Spanish B1 Level by May 2016 [Spanish TAC 2016]

[haziz]

I started learning Spanish last year in May. After a couple of months of very enthusiastic self study, I took two poorly run and very hectic courses (they were trying to cram 1 semester of material into 1 month) at a local community college that managed to utterly crush my enthusiasm and led me to abandon my studying of the language.

I restarted two weeks ago, I am back at self study. I would have set myself a goal of B1 level of comfort with Spanish by 6 months, but I then noted that there is a sitting for the DELE exam available in late May of 2016. I figure that what I did last year probably does count for at least one and a half months of study, even if I do have to revise the material again. I have always found in my professional career that choosing to take an exam, as opposed to being required to take one, generally focused my goals and aided in motivating me to self study. I, therefore, am setting myself the goal of taking the DELE in May of 2016, preferably at the B1 level, but the A2 level would also be acceptable. I will decide on the level when the window for registering opens up in February or March using their sample test papers as a rough guide. I will generally aim for about one level above my comfort zone, hence setting myself up a goal to aim for.

Living in the USA, I am trying to pick up a fairly neutral Latin American pronunciation, and focusing on the commonality within the Spanish language.

My study materials so far has been focused on the following.

1. Assimil Spanish with Ease, current (2014) edition: I am up to lesson 37, having again restarted from lesson 1. I am struggling with it at this point and am wondering if I am trying to go too fast. I just wanted to get beyond the first 15 lessons or so, having fallen into the rut of repeating them over and over again with my failed attempts last year. With the lessons at this point, I am finding that I understand very little of the Spanish if I just read it without the translation, but will still have significant difficulty even as I read the English translation a couple of times over. I also have the 1987 Edition of Assimil, and the 1950s Spanish without Toil, but am working only with the current edition. I know some people think this edition is dumbed down, but I am struggling even with this "dumbed down" material! I may try to go through the 1987 Assimil edition and the 1950s "Without Toil" edition after I am done with the current one.

2. Using Learning Spanish Like Crazy (LSLC) in the car. I am again up to lesson 20 having done about the same last year. I do find it useful and it does help with my pronunciation but find their emphasis on the tu form of address irritating. I do have opportunities to use Spanish at work and wish to remain fairly formal. Indeed I would prefer to remain fairly formal when traveling in Central America which I do occasionally do. I do also have the full Pimsleur course but find it quite slow going in terms of how quickly they are covering the language. I have also used Michel Thomas in the past.

3. Easy Spanish Step by Step: I use it to review some grammar rules and review verb conjugation. I do find that I need to understand some of the grammar, and find it difficult to pick up the grammar purely by assimilation either from Assimil (even with the explanations) or with the LSLC "tapes".

4. Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish: Useful for picking up many cognates shared with English and as another review of the grammar. I am still really early in the book and am using it only intermittently.

5. Ultimate Spanish from Living Language: Up to lesson 4, but I am tackling it only intermittently.

6. Watching Destinos while having dinner. I am only watching it, and have finished episode 5. I do have the book and workbooks but do not have the time to also go through these.

I can probably devote about 1-2 hours a day to my studies but am already wondering if I will burn myself out before I reach my goal.

I have plenty of other material around the house, but do not have the time or patience to go through it all. Maybe later. I did finish about half of Teach Yourself Latin American Spanish last year but found it a little tedious. I may use it for review later.

I hope I do not burn out in a couple of months. I did post this log also on HTLAL. I do find their forum software however a bit antiquated and frequent outages a little irritating.

[haziz]

I am up to lesson 39 in Assimil, I also jumped ahead and read the grammatical review lesson 42. I think one reason I am having a little difficulty with Assimil, is that since it does try to give you some real life conversations, it does throw at me numerous verb tenses, some of which I am still struggling with.

Reviewed the present subjunctive and imperative and future tense in Advanced Spanish Step by Step. I had to go to the advanced book to find these tenses covered.

I am up to LSLC lesson 24, but will probably have to repeat and review lessons 20-23 again.

[James29]

Assimil works very differently than Pimsleur-ish programs. You will not feel like you are picking anything up with Assimil because it focuses on getting things into the long term memory. With Pimsleur-ish things you feel like you are "learning" more because of the short term memory spaced repetition. Assimil can be frustrating that way, but you really need to give it a few months and then, suddenly, when you go back and review the first lesson you will be surprised at how much you remember. Keep up the good work.

[haziz]

I just finished lesson 50 in Assimil Spanish with Ease. I am also using the recordings more, now that I have uploaded them onto my Amazon library, through the Amazon Echo/Alexa. It definitely helps.

I got a little impatient and started the active phase a little early and am up to lesson four of the active phase. My translation is not bad but there is the occasional sentence where I draw a complete blank. I do try to go back to the earlier lesson and both read the Spanish, listen to the recording (often for the first time) and read the grammatical explanation.

I have not used most of my other material this week other than reviewing one or two verb tenses in "Madrigal", and listening in a somewhat absent minded fashion to LSLC. I will need to repeat lessons 20-29 in LSLC with a transcript in hand since I find their coverage of verb conjugations somewhat difficult to follow.

