ShawnP's Spanish Adventure

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ShawnP
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ShawnP's Spanish Adventure

Postby ShawnP » Sun Jul 10, 2016 4:34 pm

Good day all,

Although my planned trip to Guatemala this past January crashed and burned, I've still hit the books a bit but now plan on ramping up my journey. I decided to buckle down and learn to read, listen, and speak Spanish. Last night, I booked a ticket to Guatemala starting 8 Jan 2017 - 2 March 2017. My plan is to spend 4 weeks in Guatemala practicing/learning at immersion schools/homestay, 1 week in Belize scuba diving, and 2 weeks in Mexico speaking and enjoying Carnaval (22 Feb - 1 March 2017) with my old Air Force buddy that lives on Cozumel until 1 March. Afterwards, depart for the States on 2 March. I keep a personal log of my own but decided to put it here for accountability.

Here's where I am now:

FSI Spanish--Lesson 17 (2 lessons per week, with a review of 6 previous lessons each week--Only drills: Thanks Audacity)
Assimil Spanish w/o Toil--Lesson 50 (not sure if I'll keep it up)
Glossika Mexican Spanish--Fluency Book 2 (Completion goal of Fluency 1, 2 and 3--Sep 30)
Book 2 Spanish--Restarting at Lesson 10 (Completion goal of July 31)

Books in my possession: First Spanish Reader, Easy Spanish reader, Stories from PR, Stories from Mexico, and Stories from Latin America. (Planned completion date of 31 Aug). I've read half of First Spanish reader but with this new goal I've got to get on these books.

I really need to jump on my listening of native materials, but I don't feel I'm quite at the stage for audiobooks. The beginner podcasts have too much English and are too easy. The intermediate pods are just slightly over my head although I pick out lots of words and get the gist, sometime. The DLI Spanish phone conversations I feel are helping although I don't always understand the conversations without a transcript.

So far, the FSI (lesson and review lesson), Assimil (getting harder), and Glossika are taking 2.5 - 3 hours. Realistically can do no more.

Currently overseas so I'll start my Language Exchange around Sept/Oct. Completed a few last year. Hope to do better though.

Anyway, that's enough for now. Any recommendations or strategies would be greatly appreciated.
Last edited by ShawnP on Sat Dec 30, 2023 4:09 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Stelle
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Re: ShawnP's 6-Months Spanish to Guatemala

Postby Stelle » Sun Jul 10, 2016 5:10 pm

Nice! My partner and I are also heading to Guatemala, in late September. He'll be doing some immersion Spanish courses (although he loves the idea of language-learning, he really isn't an autodidact - yet!), and I may or may not try to find a teacher who'll work with me on something more advanced. What part of Guatemala are you thinking about visiting? We're thinking about spending a month each in Antigua, Xela and somewhere on Lake Atitlan, renting an apartment in each place. Homestays really aren't that appealing to us as a couple, although I'd almost certainly look for a home stay if I were going on my own.

Looks like you've got a good variety of resources! For listening accessible to a beginner, you might want to try Destinos. It's cheesy and kind of slow, but it really works. I was ready for Notes in Spanish intermediate after watching most of Destinos.

¡Buena suerte! I look forward to following along on your log.

edited to tone down an overabundance of exclamation marks
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ShawnP
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Re: ShawnP's 6-Months Spanish to Guatemala

Postby ShawnP » Sun Jul 10, 2016 7:08 pm

Thanks Stelle,

So your going for 3 months??? Wow. I thought 2 was pushing it. Please let me know how it goes. I'm looking at going straight to Antigua, Atitlan, perhaps Xela, then up to Coban and across to Belize. I'll be flying solo so I'll try out the homestays just for the practice and culture. This journey will be my first attempt at immersion so I'm looking forward to it.

As for Destinos, I made it to about 46 last year and then just fell off. I'll get back at it. Extra en espanol on youtube is good, seen all episodes twice so far.

I haven't decided on schools yet. Still lots of research to do. Good luck to you also.
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Re: ShawnP's 6-Months Spanish to Guatemala

Postby Tomás » Sun Jul 10, 2016 7:38 pm

ShawnP wrote:Books in my possession: First Spanish Reader, Easy Spanish reader, Stories from PR, Stories from Mexico, and Stories from Latin America. (Planned completion date of 31 Aug). I've read half of First Spanish reader but with this new goal I've got to get on these books.

I really need to jump on my listening of native materials, but I don't feel I'm quite at the stage for audiobooks.


There is free audio for those "stories from" books. See the thread on graded Spanish readers from a couple days ago for the links.
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Stelle
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Re: ShawnP's 6-Months Spanish to Guatemala

Postby Stelle » Sun Jul 10, 2016 8:03 pm

ShawnP wrote:Thanks Stelle,

So your going for 3 months??? Wow. I thought 2 was pushing it. Please let me know how it goes. I'm looking at going straight to Antigua, Atitlan, perhaps Xela, then up to Coban and across to Belize. I'll be flying solo so I'll try out the homestays just for the practice and culture. This journey will be my first attempt at immersion so I'm looking forward to it.

