The last 6 weeks have been some of my most productive yet. I’ve managed to remain consistent and at the same time found 2 new learning techniques that I genuinely enjoy.
That said, it’s not all positive.
Let’s get into the reflection!
Period: June 27 - Aug 6, 2022.
What I did: 🔗
- ✅ Made it to August!
- ✅ Maintained a solid Anki Streak.
- ✅ Started private Spanish lessons with an iTalki Tutor.
- 😇 Increased daily exposure, but not to 1 hour per day.
- ❌ Anki still at 5-10 new words per day, not 20.
- ❌ My small talk is still bad.
Reflections: 🔗
To start with, let’s talk about what worked:
Reading Spanish Children’s Books. 🔗
My original goal was to read Harry Potter in Spanish. As one of my favourite childhood books, it seemed like a natural way to combine learning with an existing interest. It quickly became apparent that reading Harry Potter in Spanish would be a lot harder than expected. To understand 95% of words, i’d need to know 1857 stems. That’s well above where I am today.
Why 95%? This is the magical threshold where contextual learning comes into play (Laufer, 1989). In other words, you understand enough to fill in the gaps (get through the content without a dictionary) and learn the new words via context / exposure. This is supported by a 2011 study by Nina Daskalovska, which demonstrated the positive impact of reading on language acquisition.
There’s a nice example of 80-98% reading comprehension in a presentation by Marcos Benevides.
There’s plenty of discussion around this. What is Reddit without a healthy dose of “Well, actually”? 🤷
Instead I landed on a simpler children’s book: El Principito (The Little Prince).
I found a great bilingual version by Small World Press. Having the Spanish and English side-by-side makes the learning quicker - there’s less lookup to do.
My process is this:
- Read through a paragraph in Spanish, underlining which words I don’t understand (even if i can guess by context). Goal is comprehension.
- Read through the English to check my comprehension.
- Repeat 1 & 2 for an entire page.
- Add the missing words to Anki.
- Re-read the page in Spanish.
It takes me about 8 minutes to get through a page, then another 20-30 min or so looking words up and adding to Anki. My pace feels pretty slow right now, but i’m only 10% of the way through the book. I’d be quite happy if i could cut this in half.
I also purchased a “Spanish Short Stories for Beginners” book, which i’ve been working my way through. The stories are pretty lame, but they’re quite short and guided around language acquisition. Each story is 1-3 pages long and uses pretty basic vocabulary. I tend to do one story per study session, which takes about 40 mins including adding to Anki.
This has been my favourite method of learning so far - better than podcasts, youtube videos, etc.
Note: I wish there was an easier way to do this on my phone - export an article / piece of text in Spanish, then be able to mark words I don’t know (to translate) and easily add to Anki. Someone make this please!
iTalki Tutor / Private Spanish Lessons 🔗
I started iTalki (again) and this time I think it’ll stick! 3rd time’s the charm 😎
What’s changed?
1. Shorter 30 Minute Lessons. Both previous failed attempts were 45-60 minute sessions. They’re harder to schedule, exhausting, and simply too overwhelming. They would suck up so much of my day - easily 90-120 minutes for a 60 minute lesson. I’d plan some phrases before so i didn’t sound like an idiot. At the end I was physically tired with no motivation. I would dread the start of the session and by the end I was counting the minutes until it was over. It wasn’t fun.
30 min sessions are perfect! It’s enough time to practice what I learned, learn some new concepts, and still have a lot of energy at the end. The lessons still have an energy curve, but somehow it’s changed. It’s a slow start, but i find my rhythm half way through and end with more energy than i started with. It’s quite motivating!
2. Once a week. Previously I tried to do more. It was too much and i found my learning became 100% around the iTalki lessons. I didn’t have enough time to properly learn everything and quickly resented the lessons. Too much too quickly - I was overwhelmed.
That said, i do want to see if i can do 2 sessions a week at 30 mins as an experiment. We’ll see.
3. I understand more! Honestly this could be the entire reason I enjoy it more this time around. There’s more to communicate about!
At the end of the day, my goal is consistency. 30 mins a week is far better than 2 x 60 minute sessions a week then fizzling out for 6 months. Less is more!
Confidence 🔗
Confidence is still a major factor for me. My conversation skills are so much stronger when i feel confident. It’s almost like intuition starts to factor in as words seem to appear in my mouth.
Everything comes crashing down when i’m nervous. I get a few things wrong then it spirals. I’m now thinking about every word, stumbling over words I knew last week.
It’s very clear that my confidence has a huge compounding effect, so it’s worth investing in.
Confidence Improvement 1: Practice the first 120 seconds of conversations. Practice variants. Write down scenarios. Anything I can do to nail the first moments of a conversation. Why? This sets the tone. If i screw up in the first 15 seconds it’s all over, but if i come out of the gate strong then it puts me in a good mindset.
Confidence Improvement 2: Speak more! I’m so nervous to speak Spanish to new people that i simply avoid it. I need to stop this. Avoiding conversations only reinforces my lack of confidence.
Other areas of improvement?
Tenses 🔗
This has come up in my reading and conversation a lot. I simply don’t know past and future tenses. It throws me off because I know the stem, just not in the form presented. It’s frustrating so I want to become more familiar. I understand this will be a long road, but there are plenty of common instances that I need to nail down (e.g. fue, dije).
Pronouns & Possessives 🔗
😵💫 mi, me, tu, te, nos, lo, su 😵💫
They’re peppered in everywhere and I find myself stumbling over them all the time. Are they hard? They don’t seem to be. I need to sit down, learn how to use them, and practice. Seems a low-difficulty & high-reward endeavour.
One final thing - I’m going back to Australia next week and will be starting in-person classes in Sydney with Spanish Blackboard Academy. I’m quite excited to be around other student and increase my exposure. Hopefully my next update has some positive reflections on the classes :)
Plan for next 6 weeks: 🔗
- Increase Anki to 100 new words a week (average of 15 a day).
- Continue weekly iTalki lessons.
- Spanish Blackboard Academy weekly lessons.
- Nail down the first 120 seconds of a conversation.
- Finish El Principito
- Finish 12 stories in “Spanish Short Stories for Beginners”
- Become confident with Pronouns & Possessives.
- Become confident with Preterite & Future tenses for common verbs (ser, ir, estar, tener, hablar, comer)
Note: trying something slightly different with goals this time. A little more specific & tangible.
Quantifying progress: 🔗
Anki Counts on July 25
- Learning → 51 (+26)
- Relearning → 6 (+3)
- Young → 180 (+4)
- Mature → 468 (+160)
Anki Counts on Aug 5:
- Learning → 62 (+11)
- Relearning → 12 (+6)
- Young → 209 (+29)
- Mature → 515 (+47)
At this pace, i’ll be able to read Harry Potter in May 2023 (288 days from now).
If I’m able to increase my Anki to 100 / week (15 a day), I’ll be able to start reading before the end of the year.33
Note: I need to do a more consistent tracking for Anki. Is there a way to see progression of “Mature” cards over time? Might need to make an Anki plugin for this.