anna8 - Putting the pod in Spanishpod...
I confess I had been a linear listener: every evening, a new podcast -- (Not quite) live!!! from Shanghai!! -- and very little looking back. (A tad compulsive perhaps, but in this I was not alone: remember how we pressed our noses against the cyberwindow of the elementary lesson, Hold it, waiting for our fix?)
And then... and then... this technophobe got an ipod! Suddenly I was revisiting the now hundreds of podcasts, arranging them in playlists, listening to marathon sessions of Del Taco al Tango (¡cien por ciento en español!) or all the episodes thus far of Asalto a mano armada or all the advanced lessons or all the medical lessons -- well you get the idea -- and I realized what an extraordinary body of work you have created here! This is the place to tune up your Spanish ear, linguistically and culturally, and build your (collocational!) vocabulary.
You stand alone, you really do. There are some good podcasts out there but no one else has your combination of charm, humor, and smarts that not only sustains interest through a first hearing of each lesson, but permits repeated study; and that keeps us anxious for the latest emisión from our friends in Shanghai.
And yet there are limitations inherent to the podcast form. My learning experience here has been receptive, passive and largely silent. In the brick-and-mortar classroom, in contrast, even when the teacher is not ideal, students get to practice their language aloud and in real time -- with each other, with the teacher, and, in the best of circumstances, with native speakers.
For some listeners, those who have regular contact with Spanish-speaking colleagues, friends, or family, this limitation is not a big deal but many of us are not so fortunate. Some people are trying their luck with the Skype conversation group. Some have chosen the Spanishpod private tutor option. (I don't know about you, but for me ten minutes, the allotted lesson time, hardly allows me to clear my throat and exchange polite greetings, let alone get into a conversational rhythm.) And of course several of us try to post here regularly in Spanish, but writing and speaking are very different skills.
You are all -- Spanishpod team and listeners both -- so creative and bright. I think this is the next pedagogical challenge -- how to get the community of language learners talking!
Tags: active learning, passive learning, speaking, listening,
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Gracias, I share these exact sentiments.
Well put anna8.
I feel that the process of speaking and conversing is when (for someone of my spanish level anyway) the english translation for a spanish word can be thrown away during speech; which I think is a major step towards some sort of comfortable fluency.
Hey Anna8,
I've been doing the "listening and re-listening" with my I-Pod since I started in April. This site is so huge, a teaching feat that I'm not sure has been accomplished anywhere else. There is so much that you pick up listening to an old and already mastered lesson, when you listen 3-6 months later.
I also believe that the next challenge could be a way to get us talking. I think the challenges we are given in the podcast are meant to get our mouths moving, but maybe there's even more. Between the Spanishpodistas and technological advances, maybe something could be figured out.
I love reading and writing, but I want so much to talk with people as well. I have made a few Spanish speaking friends around town, but it's not as easy as I would have thought, to make time to sit down and chat. (and have something to chat about....I'm not necessarily talkative...just longwinded in writing. ha ha)
Just look at how much this site has evolved even over the past year, and how it has only gotten better and better. I'm positive that as time passes, that trend will continue.
I'm looking forward to learning and chatting with you all over the next year.
I listen to SpanishPod everyday. As a result, my listening comprehension has improved considerably. Other aspects of my Spanish have improved but not as much. If the SpanishPod team could come up with a way to help us practice speaking more that would be great but I have no know idea how they could do that through a podcast.
As I think about this a little more, SpanishPod’s audio review could help us practice speaking more and I should take greater advantage of it. I think that trying to translate the phrases in the audio reviews before the native speakers could be an excellent exercise.
Hey guys, many of us here have taken courses where you are prompted for an answer and then given time to respond. Some people can respond right away, others hit the pause button and then respond. The key is the fact that we are speaking.
Well you can do the same thing with the podcasts. This is something that I do. Sometimes I'll pause and repeat a sentence or two that I just heard several times and other times I'll just speak right over the top of the gang, trying to keep the cadence all the way to the end.
I do the same thing with the Del Taco Al Tangos and with the breakdowns of the lessons themselves.
Another thing that I do is have conversations with myself in Spanish all the time. I know it sounds crazy, but it's really effective. I mean the other day I was reading a book, looked up at the electrical outlet in the wall and rembered asking a Mexican one day at work what that thing was called, and what the thing at the end of the cord that goes in there was called....so this led to a full conversation that I had with myself regarding all that stuff.
