Although Fluenz discourages going through multiple lessons in a day, I feel pretty comfortable that it is reasonable for me. The material is essentially review. My problem is that the words have been locked away for a long time, and I need practice. In any case, I will only keep up a faster pace until I am up against truly new material or I just don't have time.
I am lucky to have opportunities to speak Spanish daily with people at work. I get to ask, "What do you think about saying something this way" to colleagues and I get a chance to try it out on patients. Many of them look at me sideways. I'm optimistic that I will be able to attain some level of proficiency but I am concerned that I will lose steam after a couple of months. I know I learn intensely in bursts. At the same time, I see learning Spanish as a need and I will be confronted with opportunities daily.
Activities I have been intent on in the past but stopped include guitar, snowboarding, poker, eating salads, and working out (ha!).
Activities in which I have maintained long-term effort include studying anesthesia, being more punctual, cutting out coffee and softdrinks (for heartburn reasons), and taking maintenance meds.
I think having daily confrontation with the Spanish language will maintain my attention.
Will it be a challenge not to get overwhelmed and not to get bored. We'll see.
The Google Translate tool: translate.google.com What an amazing tool! It makes mistakes, but if you can bounce the statements off of people, you can learn a lot.
Something I recently learned to say: Mientras usted respira el medicamento, va a mantenar dormido. Cuando voy a parar darle el medicamento, va a despertarse despues diez minutos. (minus the accent marks). That's my two liner for my description of general anesthesia, and now I can say it in Spanish. The ir + a construction may not be as cool as the future tense conjugation, but it's easy to say it this way, and it will be understood.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Journal posts
I didn't care to write stuff until I got this far.
------------------------------
12/24/09
Just completed Lesson 16 of Spanish 1a
Certainly the stuff they are teaching is practical. I also feel that the dialogue is a reasonable structure to move quickly to spoken spanish. Being conversational is the first goal. To understand stuff in movies and in television would be very cool. Understanding patients feels very far off. If I go through each lesson in one day
over the next 150d, that would be 5 mo. Understanding my patients well in 5 mo? I don't know if that's possible. If I go through each lesson 2/wk, that would be almost 3y. I want to get through the content as quickly as possible with good control of the content. It's easy to go through these beginning lessons quickly because I already learned the words in high school. The information is not a stretch.
The first 30 lessons should be pretty quick, but attaining the control is still a challenge. Part of the key for me will be internalizing the language, getting a chance to think over the dialogue, where I grasp the meaning in the word order of the spoken language. That means speaking and hearing the language at a rate that I can internalize the words. At full spoken speed, I can't hear the individual words. I have to practice speaking and hearing to the point that full speed is parsable. I might be able to speak at full speed with a short burst of practice, but to be able to hear it and parse it requires more practice.
Ese, este, esa, esta, can be very difficult to hear. The terminal vowel gets rolled into the next word, and if the next word begins with a vowel, I don't hear all the sounds I am expecting to hear. Very confusing to listen to.
Internalize and grasp the meaning listening at full speed in the word order of the spoken language.
Adding in the other tape and movies will add vocabulary, however fluenz is just offering the bones right now. I wonder how things will progress. You have to learn vocabulary at some point, but they don't really introduce very much at a time. They do a nice job integrating past lessons with current content. I get the sense that I am not learning much, but the metric will be what I can speak/understand at the end of the series. You may certainly add more vocabulary then...
Adding in what you feel will be important along the way. Body parts/ Organ systems are going to be much more important to me earlier.
The pace of the video certainly seems very slow right now. I am assuming that my level matches the level of the program, it will no longer feel so slow. Certainly in the chinese lessons, because of my lack of knowledge of the language, the lesson speed seemed just fine!
How did they figure out the lesson speed?
----------------------------------------
12/25/09
Just completed lesson 20 of spanish 1a
Yeah! I finished the first disk. That felt like a full day of spanish. Lots of practice with numbers. I am going to look for a spanish movie on netflix to download to watch immediately. Started to watch Sin Nombre. What a gruesome movie. I guess it's reality for some, but wow. Really scary. I only watched the first 19min. I didn't understand much of the dialogue. Got a little motion sick, too. That movie seems too violent/graphic for now. I'll look for something a little milder. At the request of the language program, it is saying that I should watch a movie over and over again until I can understand the dialogue. Shrug. OK.
