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Colossal Input vs. FSI

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11 messages over 2 pages: 1
luke
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6994 days ago

3133 posts - 4351 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 9 of 11
18 February 2015 at 7:17pm | IP Logged 
patrickwilken wrote:
One plus with massive input is that you can do it anywhere (the beach, a cafe etc) and it can be very pleasurable. Something that can't be said for drills.


I told you when I hear FSI I salivate like one of Pavlov's dogs.

All kidding aside, I totally get the resistance to carrying on with FSI drills. I hit the same wall that Mr. D. has brought up at the same point (unit 8). I'm glad I persevered for at least up to this point. I'm again thinking of dialing back FSI drilling to something like 20 minutes in the car, rather than an hour sometimes. It can suck the fun out of a drive when you can't respond to a drill that you think you should based on how many times you've already done it.

I've been inspired by Cavesa and others, like Mr. Wilken, for whom the more pleasant input inspired method has given great results.

I do have some errands to run, so, just this one more time, I'm going to do FSI again, even though I already did it for 20 minutes earlier this morning.

I think I am anyways. Let's see how my concentration is when I hop in the car.

P.S. I fought my way through the rest of the hard core FSI tape 9.4 during that little errand. Must come up with better FSI approach (penultimate gasp).

Edited by luke on 18 February 2015 at 7:56pm

1 person has voted this message useful



DaraghM
Diglot
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 5940 days ago

1947 posts - 2923 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian

 
 Message 10 of 11
19 February 2015 at 9:53am | IP Logged 
Thanks for the great advice.


smallwhite wrote:
I used to do grammar exercises by writing them out. Now I do them orally.


This is a great tip. It’s actually how I found out why spoken fluency wasn’t sufficient. I’m using “Les 500 Exercices de Grammaire ” for B1 and B2 do this oral practice.


Serpent wrote:
How much input have you already had? .


I’d estimate about 6,000 pages and around 400 hours of audio.

Serpent wrote:
Can you read >98% of a standard novel without difficulty? .


I’d say yes to a modern novel, but I’d struggle with some historic novels. I’ve found the gaps in my vocabulary are equivalent to the threshold vocabulary I have in my native language. E.g. haulyard, backstay

garyb wrote:
For French, I found Grammaire Progressive niveau Perfectionnement very useful for "tuning up" my grammar.

Cavesa wrote:
I recommend jumping right into Perfectionnement.


This is a great resource, and I completed about the first third last year. It’s the best of the series. I’ve worked my way through the previous three levels during my 1,000 hours challenge. I ended up dropping it as I felt I’d spent forever with the series. I think I’ll return to it and also continue with the “Les 500 Exercices” books as well.

Iguanamon wrote:
The obvious answer, to me, is to do both.


As you also mention, my other language commitments are restricting my time. It’s tempting to pull back on some languages such as Bulgarian and Polish. I didn’t plan on studying them this year, removing them from my studies list. but they drew me back in. Yes, I’m an addict. The last six months has also seen a big improvement in my Russian. I can’t abandon it having finally make some headway.

I think my plan will be to increase my reading, but also do the FSI drills. The handy thing about the FSI is I can use them as audio only, as I already know the grammar and vocabulary. I’ve also got the new French in Action course Part 1. It has a ton of audio as well with a lot of audio exercises. I stopped FIA at Unit 14 as I misplaced the MP3 disk, but I just found it again last night. Hmm. Is my question now FIA vs. FSI ?

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Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4798 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 11 of 11
22 February 2015 at 12:22am | IP Logged 
Are you sure your last question isn't going to provoke just the same answer: "Why not
both"? :-D

Now seriously. I think the FIA is unnecessary, if you are already advanced enough for
real native input. But it can't hurt obviously.




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