Need to go from A0-->B1 Spanish in a few weeks

[Cainntear]

Using slow-moving, generic beginner courses such as ... Michel Thomas

There are many things that MT can be criticised for, but one thing it is not is "slow-moving". I've yet to see another course that manages to cover as much grammar anywhere near as quickly.

[Stefan]

There are many things that MT can be criticised for, but one thing it is not is "slow-moving". I've yet to see another course that manages to cover as much grammar anywhere near as quickly.

You're right, poorly worded by me and I shouldn't have included MT. The point I was trying to make is that you spend a lot of hours (I believe MT is about 21 hours) listening and afterwards I wasn't sure what I really knew. I felt like I lacked the fundamental grammar tables that you can get from any textbook at a glance. It's been a few years since I went through the course so it's possible that my memory is clouded by the frustration I felt at the time.

[PeterMollenburg]

Rotate an hour per course of these:

1 Destinos
2 Assimil
3 FSI Basic Spanish
4 A 'no-nonsense course' that Cavesa mentioned.
5 Prepatory exam book(s) which Cavesa also mentioned.

= 5 hours

Do it twice a day
= 10 hours

Downtime as emk says, rid your life of English. You are Spanish- act the part, for it is really you, you are Spanish and you've forgotten, and fit in an exam tutor sonewhere.

[s_allard]

Rotate an hour per course of these:

1 Destinos
2 Assimil
3 FSI Basic Spanish
4 A 'no-nonsense course' that Cavesa mentioned.
5 Prepatory exam book(s) which Cavesa also mentioned.

= 5 hours

Do it twice a day
= 10 hours

Downtime as emk says, rid your life of English. You are Spanish- act the part, for it is really you, you are Spanish and you've forgotten, and fit in an exam tutor sonewhere.

What strikes me about this advice in particular and some - but not all - of the other posts is how the role of the tutor seems to be something of an afterthought. I'm with Stefan and emk in this department, and I'll go even further: the number one strategic decision should be to get a good tutor. I don't do much tutoring myself but I have seen spectacular results literally in a matter of days when people work efficiently with good guidance. Here are a few reasons why a tutor can make a huge difference:

1. Diagnosis: what is the situation? What are your weaknesses? What has to be worked on?
2. Strategic planning: how to get from point A to point B. Put things in the right order of priority.
3. Feedback and correction: detect and correct your mistakes, correct your exercises; prevent you from going the wrong way.
4. Recommendations of appropriate learning materials. May even provide specific materials.
5. Work on drills and mock exams: this is great for developing confidence in an exam situation
6. Encouragement and support.

I could easily see meeting with a tutor over Skype multiple times a week if necessary. The schedule, the duration and the contents are all subject to variation of course. With so much to master in such a short time, it's easy to get lost and flounder if you don't have good guidance.

[PeterMollenburg]

Rotate an hour per course of these:

1 Destinos
2 Assimil
3 FSI Basic Spanish
4 A 'no-nonsense course' that Cavesa mentioned.
5 Prepatory exam book(s) which Cavesa also mentioned.

= 5 hours

Do it twice a day
= 10 hours

Downtime as emk says, rid your life of English. You are Spanish- act the part, for it is really you, you are Spanish and you've forgotten, and fit in an exam tutor sonewhere.

What strikes me about this advice in particular and some - but not all - of the other posts is how the role of the tutor seems to be something of an afterthought. I'm with Stefan and emk in this department, and I'll go even further: the number one strategic decision should be to get a good tutor. I don't do much tutoring myself but I have seen spectacular results literally in a matter of days when people work efficiently with good guidance. Here are a few reasons why a tutor can make a huge difference:

1. Diagnosis: what is the situation? What are your weaknesses? What has to be worked on?
2. Strategic planning: how to get from point A to point B. Put things in the right order of priority.
3. Feedback and correction: detect and correct your mistakes, correct your exercises; prevent you from going the wrong way.
4. Recommendations of appropriate learning materials. May even provide specific materials.
5. Work on drills and mock exams: this is great for developing confidence in an exam situation
6. Encouragement and support.

I could easily see meeting with a tutor over Skype multiple times a week if necessary. The schedule, the duration and the contents are all subject to variation of course. With so much to master in such a short time, it's easy to get lost and flounder if you don't have good guidance.

