I always hear people talking and see people writing about trying to learn some freakin’ language or, when they’re serious, learning it.

The slogan of this blog is Learn How to Learn Spanish. Man, even I’m making this mistake. Learning a language… Ha! Officially, babies don’t learn a language, they acquire it. It’s thrown at them and they absord, that’s all they do. They don’t put effort in it, they don’t worry and are not even thinking about learning something. And they’re good. They end up speaking the language, even though it takes them several years. But again, that doesn’t matter, because they’re more fluent than most language learners will ever get.

I talk a lot about babies and language acquisition, but that’s because I think we’d make our lives easier if we’d all be “learning” a language like they do. I mean, people became fluent in a language without learning it. They understand and speak it because they acquired the darn language. They put no real effort in it, they just absorbed and had fun. Schools and colleges just destroyed that idea of absorbing a language. They think you have to learn it. Even when you try to just acquire a language, they come up will all kind of things to supplement your “learning”.

Lately I’ve been reading this blog of an ALG student. ALG stands for Automatic Language Growth, and like the name suggests it’s all about language “growing” inside you. You’re not learning it, but rather absorbing it, acquiring it, because of which it starts growing in you. Just read the blog and you’ll see how amazing the system is.

ALG pretty much works like this: a student enrolls in a course for which he has nothing to do except for attending class and listening. There’s no homework, no textbooks, no speaking. Just listening to some teachers for several hundreds of hours. And because of all that comprehensive listening (even though it’s not that comprehensive at first), the language starts growing in you.

Later on, the student learns (yes, as in studying a bit) how to read and write. Even speaking is covered, but only after more than 800 hours of listening. You see, after that many hours of listening the language has grown in you, making it an “adult”. You’ve acquired the language, but maybe not perfectly yet. There’s room for improvement, but that’s covered with more input and practice.

As this student proved, you don’t need to learn a language to actually speak it. Acquiring it is the goal, learning is just a way to do it. You see, the student in question had lived in Thailand for several years and learned some Thai, but didn’t speak it. So he decided to move from learning to acquiring it, and he succeeded.

Unfortunately, the ALG program is only available for a limited number of languages in Thailand. But we can replicate it and apply it to our own environment. Keith has been a great advocate of the TV method and has shown how far it can take you. But just as with ALG it takes diligence to keep going and to finally succeed.

I strongly believe we should stop talking about learning a language, because that implies that we use some kind of tool to learn it, and that’s not the most effective way to learn a language. Instead, just absorb and let the Spanish language grown in you. That’s how you learned your native tongue, and now that’s how you’re going to learn Spanish as well.

Further reading:

• Reasons why NOT stop studying Spanish
• Immersion is the way to go (and stop looking for excuses)
• Learning a Language Is Like Running a Marathon

Further

Just a quick message to let you know Eleena of Voices en Español just published a podcast I recorded for her some weeks ago. The sound quality isn’t superb, but that’s the best I could do as a poor student.

In short: it’s me reading a short story in Spanish, about a Japanese farmer. I just love that story, and I tried to limit myself to ’standard’ Spanish. So yeah, you now hear that my accent isn’t shipwrecked anymore and that I’m at least able to read a story out loud in Spanish .

I hope you enjoy it!

Further reading:

• For All Serious Learners: Barra de Español
• Cuentos en Español
• Keep it short!

Further

Sooner or later, every language learner that goes beyond the beginner’s stage hits a plateau, especially advanced learners. At that point you’re probably still making some progress, but you’re not noticing it. This is especially the case when you immerse yourself in a language. When learning a language through grammar study you know what verb tense you’ve just learned and which one you need to learn next. The fact that you don’t speak the language in the end doesn’t matter; you know how far you are in ‘conquering’ your target language. Not so much when immersing yourself.

And that’s quite logical. When we learned our native language we made rapid progress in the beginning, while when we get older we learn less. This is often mistaken as the ‘critical learning period’, I just think there are less things that are important enough to learn at that moment. You hit a plateau learning your native language. That doesn’t mean that you’re not learning anything, it just means that you’re learning less in a certain timeframe. And that’s okay, we eventually go to school and learn other important things. Perfecting our native language is still a priority, but other things now have a higher priority.