Milestone? A disk is a disk. That's 20 lessons, so that's cool, but my understanding of regular speech at full speed is minimal.
Everyday a little more!
----------------------------------------
12/26/09
Just finished lesson 23 of spanish 1b
finished up numbers and now am doing time. it's going ok. just looking to finished spanish 1 by the end of the year. 3 lessons at a time for one sitting seems enough at this accelerated pace. 2 and 2 or 1 and 3 if I can break if up over the day. I don't think that finishing spanish 1 will be a big milestone as far as spanish knowledge. I will be close to refreshing my previous knowledge but I don't think I will have learned much new stuff. I will have gained valuable practice that I greatly need.
-----------------------------------------
12/28/09
just finished lesson 27 of spanish 1b
closing in on the end of spanish 1. kinda cool. important review chapters will be the numbers lesson and probably the last lesson, lesson 30. It's moving faster. I wonder how good my spanish skills will become after using fluenz. Certainly it's useful in the area of traveling. I mean what do you want to know how to say? I don't know.
I just want to express myself and understand my patients. I will supplement with spanish reading at some point, watch some spanish movies, and get the important phrases for medical spanish. 1/5 of the way is a huge way from the end.
I have to maintain the understanding that my learning will not be complete even when I finish this series. Will I have a good foundation to continue learning? That is the real question. Work at it and practice.
Reading the reviews, some people feel that Spanish 2 is still a bit slow. Maybe I will continue the pattern of multiple lessons per day through the end of 2. I feel like 4 lessons per day is quite enough, though. That's 7.5 d for the next level... haha. Obviously I don't have that much time on my hands.
------------------------------------------
12/29/09
Finished level 1. Started level 2. Fast start! Sonia isn't speaking so slowly any more, we get tu, and we get the past tense. Thought it was quite a step up. Very excited.
------------------------------
12/24/09
Just completed Lesson 16 of Spanish 1a
Certainly the stuff they are teaching is practical. I also feel that the dialogue is a reasonable structure to move quickly to spoken spanish. Being conversational is the first goal. To understand stuff in movies and in television would be very cool. Understanding patients feels very far off. If I go through each lesson in one day
over the next 150d, that would be 5 mo. Understanding my patients well in 5 mo? I don't know if that's possible. If I go through each lesson 2/wk, that would be almost 3y. I want to get through the content as quickly as possible with good control of the content. It's easy to go through these beginning lessons quickly because I already learned the words in high school. The information is not a stretch.
The first 30 lessons should be pretty quick, but attaining the control is still a challenge. Part of the key for me will be internalizing the language, getting a chance to think over the dialogue, where I grasp the meaning in the word order of the spoken language. That means speaking and hearing the language at a rate that I can internalize the words. At full spoken speed, I can't hear the individual words. I have to practice speaking and hearing to the point that full speed is parsable. I might be able to speak at full speed with a short burst of practice, but to be able to hear it and parse it requires more practice.
Ese, este, esa, esta, can be very difficult to hear. The terminal vowel gets rolled into the next word, and if the next word begins with a vowel, I don't hear all the sounds I am expecting to hear. Very confusing to listen to.
Internalize and grasp the meaning listening at full speed in the word order of the spoken language.
Adding in the other tape and movies will add vocabulary, however fluenz is just offering the bones right now. I wonder how things will progress. You have to learn vocabulary at some point, but they don't really introduce very much at a time. They do a nice job integrating past lessons with current content. I get the sense that I am not learning much, but the metric will be what I can speak/understand at the end of the series. You may certainly add more vocabulary then...
Adding in what you feel will be important along the way. Body parts/ Organ systems are going to be much more important to me earlier.
The pace of the video certainly seems very slow right now. I am assuming that my level matches the level of the program, it will no longer feel so slow. Certainly in the chinese lessons, because of my lack of knowledge of the language, the lesson speed seemed just fine!
How did they figure out the lesson speed?
----------------------------------------
12/25/09
Just completed lesson 20 of spanish 1a
Yeah! I finished the first disk. That felt like a full day of spanish. Lots of practice with numbers. I am going to look for a spanish movie on netflix to download to watch immediately. Started to watch Sin Nombre. What a gruesome movie. I guess it's reality for some, but wow. Really scary. I only watched the first 19min. I didn't understand much of the dialogue. Got a little motion sick, too. That movie seems too violent/graphic for now. I'll look for something a little milder. At the request of the language program, it is saying that I should watch a movie over and over again until I can understand the dialogue. Shrug. OK.