As for Destinos, I made it to about 46 last year and then just fell off. I'll get back at it. Extra en espanol on youtube is good, seen all episodes twice so far.

I haven't decided on schools yet. Still lots of research to do. Good luck to you also.


We're going to be in Central America for 7 or 8 months. We're taking a sabbatical, and neither of us will be working this coming year. The first three months will be focused on language study, and the rest of the time we'll be travelling. We'd like to visit Costa Rica and Belize. We may also do some WWOOFing.

Have you tried the intermediate Notes in Spanish podcasts? If you watched most of Destinos and all of Extr@, then they might be a good level for you.

You could also check out A mi aire. I haven't listened to it, so I'm not sure if it's any good, but I'm using the Italian podcasts on the same site, and I find them excellent. I like the conversational tone, along with the full transcripts.

Another excellent resource is VeinteMundos, which offers interesting articles accompanied by full audio.
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ShawnP
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Re: ShawnP's 6-Months Spanish to Guatemala

Postby ShawnP » Wed Jul 13, 2016 12:21 pm

Monday, I SCRAPPED my whole plan and start fresh from the beginning of everything, especially FSI Spanish. I feel like I didn't really overlearn any of the material but just breezed through the lessons and unfortunately got exposed. From now on, if I'm not at least 90% successful in all my FSI translations in the time provided, I'll stick with each lesson for a full week before moving on. I scrapped Assimil Spanish w/o Toil in favor for FSI.

Book 2 is a walk in the park although I don't have the book. I mostly listen to the audio only portion although there were 5-6 words in lesson 1-10 I was unsure of. I may start listening to each lesson in EN/SP, then play the same lesson in SP a couple of times until everything makes perfect sense.

Todays training consisted of : FSI Unit 5 (3-5 easy so far), Glossika 1-500 (just listening/no translating), Book 2 Lessons 1-10. I still plan on doing some L/R this evening from SPANISHLISTENING.ORG. http://www.spanishlistening.org/
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Re: ShawnP's 6-Months Spanish to Guatemala

Postby James29 » Wed Jul 13, 2016 2:11 pm

You are the man! Sounds like a dream trip. I did a few short immersion trips and absolutely loved them, but would never be able to take more than two weeks away from work.

I'd very strongly suggest working around FSI being your primary study method and scheduling your studies to finish with it sometime prior to your trip. To the extent you can find additional time add in things like telenovelas and reading books.

There is a great looking immersion school in Xela that I was checking out. Guatemala has been on my list of places to visit for a long time. Iguanamon posted a link to the school in Xela.

Good luck. It sounds like you are going to have an amazing trip.
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ShawnP
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Re: ShawnP's 6-Months Spanish to Guatemala

Postby ShawnP » Wed Jul 13, 2016 4:58 pm

James29,

Thanks for the advice. I've read your old log two or three times to see what you liked/disliked. I left my SwE book at home before I came to Afghanistan so I started with Toil which I acquired. I know you preferred SwE over SwoT and if time permits, I'll pick it back up before my departure.

My plan includes 2 weeks in Antigua, a week at Atitlan, a week at Xela, and a week up in Flores near Tikal before jumping the border to Belize. I'll keep you posted.
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MmeFleiss
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Re: ShawnP's 6-Months Spanish to Guatemala

Postby MmeFleiss » Wed Jul 13, 2016 5:17 pm

I personally thought Toil was more interesting than With Ease, with more and better vocabulary. I liked it even better when I stopped obsessing over memorizing the dialogue and just treated it like a graded reader to read intensively. It's amazing how much of the vocab you encounter there will constantly pop up in other readings. I felt like learning them from Assimil saved me a lot of time looking up vocab later on.
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Re: ShawnP's 6-Months Spanish to Guatemala

Postby James29 » Wed Jul 13, 2016 6:00 pm

There is, of course, the new Assimil Spanish (just titled "Spanish") which looks pretty good. It was not out when I was learning so I did not do it. The older, Without Toil, definitely has more stuff packed in there. I was also pretty advanced when I went through it and I was probably a bit Assimil-ed out at that time.

If I were starting again with Assimil and Spanish I think I'd look at the brand new course first.

I am really jealous, by the way. There are SO many things I'd really like to do in Guatemala for a trip. It was always first on my list for my immersion trips, but I never pulled the trigger because I heard a few horror stories about how dangerous some aspects of Guatemala City were (including the airport). In retrospect, I doubt it is really any worse than Quito, Guayaquil or Santo Domingo.
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