjoying L-Ring some novels. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5168 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 15 02 December 2013 at 1:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome back. I think I spend too much time on Spanish and reading this forum. One of my resolutions for next year is to simply read things I have to read in Spanish.
What are you going to be working on going forward? I assume you are sticking with Spanish. Anyway, good luck. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4661 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 3 of 15 02 December 2013 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry, it seems the forum is buggy again and posted what I intended as a new thread as a message on your log...
However, I'm glad to see you back with a new log! I enjoyed following your observations about Spanish and especially the occasional memory of the time when you were studying and using Samoan ;) Edited by druckfehler on 02 December 2013 at 7:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4558 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 15 02 December 2013 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love reading, so I am very tempted to continue to L-R books and newspapers, but as I look at my "skills" in Spanish, I clearly need to do a spoken course. A couple of months ago, while I was working on Cien Años, I was sitting in a restaurant reading the book in Spanish. Since I had already been through the book a few times listening to the Spanish while reading the English, I could read the Spanish pretty well. My waitress came up to the table with a refill on my coffee, saw what I was reading, and took off in Spanish at a mile a minute. I got most of the first sentence (she wondered if the book was good), and then I stumbled and fumbled so much on my answer that she said her next sentence at the slow exaggerated speed reserved for idiots. I fumbled my next sentence, and she switched to English.
I need to work on talking. I'm going to do FSI. I tried it before, tried to get every drill "right" at least once before moving on and bombed out at Unit 15. This time I'm going to follow James29's advice and go through the course quickly. I can always repeat it if I need more. I'm going to do each unit two times, once as Platiquemos and once as regular FSI, and move on to the next lesson whether I have achieved any mastery or not. I'm concerned that this won't be enough review, the introduction to the course talks a lot about "overlearning", but there is no law that says that I can't just keep repeating the course from the beginning over and over if I feel a need to "overlearn" it. I'm quite confident that it is possible to develop passive skills up to a C1 level studying on your own; I suspect that I could be there in a few months. I question how possible it is to develop outstanding speaking skills without extensive daily chances to speak the language. We'll see. So 106 more days of FSI... Then back to novels, L-R, and shadowing, I think. edited to clarify (I hope :) Edited by sfuqua on 02 December 2013 at 10:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3937 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 15 03 December 2013 at 1:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Have you thought about getting a Skype language partner? Or even a tutor? Sites like italki have great Spanish tutors
for no more 10 dollars an hour. Even if it's only once a week, you'll probably find that your spoken skills progress quickly if you have the opportunity to practice. I'm doing FSI the same way that you are. The most often that I've done any lesson is twice. I'm on lesson 26 now, and I'm not bored yet. If I did each lesson to perfection, repeating it a half dozen times, I'm sure that I'd end up quitting. edited to add: Also - I'm interested to see that you speak Tagalog! Did you learn it as a child or as an adult? I'm planning on starting Tagalog in May of 2014, and hope to reach conversational fluency. Edited by Stelle on 03 December 2013 at 1:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4558 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 15 03 December 2013 at 2:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I learned Tagalog at thirty, and I've been using it daily ever since. My
wife is a Filipina, and I speak it and watch TV in it most of the time at home. I am probably about a B2 in it; I've never spent the time to push through to a really high level. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3937 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 7 of 15 03 December 2013 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for answering my question! My husband is Filipino, and I'm ashamed to admit that after nearly 15 years together, I only speak a spattering of words and expressions. In my defense, his English is far better than most monolingual English-speakers. And he didn't learn French either. Ha! Learning Spanish has really lit a language fire in me, though, and I'm excited to start learning Tagalog next spring! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4558 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 15 03 December 2013 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tagalog is a great help in the Philippines; less so outside. Most Filipinos you meet around the world speak far better English than my Tagalog will ever be. My wife is actually a native Cebuano speaker, but her Tagalog is great. I lived in the Philippines for 8 years, but all of my Tagalog improvement seemed to happen in the first year.
Tagalog is bit of a beast grammatically (prefixes, infixes, postfixes, focus, yuk!), but I've known several English speakers who reached a pretty high level in it. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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