However, we Spanish learners already know those other things. All we want is getting better at Spanish, all the time, at the same rate as before. Unfortunately, that’s more or less impossible. At first everything is new and exciting. Every word or expression you pick up is new to you, so you’re happy to just take in. I know I was very happy with my progress when I used to spend my days watching television and listening Spanish music. I was learning so much, at such an incredible speed. I never thought I’d hit a plateau. Then I hit my plateau.

It has been about a year now that I hit it. I was in Spain for an internship and was using Spanish every day, all day long. At the end of my internship I was fluent in Spanish. No, it wasn’t because of my time in Spain that I became fluent, that’s thanks to all the work I put in the two years before. But living in Spain gave me the final push to polish my Spanish and really go through life as a native. But then it struck me: I was good, but I wasn’t really near-native. There were still so many holes in my vocabulary that it was embarrassing. That’s when I started looking for ways to get even better.

A few months back I enrolled in a Spanish writing class (the kind wannabe authors take, not the kind the avarage Spanish learner takes). The professor had one advice for us: “If you want to pass this class and start writing for real, you better start reading a sick amount on books. Like, NOW!“. It just made so much sense. We encourage our kids to read, in order to become better at their native language. So why wasn’t I doing that for Spanish? I knew the answer: I didn’t understand a lot of the books I like. Again, my limited vocabulary was to blame. Of course I was fluent, but I couldn’t understand literature.

And then I started thinking. I compared all kind of methods and techniques to learn languages, and one technique stood out: the so-called Don’t look up a damn thing-method. The idea is simple: you pick up a book you might like, start reading it, and do that until you finish it. There’s no such thing as dictionaries you can consult, nor native speakers, nothing. You just depend on the context. The philosophy behind this method is that important words and expressions will return time after time, and that there’s always a sentence or other piece of context that helps you understand that particular word. And I have to say, it works.

When reading, people have the tendency to look up every freakin’ word they don’t know. It slows them down. It demotivates them. But never they think all this looking up of mostly unimportant words is just useless and counterproductive. When they watch television or listen music they just enjoy the stuff they do understand, so why all the hassle when reading? I was a person like that and it caused me to stop reading. That was a huge mistake. I hit that famous plateau and was just not making progress as fast as I could.

Now, months later, I finally put the advice of my professor in practice and I already notice the difference. I’m learning a lot again. I don’t have to look up words, I just read and enjoy what I understand. I’ve learned so much the past weeks, I can’t believe I didn’t do this earlier.

Take the word bastón for example. Believe it or not, I didn’t know the word until this week. Then I was reading this book called El enigma de París (which is a great book, by the way). A guy was telling something about his mentor and the special bastón he always carried with him. I had no idea what a bastón was when I saw the word for the first time. But then it came back a few times, describing its uses, and why it was so special. Then I knew a bastón is simply a walking stick. I probably won’t forget this word anymore and don’t need to add it to my SRS. I simply enjoyed reading a good book and learned a new word (and many more).

Long story short, I believe that people – especially advanced learners – should read more books. Graded readers are great for beginners, but novels and literature are the way to go for advanced learners. You will hit that plateau, or probably already did. I know that it sucks, but not all is lost. You don’t have to continue just watching movies and series, or at least you shouldn’t. Reading is a great way to reinforce the grammar you already know from getting input, and it’s even a greater way to get a bigger vocabulary. Even if it looks hard, go on with it. Hang in there and read, read, read. It’s simply the way to go for advanced learners.

Photo by Phil Moore

Further reading:

• How to Read Spanish
• Learn by Example
• Reading children’s books

Further

The main problem when learning a language like Spanish, is that you have the idea of learning it, but are holding it off because you simply procrastinate. Spanish looks so easy for most people, because it’s closely related to English. Why would you put serious work into it? It’s pretty easy to learn, right?

Now, what if you’re past that stage and are sure you really want to learn Spanish? Chances are that you’re still procrastinating because you have no idea on how to start, or more often because you have no idea how to manage your time.

