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Spanish without Trying | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4559 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 9 of 15 09 December 2013 at 10:16pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I've been plugging away at FSI for over a week now. I have my second time through Unit 5 today, then on to unit 6. I been doing first the Platiquemos version, then the old FSI version of each unit.
FSI is excellent for getting the language rattling off your tongue quickly and smoothly. I've been making a lot of mistakes the first time through and fewer the second. Moving ahead while I'm still making mistakes bugs me, but I'll have faith and just keep moving. The drills can be fun, especially the original FSI course, which seems to have a very nice rhythm to it. There is little, vocabulary or grammar, that I am unfamiliar with in the whole FSI course; there is much, however, that I do not produce with fluency. Immediately after an hour of FSI, Spanish just rolls of the tongue better. Perhaps by the end of the course, this will become a permanent state. I've been doing 40 new cards and about 200 reviews per day in anki for the past week. This takes a little time, but not so much in that I just fail a card if I don't get it immediately. My decks include a comprehensive review of the conjugations of 40 sample verbs, the 10000 most common words in Spanish, the sentences from Michel Thomas, a Spanish phrasebook. Learning a word or sentence in anki doesn't mean that you have completely "learned" the word or sentence; anki seems most useful as an adjunct to some other form of study. It still takes some practice before you can use or understand (at full speed comprehension) something that you learned in anki. I think that this way of going through FSI is probably better than trying for some standard of perfection before moving on. If you try for perfection, you spend more time on a smaller sample of language. If you just keep moving ahead, you see a bigger piece of language. Even though the course was designed for overlearning, for a learner today, without the support of a classroom and teacher, just blasting through it quickly, then repeating the whole course from beginning to end several times, if wanted, may be the best way to go. Maybe a few minutes of FSI each day might be useful to continue, even when I have "retired" from studying and am just maintaining Spanish with books, TV, and movies. I'm thinking of dropping Platiquemos and just sticking with old FSI while still doing each unit two times. I'm not sure how I should do the "conversation stimulus" narratives at the ends of the units. They are pretty brisk to shadow. I watched an episode of El Capo; it was in the middle of a story line, so I had some trouble figuring out what was happening, even without the second language Spanish problems. I also watched a little bit of La Reina del Sur, with closed captioned Spanish. I was shocked how easy it was when I had the Spanish in writing; there was much less unfamiliar vocabulary than I was expecting. Maybe I'm learning something. I miss shadowing and L-R, but I'm going to continue this run through FSI before I do that again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 3801 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 10 of 15 09 December 2013 at 10:31pm | IP Logged |
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I don't mean to just sit up here and point out your age so bluntly but I'm 23 years old and I can only hope that at 60 I'm still active and as willing to learn more languages as you are.
Anyways, I don't know where in the States you live but I know that here in Houston, we have plenty of Spanish TV stations that would be good for listen comprehension (and trust me they talk a mile a minute) also if you're thinking about tutoring I know there's a girl on YouTube who lives here in Houston (but will Skype or do the Google video chat thing) who teaches Spanish. Her username on YT is Spanishisyouramigo. She's not super popular but she knows her stuff and she has a website you can check out if you want to know more about her. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4559 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 15 09 December 2013 at 11:50pm | IP Logged |
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The best I can tell, the big difference between 60 and 20 is how much your bones ache when you try to sleep. I really started language learning again as mental exercise. I think it's important to exercise both body and mind.
The view in the mirror is not very nice either, but then again it never was :) Thanks for the advice; I'll check it out... :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4559 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 15 10 December 2013 at 9:41pm | IP Logged |
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I mentioned it in another thread, but I should mention it here, since it involves my Spanish. I have a lot of interference between my Spanish and my Tagalog. Many, many words are shared between the languages and there are some interesting sound system correspondences. I know that I sometimes pronounce Spanish words with the Tagalog pronunciation. I know that I sometimes start speaking Spanish when I'm trying to say something in Tagalog. If I'm not careful, some Tagalog words that are not found in Spanish, words of Austronesian origin, appear in my Spanish. It's more of an annoyance than a big problem.
