My Spanish Coach - Nintendo DS

The problem with having a lot of gadgets that we seem to these days is that there isn't enough time to use it all. But last weekend, I remembered the existence of my DS, charged it up, and then realised that I had My Spanish Coach.

So for the entire last week, DS replaced Kindle during the bus journeys, while I practices Spanish with My Spanish Coach.

It is totally brilliant. It's not enough by itself to teach the language, but it is a wonderful tool for practising vocabulary, basic sentences etc. and make it fun. It uses interactive lessons, and relies heavily on games like multiple choice, flash cards, word search etc. 

With Michel Thomas structure firmly embedded in my mind, this is really helping with the practical application of the language, and I find myself practising speaking more and more phrases and words. Even attacking unsuspecting colleagues by random Spanish sentences and phrases. 

I also tried Spanish for Everyone on DS, and found it really rubbish. I only tried it for five minutes, but even the beginning and the whole format seemed so lame compared to My Spanish Coach that I decided to stick with My Spanish Coach. 

Language Log

SPANISH

Last week I put in more hours than the previous week, however, there was more passive learning involved by watching TV in Spanish with Spanish subtitles.

29/08 - 04/09 - 12 Hrs 46 Minutes

• Michel Thomas Foundation Disc 4, 5, 6, and partial 7. All tracks listened to twice.
• Charmed 2 Episodes in Spanish with Spanish subtitles
• Stargate Continuum in Spanish with Spanish subtitles, and then in English with Spanish subtitles

Language Log

SPANISH


My Spanish studies restarted on 20/08, so here is the log: 


20/08 - 12.68 minutes 

• Michel Thomas Foundation, Disc 1, Track 1 - Twice

But after that one day, I'm keeping weekly logs.


22/08 - 28/08 - 7.48 Hours

• Michel Thomas Foundation, Disc 1, 2, 3 - Repeated Twice. I repeat a batch of lessons at a time to make sure that I didn't miss anything in the first session
• Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal, Listening and Reading in Spanish

MAINTENANCE LANGUAGES


Gujarati - started writing a letter to grandparents
English -  random browsing through Word Nerd for cool facts about words 

Learning Spanish

I have spoken about my life time language goal, but as the cliché goes, every journey begins with a single step. So my current single step is to focus on learning Spanish.

I did little bit of Spanish last year, and I loved it. So now, I'm back at it, and beginning from the beginning again. I will talk about methods and resources I use on this blog, and also what works for me and what doesn't. 

When you are teaching yourself a language, it is a trial and error method until you figure out what works best for you, because there are tons of ways to learn a new language, and different things suit different people. 

I started with Spanish again on August 20.

First thing I'm doing is Michel Thomas Foundation Course. It's 8 discs audio course, and very handy during commuting time. While I'm enjoying the course, I'm getting bit antsy for some variety, and especially to get some visual idea of how words are spelt before I get them embedded incorrectly in my brain, so I'm also going to start reading a book. But currently trying to decide whether to L-R method, or read through bilingual text (I will do posts about both of these separately, as they deserve quite a bit of space). 

At this stage, the plan looks like this (to be modified as necessary)

1. Michel Thomas Foundation Spanish    
2. Michel Thomas Advance Spanish         
3. Pimsleur I & Linguaphone OR Assimil  (If you have experience of using these, then I'm happy to hear suggestions as to which order they should be used in). 
4. Pimsleur II & Linguaphone / Assimil
5. Pimsleur III & Linguaphone / Assimil

Each step to be combined with some sort of L-R/Bilingual Text + Spanish Word Games or Vocab practice, journaling, Practice Makes Perfect workbook, watch TV in Spanish, listen to audio book, Scriptorium Exericses etc