Most of us have a job, study, or do both. We don’t have an infinite number of hours, we only have 24 hour a day. We need to sleep, eat, go to work/school, clean our house, do groceries, things like that. And it’s all time consuming, so when is there every time to learn this Spanish language?

I’m not talking about getting your immersion environment working, it should be there all the time. When you eat, work, clean your house, do your groceries and do other things, you immersion environment should be working. There should be always be some kind form of Spanish, let it be written or spoken.

No, the most annoying things are things like collecting sentences, searching for Spanish media you like, doing SRS reps, search for more sentences and media. It’s not necessarily difficult, but it’s not something that goes automatically. In other words: you’re bound to fail when it comes to active things (that is, everything else than plain input in the form of audio and television).

So, collecting sentences and doing SRS reps. I have to admit; I’m not a champion when it comes to collecting sentences. That’s why I love things like SpanishPod and FrenchPod so much; they make it easy for me to collect a large quantity of high quality sentences with audio. That only leaves me to doing the SRS reps. Looking for new movies and shows isn’t really difficult for me, simply because I love pirating getting stuff.

However, I did succeed when it comes to SRS’ing. My deck expands, and I’m doing my daily SRS reps. How did I do that? Simple: I do those things in the morning.

I’m not a morning person, but I do know I need to get the most important things done in the morning. Apart from not being a morning person, I also forget easily. Countless times I’ve been in bed that I thought: “Shoot, forgot to collect some more sentences and do my SRS reps. AGAIN!”. Don’t let that happen to you, give some attention to your SRS in the morning.

Another thing that I found essential is to do the SRS reps first. Why? Because that’s all what it’s about: doing SRS reps. Adding new sentences can wait, but not reviewing your sentences every day is simply a sin. Trust me on this, it’s easier to do some reviewing first, and then adding new stuff. Collecting sentences can be quite tiring, which will result in not wanting to do SRS reps afterwards. Luckily you did the SRS reps first!

Going cold turkey with this can be hard, but it’s absolutely essential. If you’re like me, the first thing you do in the morning is starting up your computer. There are several programs out there that’ll start certain other programs when booting your PC. So get a problem like that, and set your SRS to start when starting up your PC. This way you can’t forget it, now the only thing you need to overcome is the desire to close it right away. Just do a few reps, like 10 or so. What are 10 SRS items? Nothing, right? Then, do some more if you want. If not, collect some fresh sentences. This could take as little as 15 minutes, to one hour, depending on your motivation.

In case you forget using your SRS for the rest of the day, you still have this time in the morning in the pocket. No one can take that away from you anymore, you only need to be consistent. Now, the most ideal situation would be opening that SRS a few more times throughout the day, to review some more items or maybe even add some more sentences. Use your lunch break for that, or the time right after you get home from work/school.

Note that the title of this post isn’t Time Management for Serious Learners. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably serious about learning Spanish. However, often we’re not that serious when it comes to organizing our schedule, including me. Because of that we need to do the most important and difficult things first.

Often SRS’ing is the most difficult and certainly one of the most important things to do. So do that first. Don’t worry too much about getting input; if you only have Spanish music on your iPod, only have Spanish movies and shows on your computer, and most of you books are in Spanish, you’ll get that input.

Forgetting that SRS is just too easy, so do something about that.

Photo by Robbert van der Steeg

Further reading:

• Time management
• Follow Friday For Language Learners?
• What Is The Most Important Part Of a Language?

Further

In order to continue building our community and bond a bit better with you, the readers, I’ve decided to launch a weekly newsletter. A newsletter?! Yes, a newsletter. This Friday I’ll be sending out the first one, after which I’ll send one out every Friday.

Why a newsletter?
I ‘ve always wanted to make a newsletter for you, but the amount of followers of this blog wasn’t enough to make it profitable (both money-wise and time-wise). But now that the number of subscribers is rising, I want to give the loyal readers something extra.

What will I get if I subscribe?
Subscribing to the newsletter is completely free, but will offer some great advantages. First of all I’ll be sending you extra content which I won’t publish on the blog (in-dept articles, or special materials to help you getting better at Spanish).

