jeffers wrote:I'm sure you've said before, but where and how do you do the drills? Are you sitting at a desk with a computer? Walking about? Are you looking at the manual while doing them?
Hey jeffers. You know I was into Spanish a long time ago (15 years) and revived it here in the last year or so, so there's a good bit of variety.
Back in day:
Listen/drill in the car driving to work. Generally do this "there and back". (that was often 45 minutes each direction).
Walking the dog. Do the drills with the headphones or whatever.
Not enough time with the manual.
These days:
Was mostly in the car when I was driving more. Had a "there and back" daily drive about 12 minutes each direction and that was a good amount of study time for me. Would also would do FSI in the car for errands, lunch, etc.
Then my "12 minute trip" pretty much went away. So, from a "time on task", a big reduction in FSI time. So I started doing more FSI while at home. Sometimes sitting at the computer (often) or pacing around the room (this is better than sitting). Based on that Helen Abadzi video, also carried some light dumbbells up to the "study room/office". If I'm feeling it, will do some light movements during the drill. The movement is helpful because the exercise is light and the combination reduce "boredom". Although I use the word "boredom" a lot, I don't think FSI drills are boring. They're challenges, sometimes small, always incremental, sometimes more so. If I'm getting tired of it, I just move on to something else.
I think of FSI drilling a bit like exercise. Something I should do. It's the centerpiece of my program to learn Spanish, but not where I spend the most time. I watch a lot of youtube. That's not generally not study per se, but there's a tremendous amount of interesting content out there, so I do a good bit of that. (and I want to be Don Quixote "dreaming the impossible dream"):
With the pandemic, I've taken to driving to visit some family members who live about 14 hours away by car. There I splice some FSI in with audiobooks. I'm driving alone. Splicing in a variety of books and FSI drills is much better from my perspective than grinding through a 15-20 hour audiobook that's over my head. Better to do easy books, current FSI drills, etc. On FSI during these long trips, I've taken to a "go ahead" approach.
Example of "go ahead with FSI" on a very long trip (with audiobooks spliced in, and audiobooks are the majority of the drive time, some radio too when I find a Spanish channel, but will occasionally just find some good music.
while trip is not finished:
Drill each mp3 until (good, tired, or enough for today).
Go to next mp3.
if (enough FSI or audiobook or radio)
switch to something else
end if
done
And on a "go ahead", don't even worry about what drills you've "got down" and therefore should delete. You'll know after the trip is over the next time you do the drill that you've "got it down" and can just delete it then. Don't worry about making notes and using rest stops to boot up your computer to delete a few files. (I've done that. So when I'm saying "you" here, I'm just talking to myself with a realization that came after a few trips when I started giving FSI more attention).
I'm spending more time with the manual than I've ever done. Generally I don't use it with drills. I use it with the dialogs and there annotation and actually read the "explanations" a few times. (Back in the olden days, I'd generally just look at the summary or table that comes after the "presentation of pattern". I might read the longer explanation that comes after the drills if I was really confused, but didn't use the manual enough (looking back now)).
So, although I was committed to the course back in the olden days and did things like edit the audio a lot and drill the hell out of it, I didn't think, "this is a lifetime resource". When I get this down really well, I can always come back to it if I quit using Spanish for some years.
The thing I like about the FSI Basic Spanish is the "novella" they create with the dialogs. Same characters, but different situations.
FSI Basic French is also good. If I were the boss, I'd have suggested to the FSI French guys to:
1) Use consistent "characters" in all these f-ing dialogs. (that's such an easy tweak).
2) Cut those units in 1/2 or thirds or 1/5s or whatever. FSI Basic Spanish is 55. FSI French is 24. The classes lasted the same time, and the French guys would argue, "we do one unit a week", but then, being the boss, I'd say, "hey you guys, is there a way to split this up into "days" or "a day", rather than a week or a half week.
But us amateurs can do with the course what we want.
About "metrics". They're useful, but we're dealing with amorphous analog data, not binary. So, metrics have to be taken with a grain of salt.
And apologies to any programmers who notice a bug in the above. I'm still a work in progress.
By the way, Britain's got Talent!