That's all fine, but what good is a tutor without learning the very large amount of vocabulary and grammar for the OP to advance to the stipulated level. No good having a tutor without doing the hard work, and like you say a tutor can provide feeback on weaknesses etc. but one has to learn a lot first before being able to identify such weaknesses/gaps. This is why it appears as an 'after thought' in my post.

Furthermore if i were to advise between a list of thorough courses alone or a tutor alone, the courses will win hands down because a tutor could help you tie things together, identify gaps etc and other such benefits as you have pointed out, but unless you have oodles of spare cash they are not required at all in the beginning as they're not going to teach you all the vocab and grammar from the start- thus, although tutors could help raise one's language level they are not always essential and are not a must- they are a bonus or an after thought because they often help 're-arrange' everything you already know.

I do however advise on having a tutor as the OP is on a mission, and after learning a LOT of Spanish, a good tutor will indeed help the OP become clearer on and perform better in a specific exam due to their particular knowledge of such exams coupled with the ability to provide the appropriate guidance to fill in gaps and present one's language knowlege as the exam requires.

[s_allard]

[...
That's all fine, but what good is a tutor without learning the very large amount of vocabulary and grammar for the OP to advance to the stipulated level. No good having a tutor without doing the hard work, and like you say a tutor can provide feeback on weaknesses etc. but one has to learn a lot first before being able to identify such weaknesses/gaps. This is why it appears as an 'after thought' in my post.

Furthermore if i were to advise between a list of thorough courses alone or a tutor alone, the courses will win hands down because a tutor could help you tie things together, identify gaps etc and other such benefits as you have pointed out, but unless you have oodles of spare cash they are not required at all in the beginning as they're not going to teach you all the vocab and grammar from the start- thus, although tutors could help raise one's language level they are not always essential and are not a must- they are a bonus or an after thought because they often help 're-arrange' everything you already know.

I do however advise on having a tutor as the OP is on a mission, and after learning a LOT of Spanish, a good tutor will indeed help the OP become clearer on and perform better in a specific exam due to their particular knowledge of such exams coupled with the ability to provide the appropriate guidance to fill in gaps and present one's language knowlege as the exam requires.

The key phrase here is the following:

No good having a tutor without doing the hard work, and like you say a tutor can provide feeback on weaknesses etc. but one has to learn a lot first before being able to identify such weaknesses/gaps. This is why it appears as an 'after thought' in my post.

This is what I call floundering: trying to do everything on your own, working (haphazardly) with five different methods a day and hoping for the best. Then call in the tutor a week before the exam. Good luck.

Contrast this with an alternative approach. The very first step in week one is to find an experienced tutor familiar with the B1 test. With 20 hours of self-teaching the candidate is not a beginner but who knows what they really know. The first thing is to establish the base line. What does this person know? After talking with the candidate about their learning history and trying out various things in Spanish, the tutor has a pretty good idea of the current situation. We see that the verb conjugations are in terrible shape. This is the number one priority. The direct and direct object pronouns need a lot of work. Basically, a lot of the grammar has to be reviewed. Oral comprehension is bad and pronunciation is awful.

What learning materials does the person have? Assimil, Michel Thomas, French in Action, the book 501 Spanish verbs? Good stuff but let's add some websites and other tools. We develop an action plan for twelve weeks. We'll meet twice a week for a few weeks, then once and week and then towards the end maybe every second day.

One thing we can work on immediately is pronunciation. We can start practicing how to read Spanish correctly right now. We'll pay special attention to intonation.

What does an hour with the tutor over Skype look like? It can go something like this. 5 minutes pleasantries. We have been working on the past tense in Spanish, so let's do a quick review of the two main past tenses and how they are constructed. Then we do a fill in the blank exercise exercise. 25 minutes. Then we work on reading by having the candidate read aloud a paragraph and we discuss the meaning. 20 minutes. Then we spend the last 10 minutes talking from the exam syllabus lists all while making corrections and suggestions typed in the Skype chat line.

I think everybody gets the idea by now. The tutor isn't a teacher; the tutor is there to point you in the right direction and to make sure you're on track. It's not a question of tutor vs courses. The key idea here is guidance. When time is of the essence you don't want to waste your time learning useless stuff. Looking at a conjugation table with you, the tutor will tell what is important and what is not.

