lingua wrote:It might be useful to look into the SMART goal concept. There is a lot of information out there about it.
For something like Assimil it's unknown what the actual subject is until you do it so I think it's sufficient to state that I will do X number of lessons/dialogs per week following the recommended procedure.
Cavesa, do you consider Speechling a serious resource? I mostly free-form my Italian on that site. But I could consider doing the German there in some structured manner. Probably the verbs would be a good start to solidify the conjugations.
Yes, we are actually doing exactly the SMART goals thing, there are various ways to incorporate this idea. All the things on the Week Goals list are Specific (that's why I am more for a goal like "chapter 3" than "2 hours of coursebook study"), Measurable (I'd say "Unit 3 and 4" is better than "learn the past participle", but CarlyD disagrees, which is normal. Both ways can work ), Achieveable (That's why I'm trying to keep the list short and would recommend everybody to not get too excited at first), Relevant (all of the things on our lists are meant to be serious resources leading to the goal of B1), and Time Based (Weekly Goals).
Yes, I consider Speechling to be one of the most serious pronunciation oriented resources I've ever seen. I am not too convinced by some of the secondary functions (some sort of flashcards, comprehension exercises, etc). As usual, I believe the good apps are good, because they do one thing right, and they fulfill a function a standard high quality general course leaves a gap. Once an app focuses on too many things and tries to become the course, it tends to fall apart. But Speechling is focused on its primary purpose, in spite of offering some other tools too, which is giving tons of very good pronunciation feedback.
The seriousness in this case is not primarily about the structure of the main course (which is not bad, but I plan to use some other stuff in "free form" too, for example a few chapters from a medical textbook I've got). It's the quality of the feedback. While the tutors vary a bit in their style (some just say the thing right, others explain a bit where the problem is.), they are all far superior to not only the computer speech recognition (this bar is very low), and to self study with audio (which is not bad, and often better than many tutors, but still has limits), but also to almost all the language teachers and tutors I've ever met.
We can also assess the seriousness of a resource by considering how much focus and hard work it demands from the user. Speechling is very serious. It can even be tiring at times, but it is worth it. (I wonder how many more corrections I'll need to get the word "Kirche" absolutely right
It's my worst word ever).