I’m also adding some idioms to each newsletter. Where the Spanish Word of the Day posts cover just words, the newsletter will be filled with expressions and weird idioms.

And if that weren’t enough; I’m also writing my own free eBook on how to learn languages. Subscribers to the newsletter will receive parts of the upcoming eBook over the next weeks, and when it’s ready to publish they will get it right in their mailbox.

What more can I expect?
Interviews, lots of freebies, ‘homework’ to get you working on your Spanish, and more things I haven’t come up with yet.

Sounds good. What will it cost?
$0.00, and your time every week to read it.

Can I help?
Actually, you can. I’m planning on adding a reader column to the newsletter where any reader can tell their story, tips and/or tricks. If you want to write for the newsletter you can simply drop me a line with a pitch for your story.

Great, where can I subscribe?!
Simple. Use the box in the sidebar.

Further reading:

• Success stories and guest posts
• Reader question: Real materials
• New Year, New Design

Further

It has been a while since I spoke about my French project, which I started last year. I asked you if I should post about my progress and many of you said yes, but between then and now life took over and I didn’t have much time to dedicate to French, let alone post about it. However, I’m still learning French and I’m more and more moving out of my Spanish comfort zone into a new, not so comfortable, French zone. In this post I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing for the last 4 months, and if French is really that easy for Spanish speakers.

French isn’t easy, it isn’t difficult, it’s just different
When I started learning French, people around me told me that it’d be very easy as I’m already fluent in Spanish. Well, either they lied or had no freaking idea of what it’s like to learn French. Whatever people tell you: French is not easy, not even if you speak Spanish or English. Still, it isn’t a difficult language either, it’s just different. That’s a very important mindset when learning another language. People who know almost nothing about learning another language think it’s difficult, or that there are difficult languages out there. The truth is that most languages are just different than your native language, which makes them look hard.

Dutch is a big help
So far my biggest help in learning French has been Spanish (obviously), English (as it took many words from French), and to my surprise Dutch. Dutch is my native tongue and has many French influences, mainly in terms of vocabulary. This means that I’m able to understand a ridiculous amount of French, not because I speak Spanish, not because I speak English, but simply because I speak Dutch.

Take the French verb rechercher for example. In Spanish it’s buscar. In English it’s to look for. In Dutch it’s zoeken. But! A detective is called a rechercheur in Dutch. See the resemblance? Someone that looks for someone is called a rechercheur, so to look for is rechercher. It’s awesome for a Dutch person to learn French!

There are also many, many words that we Dutchies literally took over from French. Words like trottoir, portefeuille, abonnement, fauteuil, avance, bagage, barrière, bureau, cabaretier, chef, crèche, documentaire, douane, etc. come to mind (look here for a long-ass list with French words and expressions we use in Dutch).

Also, certain parts of French pronunciation are related to Dutch pronunciation, like the guttural R, which is common in the part of the Netherlands I come from.

Spanish helps, but not as much as I thought it would
Spanish and French grammar are almost identical, according to some. Although this is true to some extent, it’s bullcrap to say it’s the same. Just take the double negation in French as an example. It does exist in Spanish (no viene nadie/no veo nada), but not as it is used in French (je ne sais pas -> no lo sé).

Another thing that’s a pain in the butt is the French pronunciation. As I speak Spanish, I’m used to pronounce everything when reading something out loud. Well, that doesn’t work for French. No, French has all these weird pronunciation rules, which sticks certain consonants to the next word, omits whole syllables, etc. It stinks, and there’s no way Spanish is helping me with this, it’s more that it holds me back.

Luckily, Spanish still helps me in terms of understanding simple grammar (although I’m not studying any grammar at all at the moment, it’s just that I already understand the nuance of certain things). And although pronunciation is really different, Spanish helps me to understand more French than I could only using English and Dutch.

Input, input, input
So, what have I been doing for these last 4 months? First of all, I had some exams and my teaching job was taking over a bit, so I didn’t go French Only (unfortunately). That doesn’t mean I didn’t get the input I needed. I’ve been downloading my favorite shows dubbed in French, have been looking for new French rap, and recently found Ouï FM, a really cool radio station.