I joined a local Spanish conversation group at the library for the second time this weekend. I am still pretty dismal at it but the fact that I am able to come up with anything meaningful is still great.

[haziz]

Upto lesson 58 in Assimil and lesson 8 in the active phase. Also did most of the review lesson 63 a couple of times. I found lessons 57 and 58 somewhat tough. Will need to redo them. I am getting about 2/3rds of the active phase right, but there are some sentences where I come up blank except for the occasional isolated word.

Watching episode seven of Destinos.

Finished lesson 30 of LSLC, but will need to redo lessons 20-30 again, preferably with a script in hand. This means I will have to do them at home rather than while driving the car.

Living Language Ultimate Spanish: Finished lesson 6.

Getting a little restless, and am tinkering a little with Esperanto on the side. I am not sure I need the distraction, however long slogs with Assimil or the other lessons feel slightly tedious and I find myself distracted by either Esperanto or endless lurking on this forum or on HTLAL.

[arthaey]

Getting a little restless, and am tinkering a little with Esperanto on the side. I am not sure I need the distraction, however long slogs with Assimil or the other lessons feel slightly tedious

That's a lot of course content; I'd be feeling restless too! Have you considered looking for some native content that's genuinely interesting?

[haziz]

I have been wrestling with Assimil this week. Finding the passive phase both tough going and a bit tedious, and the active phase much tougher than before even though I am only up to lesson 11 with the latter. I am up to lesson 64 of the passive phase, but I am finding it to be quite slow going to go through the lesson. With the active phase, in lessons 10 and 11, I managed to come up with only a third of the translation and even there, it is riddled with mistakes.

I visited unit 1 and 2 using FSI/Barron's Mastering Spanish to focus somewhat on Spanish pronunciation. I am also redoing lessons 20-22 of LSLC for revison, but that too is very slow going and I will likely just have to print the transcripts, sit down and do them an home with a transcript in hand.

I am liking Sandberg's Spanish for Reading a good deal and just finished lesson 3.

Read 2 very short essays in "Read and Think Spanish". Kind of a gentle intro to "native" material.

[haziz]

Work commitments prevented me from doing much this past week. I am only up to lesson 65 in the passive phase of Assimil and have not done any further active phase lessons, leaving me still at lesson 11.

Tinkered minimally with Duolingo. I am now also exploring Memrise, which is new to me, unlike Duolingo. I may end up using Memrise rather than Anki for my vocabulary revision, not that I have used Anki much.

Playing lesson 1 and 2 of FSI Basic Spanish over and over in the car while commuting to work. Sort of a pronunciateion practice.

[haziz]

A mixture of work commitments and general restlessness with my Spanish studies have impeded my progress over the last couple of weeks. I am finding myself impatient with Assimil and find it slow going when I do tackle it. For those that think that the current edition (2014) of Spanish with Ease is "dumbed down", I shudder to think what people would not consider to be dumbed down! I am really struggling with lessons in the 65-74 range. I got so bogged down with some of them that I hardly progressed at all. In the interest of avoiding inertia, I opted to give some of them a decent effort but then move on, even if I feel like I have not mastered the material. I am also falling behind in the active phase of Assimil.

Seeking more interesting material, I am restlessly exploring listening, mostly to Radio Ambulante, but also to other podcasts, and in seeking out simplified "native" material like Think Spanish magazine and the Difusion graded Spanish readers. OK, so some of them are not really native material, but nevertheless seem more interesting than my other learning materials. I particularly like Radio Ambulante. The presence of transcripts in both Spanish and English, makes listening to material above my listening comprehension level both possible and often enjoyable.

I also discovered Lingq. By importing some of my reading material into Lingq, I am also able to read somewhat above my level.

[emk]

I am finding myself impatient with Assimil and find it slow going when I do tackle it. For those that think that the current edition (2014) of Spanish with Ease is "dumbed down", I shudder to think what people would not consider to be dumbed down! I am really struggling with lessons in the 65-74 range. I got so bogged down with some of them that I hardly progressed at all. In the interest of avoiding inertia, I opted to give some of them a decent effort but then move on, even if I feel like I have not mastered the material. I am also falling behind in the active phase of Assimil.

There's a new edition of Assimil L'Espagnol out for French speakers as of a few years ago, and I don't know whether it has replaced the previous English-based Spanish with Ease yet, or when that replacement would have occurred. But anyway, the version of Spanish with Ease that was generally available a few years ago had some notoriously hard lessons in the mid-60 to mid-70 range, and over the years, I've seen a lot of people on HTLAL struggle through those lessons. Most people eventually moved on, and it didn't seem to do them any harm at all.

It's tempting to try to learn every single thing in an Assimil lesson. But at some point, it's OK to treat Assimil the way you would treat native media: Learn what you can learn in a reasonable amount of time, and then have faith that you'll learn the rest later, when you run into it again and your brain is ready for that particular bit.