If I had oodles of time, no exam deadlines and no money I would not use a tutor. But if I really need to pass an exam I would seriously make the extra investment. I recently saw an example of someone who had done only high school French over five years ago work with a tutor over a two week period and passed the equivalent of an oral A2 exam for entrance to a special university program.

[PeterMollenburg]

[...
That's all fine, but what good is a tutor without learning the very large amount of vocabulary and grammar for the OP to advance to the stipulated level. No good having a tutor without doing the hard work, and like you say a tutor can provide feeback on weaknesses etc. but one has to learn a lot first before being able to identify such weaknesses/gaps. This is why it appears as an 'after thought' in my post.

Furthermore if i were to advise between a list of thorough courses alone or a tutor alone, the courses will win hands down because a tutor could help you tie things together, identify gaps etc and other such benefits as you have pointed out, but unless you have oodles of spare cash they are not required at all in the beginning as they're not going to teach you all the vocab and grammar from the start- thus, although tutors could help raise one's language level they are not always essential and are not a must- they are a bonus or an after thought because they often help 're-arrange' everything you already know.

I do however advise on having a tutor as the OP is on a mission, and after learning a LOT of Spanish, a good tutor will indeed help the OP become clearer on and perform better in a specific exam due to their particular knowledge of such exams coupled with the ability to provide the appropriate guidance to fill in gaps and present one's language knowlege as the exam requires.

The key phrase here is the following:

No good having a tutor without doing the hard work, and like you say a tutor can provide feeback on weaknesses etc. but one has to learn a lot first before being able to identify such weaknesses/gaps. This is why it appears as an 'after thought' in my post.

This is what I call floundering: trying to do everything on your own, working (haphazardly) with five different methods a day and hoping for the best. Then call in the tutor a week before the exam. Good luck.

Contrast this with an alternative approach. The very first step in week one is to find an experienced tutor familiar with the B1 test. With 20 hours of self-teaching the candidate is not a beginner but who knows what they really know. The first thing is to establish the base line. What does this person know? After talking with the candidate about their learning history and trying out various things in Spanish, the tutor has a pretty good idea of the current situation. We see that the verb conjugations are in terrible shape. This is the number one priority. The direct and direct object pronouns need a lot of work. Basically, a lot of the grammar has to be reviewed. Oral comprehension is bad and pronunciation is awful.

What learning materials does the person have? Assimil, Michel Thomas, French in Action, the book 501 Spanish verbs? Good stuff but let's add some websites and other tools. We develop an action plan for twelve weeks. We'll meet twice a week for a few weeks, then once and week and then towards the end maybe every second day.

One thing we can work on immediately is pronunciation. We can start practicing how to read Spanish correctly right now. We'll pay special attention to intonation.

What does an hour with the tutor over Skype look like? It can go something like this. 5 minutes pleasantries. We have been working on the past tense in Spanish, so let's do a quick review of the two main past tenses and how they are constructed. Then we do a fill in the blank exercise exercise. 25 minutes. Then we work on reading by having the candidate read aloud a paragraph and we discuss the meaning. 20 minutes. Then we spend the last 10 minutes talking from the exam syllabus lists all while making corrections and suggestions typed in the Skype chat line.

I think everybody gets the idea by now. The tutor isn't a teacher; the tutor is there to point you in the right direction and to make sure you're on track. It's not a question of tutor vs courses. The key idea here is guidance. When time is of the essence you don't want to waste your time learning useless stuff. Looking at a conjugation table with you, the tutor will tell what is important and what is not.

If I had oodles of time, no exam deadlines and no money I would not use a tutor. But if I really need to pass an exam I would seriously make the extra investment. I recently saw an example of someone who had done only high school French over five years ago work with a tutor over a two week period and passed the equivalent of an oral A2 exam for entrance to a special university program.

Why does it have to be done while floundering or haphazardly? I'm sure there are many competent independent language learners out there that don't use tutors and don't flunder or do things haphazardly. I didn't necessarily say a week before the exam either, but you probably could infer that from what I've said, granted, but it's not necessarily what I meant. You seem to want to add deliberately contrast my opinions with your own, and yet we seem to really be in agreement on most things here for the most part, except perhaps when a tutor would be utilised, and how much a tutor would be utilised. I don't think one is necessary, but again we agree that the OP would more than likely benefit from one given time constraints.