Now, after doing everything in Spanish for the last three years, it isn’t easy to switch over to French. Also, I’ll be doing my English minor very soon, which means I also need to dive a bit more into English (my English just isn’t as good as it used to be). However, I noticed that even though I’m only able to get a couple of ‘French hours’ out of every day, every bit counts and that it does help to get better.

One very important thing I did was filling my MP3 player with French rap. It still contains some serious amount of Spanish music, but I’m about to delete those songs and keep it French only for the next year.

The TV Method
After about 250 hours, I quit doing the TV method for Spanish. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but I was simply at a high level in Spanish already, so I wasn’t making progress as fast as I could. However, I don’t know a single word of French (except from the ones in Dutch, English and Spanish, and the ones I learned from getting input), so I think doing the TV Method for French will help me a lot. I’m not sure yet if I’ll document it, or even measure the hours I put into it for myself, but I already started watching Dawson’s Creek in French of which I have all 6 seasons on DVD. I also have several seasons of South Park, The O.C., Dexter, Prison Break and Las Vegas and , so I’m good to go.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find any good comedies in French, so maybe there’s someone out there that speaks French and knows some really cool shows from France?

Don’t worry about progress
When learning Spanish (I mean, learning Spanish hardcore), I was worried about my progress all the time. Now, I had valid reasons to be worried as my education was depending on it; no high Spanish level would mean not passing tests, would mean not getting my degree. For French I don’t feel this pressure and I kind of like it. It does become easier to skip days, just getting Spanish and English input instead, but it also prevents me from freaking out when I do.

The most important thing is to have a daily routine. I’m used to doing my SRS reps in the morning, so I’ll just do that for French as well. When watching a movie, I really need to push myself to watch it in French. This isn’t easy as I still don’t understand half of it, but it’s something I need to go through. It’s just a relief to not have to worry about watching everything in French, like I used to do for Spanish.

Not worrying about making progress actually helps in the long run. I can stick to materials that are fun to me, although its possible they don’t help me to advance as quickly as possible. But that doesn’t matter, as it’s ok to stay at a lower level for a longer time. Also, I don’t need to speak French now, so I can also spare my output and not ruin my pronunciation, which is a big plus.

What I think of French
I used to associate French with high school, where I only got 2’s and 3’s (D’s for you Americans). Now I associate French with a beautiful language, a great country and a different culture (although not as different as the Spanish culture). Also, I love the sound of the language and I really enjoy learning more each and every day. I actually can’t wait to get up every morning to collect more sentences for my SRS and watch some more South Park in French, it’s just amazing.

I already see myself speaking French, although this will certainly go a bit slower than Spanish. I now have three languages to maintain (English, Spanish and French), so I won’t be able to go French only. Still, France is next door and a train ticket to Paris is only €35. I also know some people here that speak French and they know many Francophones, so I might try to go out with them some time.

How you can help me
I know that many of my readers are learning French as well. My question to you: what resources do you use to collect sentences (with audio) from? Where do you download your shows, movies and music? What are some websites in French you can recommend me, as a learner? Just share anything than can be used by the avarage learner!

Further reading:

• Mandarin, French and SRSing
• The TV Method: Update 2
• Why Keeping Momentum Is So Damn Important

Further

Choosing the right Spanish dictionary for your studies isn’t easy. Yes, it’s actually easier than ever to compare dictionaries as we now have the internet, but many booksellers won’t let you see the content to check out if it’ll fit your needs. And that sucks.

I mean, a good dictionary isn’t cheap. In fact, a good dictionary will be pretty expensive, especially if you’re a poor student. Now, we all have different needs while learning Spanish. Some love technical and sophisticated definitions, while others just like to keep things simple. Also, the amount of words and expressions a dictionary contains differs a lot, even between editions.

Anyway, no matter what kind of dictionary you choose, there are some things you absolutely need to have. That’s why I’ve come up with this humble list of things a dictionary has to have, and at the end I’ll provide some titles of dictionaries I think meet the requirements of a good one.

