Upper intermediate translations

[hypersport]

I like the dialogues in the upper intermediate series, but the translations that follow are really disappointing.

At this level, there should be no English in the podcast unless absolutely necessary.

It's one of the things that Spanishpod does better, they break down their advanced lessons entirely in Spanish...this makes the breakdown as valuable and sometimes even more so than the dialogue itself as you get unscripted, off the cuff speech from native speakers.

You could offer the translation with a transcript for those that need it, but in my opinion you are doing more harm than good here as some of the sentences that are translated are very long. This takes the student out of his immersion, and puts him back in English, very distracting.

I've only got the free membership, so for me to go back and download only the dialogues, I'd have to pay the monthly fee. Too bad I guess.

[mjhch14043]

Hola!
I agree with you hypersport... there is too much english in the upper-intermediate and in the advanced lessons. I also find that when there is english in these lessons, it interrupts the train of thought... very confusing and frustrating too. My current classes are complete immersion and I think that is helping to advance much faster.

I think that having the translations, grammatical points, vocabulary in the notes and transcripts could be more useful to the more advanced student. I can hear the conversations, listening to them a couple of times if needed.. and I get more out of it that way, then refer to the notes on vocabulary and grammar also as needed.

I am trying this out for a month to supplement my classes...and looking forward to see how this works out.

mj