Spanish Learning Resources

Aug 1, 2022 · 525 words · 3 minute read

These are the resource i’ve used to learn Spanish. Not everything worked for me so i wanted to share my experiences.

Current Toolkit: 🔗

Tier 1:

Anki (started X) - this is my daily minimum.

When I first started, I tried learning 20 new words per day.
My current settings fluctuate between 5-15 new words and up to 120 revisions per day depending on the week.
My ideal time is 20 mins on Anki. Any longer and I find myself fatigued.
Sometimes I split my Anki into several sessions through the day. Even 2-3 minutes a few times can make a huge difference.
On low-energy days, i try to get at least 5 mins in. Even if i can’t do it properly, a few mins today can make tomorrow a lot easier.

Spanish Grammar Book

iTalki Tutor

I failed on this 2 times before finding my current workable setup.
45-60 mins was far too long for me. I was exhausted after it.
30 mins has been my sweet spot. Enough time to practice and make effort, can have time after to plan for the next lesson, less intimidating than 60 mins. I find myself able to be more consistent and plan better with 30 mins. I also believe I get 90% of the value in the first 30 mins.
Conversation is better than a lesson.
Find someone who “rolls with it”. My goal is to get better at speaking - which requires some level of rhythm to the conversation. When I make mistakes (e.g. pronunciation, gender, grammar) can the tutor help me continue? If i’m being corrected, i start to overthink and I struggle to get words out. Gender, grammar, conjugation will come with time.

Sydney Class (started X)

Starting on Jul 20.
Thinking that being in a class with others will be a fun morale booster. Learning with others is good :)

Reading a book in Spanish.

Current: El Principito. It’s simple enough that I know 80% of words.
I got a bi-lingual version.
Technique: One page per session (15 min). I read through a paragraph in Spanish, trying to understand what is being said. While reading i underline which words I don’t know / remember for later. After each paragraph, i look at the english to confirm I understood the Spanish. Once i’ve finished the page, i re-read the Spanish then add the underlined words to my Anki (5 min).
TBD how effective this is.

Dictionary: SpanishDict.com

Duolingo - fun at the start, but loses benefit quite quickly. Becomes more about pattern matching than learning. I’d recommend the waterfall method.

Listening to Spanish Songs - i thought this would be great since you hear about people learning this way. It didn’t work for me. Music was too fast with too much slang. Maybe it’ll work in the future, but not for now.