When I was still a poor beginner, I often asked myself; “Where am I heading to? What is really the level I want to reach? How do I measure I reached the level I want to have in x months?“. Those questions weren’t driving me crazy, but I was sure thinking about them many times for the last two years. Although I still don’t understand everything in Spanish you can pretty much call me fluent. I now know that the level I have gives me joy and now I can finally stop worrying about what direction to go and simply keep building on the skills I already have.
But there are many people out there that do become crazy because they have no way to measure how bad-ass they already are. It’s often difficult to measure your progress (although I’m kinda addicted to my Anki stats – whahahahhahaha, MORE cards, HIGHER scores, muhahaha).
Thomas of Babelhut.com came up with something which, in my eyes, is really smart: Holy Grail materials. What is this ‘Holy Grail’ exactly? For everyone it’s something different, but for Thomas it’s a book he bought quite some time ago, a book he can’t understand at this moment (in his target language Japanese). But there will be a day he’ll understand every part of the book, which means he’ll have reached his goal (enough fluency to understand and maybe even enjoy the book).
Now, I’m at a point I can understand pretty much anything that’s thrown at me at Spanish. But for anyone who’s not at that level yet this can be a great motivator. Simply pick up a book, movie or audiobook and store it for later.
Keep working on your Spanish as a madman and then, one day you think you really rule at Spanish and understand pretty much everything, you pull out the book/movie/audiobook, read/watch/listen it and you’ll understand everything and thus reaching you goal. It doesn’t even matter if you enjoy it or not, because you set yourself a goal (understanding the material) and you reached it (you understand it and can judge for yourself if you like it or not) you feel great.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice post. I remember the day a few years ago when I realised I could read Harry Potter in Spanish without needing a dictionary to look up strange words. I was so smug for the rest of the day! Now I’m hoarding Portuguese books for when I can actually read them – hopefully soon
Excellent article! Goal setting is something I have always done and it works, at least for me. Of course I am never satisfied with my progress even though I can, for the most part, converse with just about anyone about anything in Spanish. I do fine unless I am talking with a grammar teacher, at which point I seem to make one mistake after the other. The good news is I do the same with English, so it is something about the grammar that messes with my head.
My current goal, having traveled for the past several months in Spanish speaking countries (Central America), is to continue speaking in Spanish every day. Unfortunately I am not doing so well right now with this goal. I really miss entering McDonald’s for my morning coffee being greeted with “Buenos días caballero”. I keep telling myself screw the English and just use Spanish, but…, well it really isn’t that easy. I have tried a few times and the person(s) revert to English for some reason, probably because I have that gringo look. Ugh! A friend once told me…”just say you are from X country and don’t speak English, but you do know Spanish.” I must admit that I have thought about using this trick to force people to speak in Spanish with me but…. So, any suggestions?
David
@David
I know how you feel. While being in the Netherlands it was pretty hard for me to talk Spanish from time to time. What I did was looking for some language exchange partners on the web. I was also lucky to have Spanish speaking friends (who only speak Spanish) with whom I could (voice-)chat pretty much every day.
Another suggestion I can give you is maintaining your environment back home. At the end it’ll help you to think in Spanish, which is always a good pratice (you’re practically talking to yourself in Spanish).
I love this. Such smart advice. I certainly practice everyday, but I am not necessarily practicing towards anything. Is it really any wonder, then, why I am feeling like I’m paddling but not going anywhere? It would help to have a direction! Once you have a direction, you can prioritize what you should be doing to get you there, and what is not getting you there quite as efficiently.
I have a couple of goals, actually. I would like to increase spoken fluency, but ALSO really, really, reaaaaaally want to be able to understand movies in Spanish without having to re-watch scenes. It would be fabulous if I could watch them and understand them the first time through. I think that is my hardest challenge. And, of course, heightened understanding would lead to increased spoken fluency, since I’d be getting way more comprehensible input.
Thank you. I will reconsider my current approaches to Spanish. Maybe what I really need to push is exactly what you recommend: Lots more audio input! Friends, movies, TV, podacsts…