Modules & Difficulty levels

Hello,

This is my first foreign language that I'm learning.  I have more of a mathematics brain.  I am only on module 1.10, and I will say that the difficulty scaling to this point is quite frustrating and confusing for me.  The way I typically do a lesson is that I will complete all activities, and then do all the flashcards until I can get them all without looking, then move on to listening etc.  Usually the flashcards & speaking activities are my two biggest hills to climb.  Up until this point, it was mostly just certain characteristics or sentence structure that was introduced.  Now with this lesson, I feel like there's about 30 different brand new words and ways to construct a sentence that I have to learn, and I feel like it's going to be a huge roadblock. 

Are all following lessons going to be the same?  If so, I don't really think I'm going to continue with the program.  Maybe I'm doing the program wrong?  Does everyone else get everything 100% right like I have been doing prior to moving on to the next activity?

I was able to get 27 of 31 flashcards.  There's way too many brand new ideas and terms that have never been touched on previously.  It's been a while since I've been at school, but I don't understand how anyone can possibly retain all of these brand new terms taught in this lesson without a BUNCH of activities prior to?  I'm typically top of my class and honestly this lesson makes me just want to quit.

edit: unless I take notes on which words mean what - and I refer to those notes while I'm doing the lessons.  I don't know if that's the optimal way to learn?

¡Hola Silidons!

Don't feel discouraged!

Lesson 1.10 is the first Language & Culture lesson to start using full sentences for all of the examples, and this step to using full sentences can feel like a big jump because you're just at the very beginning of your learning journey. However, it's also important for you to see things like pronouns in sentences this early on so you can start to get a feel for how they sound and work.

My advice is not to worry about getting full marks on the Reinforcement Activities just yet. Instead, just focus on the main principle being taught in each lesson.

So since Lesson 1.10 is about pronouns, just focus on getting the pronoun right as you go through each sentence in the activities. If you pick up other words and even basic phrases on the way, excellent! But if not, that's fine too — it's very early days. Once you're feeling comfortable with pronouns (what they mean and how they sound), move on to the next lesson and the next topic. After a little while, come back to the pronoun lesson and try the activities again. You'll find that with a little more time and additional Spanish exposure, you'll start to have a much easier time getting the full sentences! And in a short while, you'll have built up enough knowledge that moving forward and then returning like this will no longer be necessary (although it can always be helpful if you find a certain grammar concept particularly tricky!).

You may also find it helpful to mix in some of the Survival Kit lessons with your learning, if you haven't already. These lessons focus on basic vocabulary and can help get you familiar with many words that you will also find in the Language & Culture and Audio lessons.

I hope that you find this helpful. If you still have any questions or would like any additional help, please don't hesitate to ask!

Saludos,

Liss

An important question - how long are you taking to do each lesson? I typically try to do hard learning of Spanish 30 minutes (usually part of a lesson in Rocket Spanish). That doesn't include 20-30 minutes of reading I do in the hour before I go to bed (I am on the beginner/intermediate border as far as level).

If you are doing an hour plus a day, perhaps that is too much and you need to throttle back a bit.

I do the lessons similar to what you do, but I learned that perfecting the flashcards (especially as you go up and there are longer phrases that can have several ways of saying the same thing) is just not worth it. I go through them once and as long as I got most, I move on to the next exercise. I keep doing that until all the exercises are green.  When I am feeling a bit burned out, I go back to a lesson from the past and quickly review the key lessons (I don't listen to the conversation again) and do the “Listen” exercise (that is the hardest for me). If I have time, I move to the next lesson or I go listen to some easy YouTube Spanish.

Good luck and keep going. It is a lot of fun for me now after many months of thinking I was getting no where. Now I can communicate with Spanish speakers with no English at all (of course I sound like an idiot) but I do have to tell them to talk slowly. That is a lot of fun.

I guess I'm just a perfectionist (like I said…math brain…) so I shouldn't worry about getting them all correct.  I am understanding the concept of the pronouns etc - but like I said it just gets difficult when I'm thrown like 30 other new words and phrases that I haven't learned yet.  I'm supplementing my learning with DuoLingo and I do think it helps doing two different ones - as I have already noticed crossover with pronouns and it does help that I have more practice with them from doing both applications.

I guess it depends on how the lesson how much time I'm doing - I try to sit down and do an entire lesson.  I don't really like doing half of one, or a quarter etc.  I'll either sit down and do a full one or won't do it at all.  Maybe I should start going back and doing some of the exercises from previous lessons when I get a little burnt out.