Learning a new language... the wrong way.

I took French in high school, but this has not been that useful to me… I’ve been able to order a round of drinks at a restaurant the single time I was in France, and was able to start off a speech about a French client by opening in French. That’s the extent of my usage need. So…. I’m learning Spanish now.

I’ve been attempting to learn Spanish for over 3 years… seriously trying for a year. I used normal language learning methods… books that teach it, and apps… Duolingo was most used, but also Rosetta Stone and others that help you practice vocabulary and grammar by rote memorization. Yet, even being at the top of the Duolingo charts… I was not able to have more than a hello/que tal/goodbye conversation.

Since our nanny comes from Ecuador and my cousin speaks fluent Spanish (spent a few years in Argentina) I asked them for advice. They told me to start reading and watching anything I could in my target language. Exceptionally good advice…. and I did just that.

While my reading skills have improved, my listening skills were poor. So I (foolishly?) thought I should try something called a Language exchange on a great free site. This is where you find a partner with opposite language goals as you (feels like a platonic dating app tbh) and spend half an hour in their native language, and half hour in your native language.

My first exchange told me I was not ready for even the most basic conversation. It was so demoralizing I nearly quit this goal. However, I regrouped and started researching how best to learn a language… research was eyeopening. All the ways we learn in school, or how we are taught by a majority of books is simply inefficient, or more likely wrong.

The new approach is more closely linked to what my cousin and nanny have tried to steer me toward. This is something called “Comprehensible Input”. The idea is to simply get as much of your target language coming at you as much as possible. Watch everything possible in that language using only captions in that language. Netflix set to audio and captions in Spanish in my case, read books entirely in Spanish, listen to podcasts in Spanish, music in Spanish etc.

I’ve been doing just that for the last month, and already can tell it makes a difference. My reading has improved of course, but also my ability to comprehend spoken Spanish. At first it was 0% of the words in shows or YouTube videos, but little by little I’m picking up much more. The simple fact is words on a page don’t ‘sound’ in your head the way they are spoken by native speakers. You simply need to hear them said 40+ times before you can reflexively understand what is being said. Especially phrases that most native understand easily are often strung together just like in your own native language. “Filler phrases” like “going to” or “and then..” where it is stringing concepts together into a sentence like “I was going to read, and then the phone rang” is easier to understand if you hear the “I was going to” or “and then..” phrases over and over. Then your brain will only need to catch the stuff you haven’t heard as much, the rest will just be picking up on the verb “to read” or “phone rang”.

Some resources that are helping: “Spanish after dark” channel on YouTube. Laura is awesome… speaks only in Spanish and uses simple sentences, repeating them for you to understand them. She reads or describes the pages of books, photos in her phone… or other such means to build your understanding of the spoken language. Another resource is Lirica… song lyric based app to teach you common phrases used… pretty nice way to memorize things is songs… think of how you learned things as a child, ABCs and Wheels on the bus, these things helped you memorize easily.

[Edited to add these important resources] Something to help here… I recommend adding the Edge and Chrome extension called “Language Reactor” to your browser so you can get enhanced experience with closed captions for learning your language of choice. This works for Netflix and YouTube… awesome stuff, and free. Another item I suggest is reading your target language books in Kindle (app or device) and adding a compatible bilingual dictionary. This is different than just a dictionary that you can look up words… it is one that works with the feature in Kindle to highlight word to get its definition. In this way you can see the English definition of a Spanish word for instance. At some point I suggest going back to the Spanish only dictionary that comes for free with Kindle, but this one helps to get you started quickly.

Next is a book I love called Madrigals Magic Key to Spanish. Wow… turns language learning upside down. Shows you already know many Spanish words if you know English. Also a great concept in this book is that we learn the tense of verbs in a weird way in school… first we learn present tense verbs. “To walk” or “to eat”… instead of the past tense. Typically in conversation we don’t do this. When a friend is asking “What did you do today?”, we don’t usually answer in present tense… “I walk to the store”… we say “I walked to the store”…. so a statement like “I eat a lot” will probably make a weird conversation after this like “Are you fat?”; yet “I ate a pizza” will actually lead to more interesting topics like “What did it have on it?” Simply put… learn the past tense verb forms as early as possible… backwards of how your language teacher taught you. (I learned of past tense in my 2nd year of French!)

Next…. pony up a little cash for lessons. On iTalki, it only costs $4 to $14 (I typically pay $12) for an hour of language lesson at pretty much any time you want online. Since there are teachers (professional and community teachers) around the world, it is likely you can get a lesson nearly any time of day. This helps because you don’t feel weird spending time struggling with a language partner while you are getting started.

I’m going to try and document my progress both here and on YouTube…(to capture my actual speaking in Spanish) mainly as a way to show myself how much I’m progressing over the next year or so…

¡Nos Vemos!

[Edit - here is the YouTube Video!]