By doing this speaking (mocking) over the top of Lili and Esti (especially during the breakdowns of the advanced lessons) you are training yourself to speak as they speak, off the cuff, unrehearsed. This is where you get the gold from the podcasts, be it from a guest or from the crew, you typically don't get that kind of stuff in scripted lessons.
Speaking is the key though, as much as possible to where it starts to feel the same as in English.
Hi everyone, this is a great discussion!
I'm so glad that our little podcasts can help people with listening comprehension; this is usually a weak spot for traditional classroom teaching. In fact, listening comprehension may be exactly what we should be building our brand upon.
As far as speaking concerned, we are indeed looking for was to engage you all in speaking activities, but it's a tough prospect. And even if we do develop something, I suspect it won't be as effective or fulfilling as the old-fashioned way, which is making Latino friends :)
Hello everyone!
I usually don't listen to old shows (although I have two iPods :) but I was listening to the first 40 newbie lessons for that wikibook I'm working on. Because of this I realized that there are some real pearls among those newbie lessons, which I already had forgotten (my all-time favourite is "Smells good" :). But I think the SpanishPod web site could be improved to encourage users to review old lessons. (Apart from my old suggestion to rerun old lessons, for example by having options in the personal lesson feed for a daily rerun of an old newbie lesson, an old elementary lesson, etc.) My suggestion for the web site would be an index to lessons where each lesson is given less space but which includes more lessons on one web page. Here is an example for the first 40 newbie lessons. Another useful index is a list of all dialogues (this works best for newbie and elementary lessons, I guess). I'm currently thinking about links between a kind of grammar guide and the lessons. (Believe it or not, there is a lot of grammar in those newbie lessons.)
I also agree that more exercises for speaking would be great. I like the ideas of hypersport and in fact I have already started to talk to myself in Spanish in order to practice speaking Spanish. For that wikibook I thought about exercises and came up with a system of progressively harder translation exercises:
The idea is that once you can translate a set of phrases from English to Spanish, you might be able to express yourself more easily by just remembering (and possibly adapting) one of the phrases.
Just one more word about this wikibook: if anyone has an idea for other exercises, etc. please don't hesitate to tell me about it or just create them yourself, that's what wikibooks are all about. :)
Hola todos,
I guess I follow your method somewhat Hypersport. I have a lot of conversations with myself, just now they are sometimes in Spanish... ha ha. I try to speak along with the podcasts, and even ahead of the review exercises...answer the questions outloud before it plays....but without pausing the I-pod...I want to be able to come back fast, as I would have to in a conversation. I also have a book, My First Spanish Reader, and at the end there are excersizes to answer questions verbally, which I do out loud. And I'm always saying things to the family or even to co-workers now in Spanish, just to get my brain and mouth coordinated. (Much to the chagrin of the non-Spanish speaking or interested parties)
The DTATS are great. At first, I admit, I wasn't as happy, as mostly they are in Spanish and I couldn't follow along, but the more I listen, the more I realize I am understanding...in a natural conversation setting. That is the rythm and cadence that you would have "in the wild", and because there are always new guests with different accents, speeds of speaking and individual rythms of speaking, I think you learn more than listening to one teacher or person.
I have been really surprised to notice how many people speak Spanish around town...especially at the kid's school. Now it's more of a courage thing, for me, but I think your right JP, there's no substitute for making friends and just conversing. I just have to push myself to meet people and initiate conversations.
Martinillo, Smells good was one of the first lessons I heard, and is still one of my favorites, as are More Meatballs & Too Spicy. There really is so much grammer and all that collocation/"learn it in chunks" stuff in all these old lessons, it really pays to review them. There are so many little gems and nuances that one might not "get" the first time through as a newbie or elementary, but that become clear or obvious as your Spanish learning progresses. I like the idea of indexing the lessons, too.
Hey guys, thanks for your thoughts on the subject. You know you really inspired me to get back to talking out loud (although my friends and family are not so grateful!!).
JP, I'm glad to know that Spanishpod is at least thinking about how to incorporate more active engagement in the lessons. You're right, of course, that no matter how skillfully you do it, nothing beats a real live conversation.