And

...and hoping for the best

You believe using Destinos, Assimil, FSI Basic, an exam preparatory course and another no-nonsense course as Cavesa suggested and I agree with is 'hoping for the best'? Not to mention I also added in a recommendation for an exam tutor... and this is still hoping for the best? Again we seem to be in agreement on many things and I think you're just seeing "tutor" and not as much as you'd like to see it and you're thus picking apart all my recommendations and adding your own colourful adjectives to try to add strength to your arguments.

[s_allard]

...
You believe using Destinos, Assimil, FSI Basic, an exam preparatory course and another no-nonsense course as Cavesa suggested and I agree with is 'hoping for the best'? Not to mention I also added in a recommendation for an exam tutor... and this is still hoping for the best? Again we seem to be in agreement on many things and I think you're just seeing "tutor" and not as much as you'd like to see it and you're thus picking apart all my recommendations and adding your own colourful adjectives to try to add strength to your arguments.

I'll apologize if my comments are a bit harsh but I recall that the original recommendation was an hour each of Destinos, Assimil, FSi Basic, an exam preparatory course and a no-nonsense course. And do this twice a day. Considering that at least four of these courses cover the same material, just somewhat different approaches, to me it looks haphazard. I personally would do things sequentially or just stick with one. As for the tutor, the recommendation was:

...and fit in an exam tutor sonewhere.

That sure looks to me like giving a minor role to the tutor. I'm not arguing that a tutor is necessary to learn a language. I'm just saying that if the stakes are high and time is short, it is highly advisable to get expert advice as soon as possible and develop an action plan rather than just trying to do it yourself and then call in the tutor when it may be too late.

[PeterMollenburg]

...
You believe using Destinos, Assimil, FSI Basic, an exam preparatory course and another no-nonsense course as Cavesa suggested and I agree with is 'hoping for the best'? Not to mention I also added in a recommendation for an exam tutor... and this is still hoping for the best? Again we seem to be in agreement on many things and I think you're just seeing "tutor" and not as much as you'd like to see it and you're thus picking apart all my recommendations and adding your own colourful adjectives to try to add strength to your arguments.

I'll apologize if my comments are a bit harsh but I recall that the original recommendation was an hour each of Destinos, Assimil, FSi Basic, an exam preparatory course and a no-nonsense course. And do this twice a day. Considering that at least four of these courses cover the same material, just somewhat different approaches, to me it looks haphazard. I personally would do things sequentially or just stick with one. As for the tutor, the recommendation was:

...and fit in an exam tutor sonewhere.

That sure looks to me like giving a minor role to the tutor. I'm not arguing that a tutor is necessary to learn a language. I'm just saying that if the stakes are high and time is short, it is highly advisable to get expert advice as soon as possible and develop an action plan rather than just trying to do it yourself and then call in the tutor when it may be too late.

Well in the end there is always going to be difference of opinion, and we clearly differ on certain points. I must be honest for some reason you touched a nerve, whether it's a bad mood or whether my comments are legitimate in response to yours and justified doesn't matter in the end. I was on my high horse and I wanted to ride it! I apologise if I've also been a bit abrupt or rude. And thank you for being polite.

So, I think my advise is solid but it comes from a personal perspective involving, well, a lot of personal experience. Your experiences are different, thus your advice is well, and in line with your experience most likely of what may or may not work based on your own conclusions. I don't see an issue with overlap with courses as I believe we get a massive amount of repetition in native content (TV for example) in conversations and so on. Repetition is good and necessary. When using courses you're not necessarily going to retain something you come across the first time. Additionally many things might be repeated, but others will not, and at times when a them is repeated, such a "tener + hambre, tener + miedo" in one book and accompanying exercises and context provided (eg Destinos video) then you might come across variations in another book such as "tener + calor" (it's been that long I can't think of any others in Spanish). But you do bring something else to mind that if you overlap too much with courses you could waste time and not progress quickly enough. Still if one did 10 hours a day then progress would be quick enough I'd think, but I could be wrong.

