In language learning there are winners and losers. Winners are the people that reach fluency, losers are those who don’t. Is it that simple? YES, it’s that simple. I could finish this post right now, but I want to share something more valueble, something we all know (yes, even you know this) but often we’re trying to forget it because it’s an inconvenient truth (like the movie).
Most people that start learning Spanish (or any other language) think it’s something they can do in their spare time, on the side. The cruel reality is that if you really want to become fluent at Spanish, there’s no spare time. As soon as you start, the days of doing nothing are over, they don’t exist anymore. Whatever the people around you (or you to yourself) say; spare time is over, out of the window. From now on you’ll do Spanish. Every day of the week. Every freakin’ waking hour. You can’t say you can’t do it, because Spanish is there to be learned, not to be forgotten. Of course, it should be there in a fun way, but it should be there nonetheless. Therefore, people that take classes, use textbooks, only dedicate an hour per day to Spanish, still do many things English, etc. are in the danger zone. Heck, if you want you can even stop reading this blog. The more Spanish, the better! (Now, I could write all my posts in Spanish, but that would pretty much take away the advantage that most readers here speak English instead of Spanish [yet].)
There was a time in my “simple life” where I was sucking at Spanish, and I was sucking hard.” The “simple life” being mostly monolingual (unless you insist that English and Dutch are two separate languages, ha!). And I was sucking hard. Why was I sucking at Spanish? Because my current environment, at the time, was saying that it was ok to dedicate only a few hours to Spanish every day. That I could become fluent with my textbooks and college classes. That hanging out with Dutch friends was healthy, because I could understand them. That I should have fun as well (in their eyes, Spanish couldn’t be fun because it’s a language I couldn’t understand at that time). Yeah, I listened. And yeah, I sucked. But from the moment I said “ENOUGH!” to my environment (“friends” (sorry people, if you demotivate me I don’t like you that much), family, classmates, the whole bunch) and I actually started seeing improvement. I realized that if I wanted to learn Spanish, REALLY learn Spanish, I had to change and had to make Spanish a BIG part of my life. And as soon as Spanish was a big (if not the biggest) part of my life, I started becoming a winner. No, scratch winner. I started becoming a champion. So I came to the conclusion that if Spanish isn’t a part (BIG part) of your life, you’ll never become fluent.
Now, there are some people out there that may have some ‘gift’ for learning languages (not that I believe in it, but still). People that can dedicate a few hours per week to Spanish and speak it pretty well after six months (still not believing it, but if you do; good for you). Maybe, just maybe there are some people out there like that. But what are the odds? One in 100,000? One in a million? I don’t know, but it ain’t much.
So why not choose the easy way? Why not make Spanish a big part of your life? Why not have fun? It’s easy and it works simply. So, go and make Spanish the most important thing in your life!
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Daniel, I couldn’t agree more with your commens. However I do believe that there are people out there that can learn a language in a week. Do you know Daniel Tammet?
He learnt Icelandic in a week!
Well, he is a genious!
Sorry Ramses, I was thinking in Daniel and wrote “Daniel” and not “Ramses” before. Apologies!
Hehe, no problem. Yes, I’ve seen the documentary about him (and other people who have some form of autism). He is lucky though as his autism isn’t limiting him in a social way, but this is extremely rare. Also, he didn’t learn Icelandic to fluency in one week, although he certainly reached a pretty high level.
What I’m trying to say is that although there are people who have some advantages, the grand majority of the language learners simply need to really commit themselves to the language in order to learn it. There’s no other way about it.
I agree with you but just wanted to mention some exceptional people!
I follow many of your tips to improve my English and you are 100% right, immersion is a must to become fluent!
I totally agree with this. I wound up keeping up my Spanish from the first time I returned from Spain until I went back again a couple of years later. My friends were all super surprised that I sounded pretty fluent during some conversations even though I had been in the United States for two years! But that’s exactly what I did (and still continue to do): listen to Spanish music all the time, have pretend conversations with myself in Spanish in the car, make friends with Spanish speakers (my only fault is not insisting that they speak to me in Spanish more), watch Spanish TV, read in Spanish, etc. Unfortunately, I think I’ve sort of reached a plateau…
@Miss Polyglot
We all reach a plateau at some point. What I do is use my college textbooks to mine sentences from because they’re often pretty complicated. This can great boost your level of Spanish. So use your SRS! (Now I’m thinking about it, I still have to write an article about using an SRS, jeje).