Milestone? A disk is a disk. That's 20 lessons, so that's cool, but my understanding of regular speech at full speed is minimal.
Everyday a little more!
----------------------------------------
12/26/09
Just finished lesson 23 of spanish 1b
finished up numbers and now am doing time. it's going ok. just looking to finished spanish 1 by the end of the year. 3 lessons at a time for one sitting seems enough at this accelerated pace. 2 and 2 or 1 and 3 if I can break if up over the day. I don't think that finishing spanish 1 will be a big milestone as far as spanish knowledge. I will be close to refreshing my previous knowledge but I don't think I will have learned much new stuff. I will have gained valuable practice that I greatly need.
-----------------------------------------
12/28/09
just finished lesson 27 of spanish 1b
closing in on the end of spanish 1. kinda cool. important review chapters will be the numbers lesson and probably the last lesson, lesson 30. It's moving faster. I wonder how good my spanish skills will become after using fluenz. Certainly it's useful in the area of traveling. I mean what do you want to know how to say? I don't know.
I just want to express myself and understand my patients. I will supplement with spanish reading at some point, watch some spanish movies, and get the important phrases for medical spanish. 1/5 of the way is a huge way from the end.
I have to maintain the understanding that my learning will not be complete even when I finish this series. Will I have a good foundation to continue learning? That is the real question. Work at it and practice.
Reading the reviews, some people feel that Spanish 2 is still a bit slow. Maybe I will continue the pattern of multiple lessons per day through the end of 2. I feel like 4 lessons per day is quite enough, though. That's 7.5 d for the next level... haha. Obviously I don't have that much time on my hands.
------------------------------------------
12/29/09
Finished level 1. Started level 2. Fast start! Sonia isn't speaking so slowly any more, we get tu, and we get the past tense. Thought it was quite a step up. Very excited.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Road to fluency?
I am writing my thoughts along this journey with the hope that I will elicit a dialog regarding the Fluenz Spanish system. As of yet, the only forum is the customer review section on Amazon, for this product.
My experience in using Fluenz Spanish has been excellent so far. I recently finished the first level of five and will be starting the second level this evening. I wrote out a few journal entries as I was going through level one, so I'll add those in at some time.
Before starting with Fluenz, I had taken a 16 year break studying Spanish. I took four years of it in highschool and don't remember a damn thing. What can you expect with no practice? Directly after highschool I actually went on an exchange program to Germany and had a fully immersive experience for a year. I lived with several host families, studied nursing at a hospital based school, and worked full time at the hospital. I achieved some level of fluency after that, breezed through some college level courses after getting back to the States, and left language studies since then. Spanish has been mostly deleted from my brain. When I attempt to remember a Spanish word, I say a German one.
So why Spanish now? I think it will improve my ability to take care of my patients. I am an anesthesiologist in the Boston area and I have a lot of Spanish speaking patients. Translators are great, but they can't always be around, and waiting for one to show up is time-consuming.
Waking up a patient from an anesthetic, can be challenging. Add the extra challenge of an inability to communicate, and the stress level rises logarithmically.
There are lots of good reasons to learn a new language. But why don't we just get started, shall we?
My experience in using Fluenz Spanish has been excellent so far. I recently finished the first level of five and will be starting the second level this evening. I wrote out a few journal entries as I was going through level one, so I'll add those in at some time.
Before starting with Fluenz, I had taken a 16 year break studying Spanish. I took four years of it in highschool and don't remember a damn thing. What can you expect with no practice? Directly after highschool I actually went on an exchange program to Germany and had a fully immersive experience for a year. I lived with several host families, studied nursing at a hospital based school, and worked full time at the hospital. I achieved some level of fluency after that, breezed through some college level courses after getting back to the States, and left language studies since then. Spanish has been mostly deleted from my brain. When I attempt to remember a Spanish word, I say a German one.
So why Spanish now? I think it will improve my ability to take care of my patients. I am an anesthesiologist in the Boston area and I have a lot of Spanish speaking patients. Translators are great, but they can't always be around, and waiting for one to show up is time-consuming.
Waking up a patient from an anesthetic, can be challenging. Add the extra challenge of an inability to communicate, and the stress level rises logarithmically.
There are lots of good reasons to learn a new language. But why don't we just get started, shall we?
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