This is how I have been doing the passive wave:
1. Listen with the book closed.
2. Listen to the Spanish while reading the Spanish quietly along once through.
3. Listen, pause after each line/sentence, and read aloud.
4. Compare the sentence structures and translations.
5. Review the notes.
6. Listen x2; first reading the English and second the Spanish
7. Play the audio of the first exercises, pausing after each line, and repeating aloud. Then repeat the sentences while reading the English.
8. Do the fill-in-the-blanks. Cover the answer key with a notecard and check only after I guess.
9. Listen and read along out loud with the lesson once all the way through.
10. Read the end of lesson cultural note if there is one.
Then sometimes I just randomly review a lesson by listening to the audio and reading the Spanish out loud along with it and then check the vocab. Seems to be going alright since I usually remember everything on the Spanish side from looking at the English side if I do that first.
I still have a bit of time before the active wave, but it will arrive during a hiatus from the site (I am going on an extended trip and internet access will vary from spotty to non-existent.) Thus, I thought it good to figure out the game-plan now so I was not stalled when it arrived.
I guess my main question is, what is the actual point of the Active Wave?
Inside the front flap of the book:
"As you learn each new lesson, you will also review an earlier one, following our instructions, and translate the dialogue from English into Spanish. You'll be delighted at the results!"
From the introduction:
Basically the same as the front flap, but it says, "This time, however, instead of translating the first exercise in each lesson from Spanish into English, try to translate it the other direction; that is, from English to Spanish. This will consolidate your learning, as well as allow you to see how much you've progressed."
At the end of Lesson 50 (where the active wave begins):
Just explains how the book will tell you which lesson to go back and review, and adds, "But this time, after reviewing the lesson, you'll translate the English into Spanish instead of the other way around. Then read your Spanish translation out loud - don't be shy; speak loudly and articulate clearly. Go over the pronunciation as many times as you need to."
At the Language Geek site, someone wrote at the directions as they read in the Dutch course:
"1. Read the lesson, repeating each sentence once. If you have the recordings, listen to them carefully.
2. Cover the Dutch text and try to reconstruct it, looking only at the English sentences. Make an effort to do this both out loud and in writing. This is the most important part of the second wave!
3. After you are finished, uncover the Dutch text and carefully correct any errors you have made."
It strikes me as strange to not try the translation "cold," but perhaps the idea of listening to the audio first is to make sure I am choosing the "correct" thing to try to translate to since there are surely many ways to say a given phrase that I will learn. It seems the real key takeaway here is to write. Combining the above, I'd think the simplest way to make sure I cover the bases is to:
1. Write out my attempted translation of the first exercises from English to Spanish. Check and correct any written errors.
2. Listen to the main dialogue without looking at the book.
3. Listen again while reading the English.
4. Write out the Spanish from the English translation without looking at the Spanish. Check and correct any written errors.
5. Listen and read along with both the Spanish and English a couple times and then read aloud along with the Spanish.
What do you all think? Does that pretty fairly capture the spirit of the active wave? Too much? Too little? I don't want to overthink it, so just want to make sure I am getting the main gist. Interestingly, since I review the main dialogues and not the exercises vocab, that may prove trickier when it comes time for review!
Separately, that is not too labor intensive. Does anyone think there'd be a problem in reviewing two old lessons in a day if time permitted? I wouldn't want to do it the whole way since that'd mean the last week basically doing the active wave the next day. But maybe for the first ~35 days so I'd get to lesson 70 of the active wave while on lesson 85 of the passive. And then I'd just trail two weeks behind the active. It'd cut more than a month off the overall time to do the course. And the dialogues are longer at the end, so it might make more sense to have the review be a bit sooner. I welcome everyone's thoughts.