So what have I learned or done lately?
Got back from my trip.
During the drive back, did a good bit of FSI Variation drills. Some FSI sequential drills. CD2 of Assimil Using Spanish. Some radio. The audio from Hugo Spanish in 3 Months (CD 3 of 3). Finished book 3 of 5 of
2666.
I'm going to do another visit again in a couple weeks, so thinking of relatively short interim activities/goals.
While I'm thinking about it, these are some current bars:
: 2666 de Roberto Bolaño
: FSI Basic Spanish
: Anaya El Quijote (4th time)
: Leyendo 4000 páginas desde junio 14, 2021
: Hugo Spanish in 3 Months (overview)
: Cien años de soledad (7x)
: Club de Cuervos
: Anki el_quijote - mature cards - from the Anaya books
: Anki 5000 - mature cards
: Anki FSI mature cards
: FSI Dialogs (2x)
: FSI PoP (Illustrations)
: FSI Replacements
: FSI Variations
: Quijote del siglo XXI (4x)
Cien años de soledad is back in the game. Listened to the Gustavo Bonfigli audible recording of chapter 1 on my walk this morning. Made some notes about words that weren't clear. Put those into an Anki deck this morning. 19 * 2 = 38
tarjetas. That's not every word that was a bit questionable, but most of the ones that made the story less clear and vibrant. I'm hoping to continue this practice between now and my next road trip, meaning, I'd like to listen to the 20 chapters in the next couple of weeks and make notes for vocabulary cards.
FSI is still on unit 37. AllSubNoDub was kind enough to ask about plans a while back. Keeping with that FSI plan, I don't have to get beyond unit 37 in 2021, so I'm close to reaching that goal. (5/8 way through the course).
2666 is going on the back burner. During yesterday's walk, started book 4. I wasn't enjoying it. That made me switch to Cien años chapter 15, which is where the Gustavo Bonfigli happened to be and I liked it a lot. That led me to the idea of carrying a notebook, since there weren't
that many unknown words. And it's more fun, and I need some of that.
Towards the end of today's walk, started talking to myself, recapping the story as told in chapter 1 to myself. That gave me the idea that when I turn to a "just read it" run, I want to pay particular attention to the space and time transitions. Or maybe that's for the time after with a new copy - the one that has paintings in it and a larger font than the RAE edition.
Lastly, I'm tempted to run through Hugo in 3 Months again - a second run - trying to put some grammar and other approach to my studies. That also has some vosotros, which will be handy for my next off-site visit, where I'm thinking analyze the
Anaya El Quijote.
Teango has his 3 day projects. I'm looking at 2 week projects.
Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice wrote:Learners’ needs change over time. Learning is more efficient when the focus is on providing each learner with what he or she needs in order to learn right now, not on teaching a preset curriculum. A flexible language program adapts to learner traits so as to minimize weaknesses and maximize learning strengths for particular learners. Some learners demonstrate higher “aptitudes” in one style of language program than in another.
There is the need for changes of pace in long-term language training.
Motivation, self-discipline, and power of concentration may be equally or more important than cognitive aptitude.
Some kind of explicit grammar instruction helps most people to learn efficiently. Some focus on an overview of the grammatical system appears to make language learning more efficient by creating awareness of form(s) so that learners can attend to them when they are ready.
Immersion experiences appear to have the greatest payoff above the S-2 level (Speaking at B1/B2 level).
Experience at FSI indicates unequivocally that the amount of time spent in reading, listening to, and interacting in the language has a close relationship to the learner’s ability to use that language professionally.
For knowledge of one language to be a real advantage in learning another, however, it needs to be at a significant level. An interagency group determined recently that this kind of advantage takes effect at a three-level proficiency or better (B2/C1).
Language learning may also be affected by whether the learners possess an overt declarative knowledge of salient linguistic and grammatical concepts. It appears increasingly clear that such knowledge helps many learners to be able to progress faster and more surely, and that lack of that knowledge can slow them down. Knowing such concepts increases the accessibility of such resources as reference grammars, textbooks, and dictionaries, and also serves an important purpose in making adult learners aware of types of language phenomena to watch for.
We see individuals on a regular basis who know exactly what they have to do in order to learn a new language. Some of them are so good that they are truly astonishing, and they are each different. Earl Stevick emphasized this point in his 1989 book, Success with Foreign Languages, by describing seven such superb learners— each with different learning approaches. Programs at FSI need to be flexible enough to make it possible for each learner to progress as rapidly as he or she is able. We have found the following adult learning axiom to be revealing: “If an adult tells you that he needs something in order to learn, the chances are very good that he’s right.”
Lesson 7. The importance of “automaticity” in building learner skill and confidence in speaking and reading a language is more important than has been recognized by the SLA field over the last two decades.
In order to perform higher order communicative skills—such as participating in social conversations and other such job-related uses of the target language—our students must produce spontaneously and accurately the relevant grammatical structures and routines of the language.
Adults need to read considerable amounts of “easy” material in order to build up stamina and to automatize processing skills.
Successful language learning requires “stretching” learners some of the time through “i+1”- type tasks. Yet it is also important to build up processing skills by varying the pace and giving learners some tasks that they can perform easily. This is particularly important in intensive programs, where students are constantly confronted with new structures and vocabulary to learn.
Those are my notes from
https://howlearnspanish.com/wp-content/ ... 999_07.pdf