Ramses, good work with the blog and all. I’d just like to offer you some corrections on your English, especially since some of the mistakes were repeats.
You said: “As soon as you start the days of doing nothing are over, they don’t exist anymore.”
It’s small, but you might want to use an extra comma after “start” i.e. “As soon as you start, the days of doing nothing are over; they don’t exist anymore.” (The semi-colon isn’t completely necessary, but is still useful here).
You said: “Therefore; people that take classes, use textbooks, only dedicate an hour per day to Spanish, still do many things English, etc. are in the danger zone.”
Incorrect usage of a semicolon here. http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/StudyZone/410/grammar/colons.htm
“Therefore” isn’t an independent clause. In this situation a comma is fine. “Therefore, people that take classes, use textbooks, only dedicate an hour per day to Spanish, still do many things in [it sounds more natural if use "in" here] English, etc. are in the danger zone.”
You said: “(Now, I could write all my posts in Spanish, but that would pretty much take the advantage away of the fact that most reader here speak English but not Spanish [yet])” This sounds odd. Try: “Now, I could write all my posts in Spanish, but that would pretty much take away the advantage that most readers here speak English instead of Spanish [yet].”
You said: “There was a time in my simple life (you know, simple in the fact of being mostly monolingual (okay, bilingual if you insist that English and Dutch are two separate languages, ha!)) where I was sucking at Spanish (may I call myself a loser for going in the wrong direction? May I? May I?!), and I was sucking hard.”
This is actually challenging to read. It shares some traits with run on sentences. You’re trying to pack too many things into one sentence. Suggestion: “There was a time in my “simple life” where I was sucking at Spanish, and I was sucking hard.” The “simple life” being mostly monolingual (unless you insist that English and Dutch are two separate languages, ha!).” Asking “may I call my self a loser for going in the wrong direction?” seems odd to me. I guess if you insist on asking something like that, instead say “should I be calling myself a loser for going in the wrong direction? Should I? Should I?”
You said: “Why was I sucking at Spanish (and not improving)? Because my environment said that it’s ok to just dedicate a few hours to Spanish every day.” Again, this just sounds odd. Try: “Why was I sucking at Spanish? Because my current environment, at the time, was saying that it was ok to dedicate only a few hours to Spanish every day.”
Alright, this is the first instance of many where you used the gerund form (-ing words) instead of the infinitive ( http://www.englishlanguageguide.com/english/grammar/infinitive.asp ). You said: “I realized that if I wanted to learn Spanish, REALLY learning Spanish, I had to change and had to make Spanish a BIG part of my life.” It’s really odd because you did it right the first time “I realized that if I wanted to learn Spanish,” but not the second time, “REALLY learning Spanish” should be “REALLY learn Spanish”.
And here’s where the cluster of them are, you said: “So why not choosing the easy way (really, immersion is easier than you might think)? Why not making Spanish a big part of you life? Why not having fun? It’s easy and it simply works. So go, and make Spanish the most important thing in your life!” Should be “so why not choose the easy way? Why not make Spanish a big part of your [you said "you" instead of "your"] life? Why not have fun? It’s easy and it works simply. So, go and make Spanish the most important thing in your life!”
And then, again in a comment, you said: “What I do is using my college textbooks to mine sentences from because they’re often pretty complicated.” Should be: “What I do is use my college textbooks to mine sentences from because they’re often pretty complicated.”
Sorry if this kind of comment is unwelcome, but it’s difficult to take advice from someone on learning a language when they themselves haven’t quite mastered one already. I suppose it’s like sending in a resume/CV that’s riddled with spelling errors. Chances are, you won’t get the job.
Regardless, you have some excellent content here on this site. Keep up the good work.
Chris, I’ll look to the things you mentioned, but I’m not a native speaker of English. In other words: I do make some mistakes now and then.
Anyway, this blog is about telling people how they can learn another language, not showing off my English skills. My English isn’t that impressive. I think my Spanish is actually better at this moment, simply because I’ve spent the last three years getting Spanish input and not doing anything with English. You could say it’s difficult to take advice from someone that hasn’t fully mastered English yet, but luckily I’m not writing a blog called “English Only”
.
Besides all that: some things are just typos, sorry.