Answers
Jan 27, 2014 - 11:07 AM
@ThorntonMiller - This is completely normal, especially when just starting out. It's good to listen even as much as 5-10 times if necessary. Repetition really is the key when it comes to learning a new language.
Jan 27, 2014 - 05:41 PM
There are two tricks I've found to remembering lengthy sentences in Spanish. The first is to really understand what it means in English, rather than just using rote memory on the sentence. Knowing what the sentence means makes remembering so much easier. The second thing is to break the sentence up into little chunks of three or four words each. When you can easily remember the first chunk, move on to the next one, then piece them together until you've got the entire sentence. There's a reason there's a hyphen in phone numbers: it's to break it into two chunks. Remembering a 3- and a 4-digit number is a lot easier than remembering a 7-digit one.
Jan 27, 2014 - 06:05 PM
Thanks, we've discussed something like this but you are much more specific and its really helpful. Also it's nice to know that we're not the only ones struggling at times. Could you give us some input on how fluent we should be in knowing and writing the long sentences before advancing to the next lesson. Should we have the lesson down cold or less so or just push on?
Apr 04, 2014 - 10:27 PM
I was told you should be 80% before moving on. This was a different language program that said that.
Apr 05, 2014 - 07:24 AM
I find often you listen, get the gist of what is being said, write something that says pretty much the same thing in correct Spanish, but is not exactly what was said originally. This shouldn't be a worry, but you do have to put in the exact sentence for the program to let you move on.