Also I'd like to add that the 10hrs/day of 5 decent courses was essentially to illustrate that one ought to get serious with some very decent material and some huge effort. I didn't research the hours, I just was trying to illustrate to put in the hard work, get serious and perhaps a tutor could help tie it all together in whatever capacity would suit.

[Cavesa]

Just a few tiny bits:

I agree there is no time for movies and such stuff in an extremely tight plan like this. And the number one reason is: you don't need that for passing B1. So, the time/value ratio is in this case not that good. But in just a few months, you'll be ready to rewards yourself with some movies, if you still keep studying Spanish after the exam. But for similar reasons, I am not sure Destinos or Michel Thomas are worth incorporating into the plan.

The pronunciation: this is the opposite, the time/value ratio is very good. You can learn solid Spanish pronunciation in an hour of work, yet so many people do not invest the one hour and skip right to more fun stuff. And while many B1 speakers have horrible pronunciation, they may often be better able to balance it out by other things, even should it cost them some points. I think learning the pronunciation correctly can save/gain some points and it facilitates the listening skills and adds confidence (which is quite important for the exam).

Tutor can be very useful for speaking and writing practice and feedback, yes, that is extremely true and paying one for these purposes is a good idea.

But not so much for explaining the tasks (which is a more important role in some more advanced exams with tons of formal stuff to take into account. B1 writing genres and speaking situations are explained and given examples of everywhere) or the exam in general, which many tutors love to waste hours on. Not for tasks including multiple choice answers and such, a key to exercises suffices here, another favourite. And definitely NOT for assessment like "your conjugation is weak" or "you should focus on the prepositions", which Sallard mentiones. Everyone knows that on their own and everyone can easily work on that on their own, while being corrected "just" within the area of oral and writen activities. From my experience, being repeatedly corrected a mistake is worthless without the student taking a grammar book and studying on their own. Sure, finer details and troubles are always to be found, but that is not needed for B1. B1 is not about fine details. If a learner needs to be told general obvious stuff like "you should work on your prepositions", they should definitely consider not to try self-teaching again.

About the planning: Most tutors suck at planning. I have met a lot of teachers and tutors. Sure, there are some exceptions and the video with the German experiment (I remember watching a similar one with guy who got to B1 in a month or two) is a good example. But vast majority of them is incompetent at devising trully efficient intensive learning plans. Most of them do not understand they are to supplement writen sources, not to take over them. Most of them insists on doing basic grammar explanations themselves, which is a waste of time and money and the tutor can almost never be better than a grammar book on that. The same way, they insist on supervising activites one should do on their own, such as filling the gaps exercises or listening exercise with audio.

And I totally don't think any tutor would say "What learning materials does the person have? Assimil, Michel Thomas, French in Action, the book 501 Spanish verbs? Good stuff but let's add some websites and other tools.". Instead it would be "What is Assimil? What is Michel Thomas? Oh, and you don't need an explicit verbbook. Let's go through my favourite classroom series instead and I'll give you personally copies from other books to supplement it." Which usually leads to using crappy courses, worse organisation of the learning process, and more dependence on the teacher, without necessarily leading to better results. (P.S. the chaos of copies, so difficult to review and use on one's own, would be exactly from the grammar books and preparatory books we are talking about on this thread. I have heard several people say "oh, I had paid for a preparatory class. But it was a waste of money, we just did preparatory book exercises on copies and didn't actually talk/write so much. I would have been better on my own, had I bought the book.")

I am afraid this thread is slightly leading to a problem that has been mentioned several times already: too many resources recommended. No, five courses to spend 10 hours a day on, that is not realistic. It simply isn't.Ten hours per day is not realistic. Getting through five courses is not realistic (and doing fist 5 units of each, that won't suffice).
I may be a bit controversial here, but I don't think FSI (except for the pronunciation drills) is a good course now. Not cefr labeled, very intensive yet with curriculum not necessarily teaching the B1 exam stuff. Destinos: I already mentioned this course. As a supplement after the other stuff has been done, sure. But again I wouldn't be sure it fits the exam.

My idea of main resources to follow would be, for example, Assimil+Gramática de uso del espanol+two preparatory courses for the B1 exam.
Supplements: a tutor (the best supplement of them all, true),Aveteca, Destinos or another good resource on listening, conjugation practice tool (such as verb courses on memrse or various websites with exercises), perhaps a vocabulary book.