I ran through about 12 lessons of the old course before going to Spain a couple of years ago, left it and got through about 18 last year before going again.
The company I work for have changed offices so I’m driving now rather than using the train and I’ve rattled through level 1 in the space of two weeks.
I probably need to review the last five lessons and maybe give myself a short rest from it, but where would people suggest I go from here? Obviously there’s level 2. This may be the wrong place for this question, but would I benefit from trying a different course do you think - maybe Michel Thomas or Paul Noble?
I had a free trial of Audible a while ago and tried a random lesson from Michel Thomas - I liked that he points out pronunciation errors but I’m not sure whether it’s worth paying for that as well as level 2.
Thanks Aran and everyone else involved in creating the lessons. I found the old ones really useful for previous trips to Spain and I feel I’ve made a lot of progress this past fortnight.
I’m a fellow car learner and so this course has been ideal for me two. I’ve worked my way through all 16 of the course 2 lessons presently available and would definitely recommend continuing onto course 2. I’ve dabled in other courses for learning (mainly while I’m waiting for new lessons SSI to be released)but none have come close to the SSI way in my experience.
Of the other methods Duolingo is an entertaining way to while away a bit of time and attempt to extend your vocab if you have a bit of time spare. It’s free and like I say can be quite entertaining but for me it isn’t anywhere near as effective in hardwiring the language in to your brain. If you’ve completed the old and new course (and have the time) the best way of improving (along with continuing with Course 2) is to find a local Spanish conversation group and or Skype session with other speakers. There is no substitute for using what you’ve learned in real conversation and your learning will really take off as a result.
It’s obviously impossible for me to give an unbiased answer here, but given the bias, here are my thoughts:
The Michel Thomas Spanish course is, I think, his best. Having said that, by the end of Level 1 you’ve already covered the vast majority of what he gets through in his main and advanced courses - 8 hours and 5 hours respectively, against Level 1’s 12.5 hours (more or less). He introduces more stuff in his advanced course, but at the expense of not drumming each new item in as carefully - it’s survivable, but I think not ideal. The material you’d cover in Level 2 goes wider than his advanced course, and in considerable more depth and variety of practice.
I can’t comment on Paul Noble - I haven’t tried his stuff - I gather a lot of people think it’s essentially a re-presentation of what Michel Thomas does, but there’s no reason why that wouldn’t work well. His Spanish course seems to be about 13 hours, so I strongly suspect that after having done our Level 1, you’d find a lot of repeat material in there (perhaps most of it?).
So, all in all, I know that our Level 2 goes a long way beyond MT’s advanced stuff (in terms of time alone!), and it seems as though PN’s course is likely to have a fair bit of overlap with our Level 1 - so I strongly suspect that you’ll get more of a sense of excitement and growth with our Level 2.
Having said that, it’s possible that switching to either MT or PN would work better for you if you found their material more enjoyable and easier to use - so some testing (especially if you can do it for free or minimal cost) might be in order - if you do find that you prefer their approaches, then it would of course make more sense to stick with them - certainly it wouldn’t seem like a good tactic to think in terms of paying for them and then coming back and paying for Level 2 as well
Oh, one more thought - have you been listening to the accelerated listening exercises? It’s well worth carrying on with those on a regular (daily, ideally!) basis, whatever else you do
My 7 year old son has just started using duolingo and seems to be enjoying it and progressing fairly well - I’ll try to give that a go but it’s easier to find time to listen to stuff when I’m in traffic jams anyway!
I’ve been doing the listening exercises as they appeared on the website - so directly after every fifth challenge. I’ll keep listening to them and I’ll probably pick up course two in the next week or so.
We probably need to be a bit clearer that the idea is once you reach a particular level, you then listen to that exercise once a day until you hit the next level
I’m trying to figure out a way to get past my natural bias here - some kind of side-step - because I’m not all that comfortable saying ‘Look, our stuff is loads better, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot!’…[Even though that is of course what I actually believe!].
But how about this - if, after you do Level 2, you still want to go and test out alternatives (instead of shouting at us to hurry up with Level 3 already!) - if you try something else, and you end up wishing you’d done that course instead of Level 2, then sing out in here and we’ll refund you for Level 2 entirely. How does that sound?
The problem is Aran you have us hooked. And for those of us who believe like you that SSiSpanish is the best we are salivating at the prospect of Level 3 arriving.
So how about if we just whisper politely that the arrival of Level 3 would be an answer to our prayers.
I’ve finished the 16 challenges of level 2 now - when are the remaining ten that are mentioned expected to arrive? Will I get them automatically or have I just paid for the first 16?
Hi James - we should have more ready before too long (just mastering and importing needing to be done on them, which our volunteers are plugging away at!).
At what stage did you pay? I kind of lose track of the different options by now! It should only have let you pay for what’s available, of course - if there’s been any mix up with that, we’ll sort it out for you - if you’d like to avoid posting details of your payments on here, just email me at aranjones@gmail.comsmile:
Thanks for the heads up about the FAQ link, too - did you get any kind of an error message?
[Even though that is of course what I actually believe!].