I don't think that there is any way to avoid Tagalog interference. I can try to increase my input in Spanish during the day, but I am not going to give up talking to my wife (a Tagalog speaker), and I am not going to avoid the living room when Filipino soap operas are on. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4559 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 15 13 December 2013 at 10:17pm | IP Logged |
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I'm still plunking along, but I thought I'd mention a weird problem I had today. The brain just would not work. I made every mistake in the book trying to remember my cards. I got mnemonics mixed up. I conjugated in the wrong tense. For a while I was consistantly mixing up the present and past subjunctive. I'm going to have a really big review day tomorrow, with all the cards that failed today.
I wonder what FSI will be like when I do it later today. If the part of the brain that does anki is related to the part of the brain that does FSI, I'm going to have a bad session. I've been looking longingly at the bookshelf today, wishing I was reading more; I may switch to FSI and L-R/shadowing on alternate days. Of course that is how I drifted away from FSI the first time. Maybe my interest level will pick up when I get into a part of the course that I didn't complete before. It seems to me that people fall into two categories with FSI courses -- those who complete them and rave about how wonderful they are -- and those who don't like them, don't complete them, and who say that they are worthless. I don't know anybody who has completed FSI, who hasn't found it profoundly useful. I've got to keep plugging away. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4559 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 14 of 15 15 December 2013 at 11:09pm | IP Logged |
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The FSI lesson on the day when it seemed like I couldn't get anki right, the FSI lesson went well.
I'm finishing lesson 8 today; another week or so and I'll be into a part of FSI that I didn't cover before on my first attempt through. I don't really see that much in FSI that I am not already familiar with. I know the vocabulary and I know the grammar, but I am far from automatic with it. What I have to learn is getting the responses out quickly and accurately. I know this material in the sense that I can read and understand it, but I am far from automatic and accurate with it. One thing that worries me is that I feel like I am losing some of my comprehsnsion skills. Of course you learn what you practice, and I haven't been practicing passive skills. I may start alternating FSI and L-R or something. Of course this is how I dropped FSI the first time through; L-R is more fun, and gives the feeling of rapid effortless improvement. It works well, but my experience was that L-R alone doesn't help active skills much. I see other people are listing their goals for 2014; mine must include FSI, but I'd like to get a bunch of books in Spanish completed too. The Aubrey Maturin series of historical novels is a pleasant obsession of mine; there is so much to the books that the characters from the book seem like old friends. I loved Hornblower when I was younger, but I show no sign of outgrowing Patrick O'Brian's wonderful books. The books have been translated into Spanish, and I have to believe that a trip L-R/shadowing/reading aloud through the 20 books would change my Spanish for the better. Lord of the Rings has what seems to be a pretty good translation, and I've slowly grown to love this series also. I have Follet's two "Cathedral" books on the shelf also. I have a variety of Vargas-Llosa, Garcia-Marquez, Perez-Reverte, Isabel Allende, and Roberto Bolano books staring at me from the shelf. I really want to complete FSI; I'm just not sure if I'm more likely to complete it by alternating with books, or if it is better to keep pushing to try to actually finish it... edited to correct some dumb mistakes in wording... Edited by sfuqua on 17 December 2013 at 6:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5169 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 15 of 15 16 December 2013 at 12:53am | IP Logged |
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The first time I went through FSI I just decided to do two lessons a week... usually four days. That was about all I could handle. I would usually do it on weekdays first thing in the morning as that is when I study Spanish. I just found if I made FSI my number one priority I would work my way through it.
Also, on those tougher lessons where you are not getting some of the drills, I would sometimes just note which drills gave me problems on the first time through. Then the next day I would just do those lessons two or three times each instead of doing the entire lesson. Then on the third day I would re-do the entire lesson and the harder drills would be much easier. I have been putting off reading for a long time and I am finally going to be doing a lot of reading this year. Good luck and keep it up. If you make it through FSI you will find it well worth it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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