1. Simple definitions. Although some of you can perfectly understand academic English, you want to keep things simple. You’re already doing something memory-intensive (learning Spanish), so why crack your brain decoding this long-ass English sentence with difficult words, explaining you what estar means?
2. Lots of words. The more words it covers, the better. Nothing is worse than looking for a word you’re never going to find. So choose one that covers many words and a broad range of subjects.
3. Lots of example sentences. Unfortunately, most dictionaries only give the translation of a Spanish word, as if it were possible to map one language to another. So look for a dictionary with loads of example sentences, with an English translation of course. Also, a dictionary with many example sentences will make it easier for you to expand your sentence collection.
4. Comes in a digital format. Now, a paper dictionary is nice to carry around and to look up a thing or two, but for serious use and serious sentence collecting, a digital dictionary is a must. Some paper dictionaries come with a CD-ROM, containing a digital dictionary, but these are often the more expensive ones. If you use your computer a lot, go for one in a digital format. Just be sure it has example sentences.
5. Isn’t just for beginners. The key to a good dictionary is that it isn’t for beginners only. Some of the better dictionaries have special tables with words and example sentences for the more advanced learner, which drastically lengthens the period you can use it. With the ones for beginners you’ll spend a lot of money, but if you’re a serious learner it’ll soon be pretty much useless for you.

Now, these are some points you should think about before buying a dictionary. I recommend just going to a book store to check some out, to see for yourself if it’ll be worth the money. For digital dictionaries there’s often trial period in which you can use pretty much every feature, before paying a dime.

Here’s a list of my personal favorites. Some are free, while some aren’t.

1. Oxford Pocket Dictionary. Thisone is pretty bad-ass, and has a free online version hosted by WordReference.com. Has lots of example sentences.
2. Oxford Concise Dictionary. The expanded version of the pocket dictionary, but isn’t free. Also comes in an online format, to which WordReference.com is happy to give you access for €30 per year. Has even more Spanish sentences.
3. EsPara Dictionary. This one comes in two flavors: Spanish-English and Spanish monolingual. Both are bad-ass, and both are available freely on the internet. Where, you ask? Oh, just at WordReference.com, again. Has a fair amount of example sentences.

These are the three best dictionaries available online, in my opinion, that is. The EsPasa dictionary is also available on CD-ROM, although I don’t know where to buy it.

Now, what about the paper variants? Again, go for the Oxford dictionary* if you’re looking for a good Spanish-English/English-Spanish dictionary. As for a good monolingual dictionary, I’d go for the EsPasa diccionary de la lengua española – para estudiantes de español. This EsPasa dictionary is a bit different that the online version, but very good. Unfornately it’s a bit heavy, so not very suited to use while traveling.

What is your favorite dictionary?

*Affiliate link.

Photo by sergis blog.

Further reading:

• Online EsPasa dictionary for free
• Why I use the EsPasa Calpe dictionary
• Lingro.com dictionary

Further

I know James from some comments he posted on this blog last year, and I was really interested in his story and how going Spanish Only (Portuguese Only in his case, at first) helped him. He also explains why most language learning products won’t help you and why you always need a good amount of input before speaking. Read his story and don’t be afraid to share yours as well!

A few years ago I became obsessed with languages. It all started with Japanese. I was attracted to the beauty of the written language and the exoticness of the Japanese culture (ok, it was the anime, manga and video games – sue me). But after failing miserably to capture Japanese in my mind (by using the latest in language learning technology that 10 bucks could buy me, of course), my interest spread from Japanese to half a dozen other languages. I wanted to learn Spanish, French, Italian and German – for starters. Unfortunately, what my brief stint with Japanese failed to teach me was that learning a language was hard. I had no idea of what I was getting myself into. I had thought that you either knew a language or you didn’t, being as unaware of the Thousand Levels of Intermediacy™ as I was. But being ever the fast learner, I soon realized that it was hopeless. So I gave up.

Fast forward two years; I started work as a furniture salesman (promotion from delivery man, woop!) in an area of Texas that is simply saturated with a Spanish-speaking population. For much of that population, English is unintelligible; they speak Spanish. Like, Spanish only (see how I did that?). And, after the senior salesman of the establishment (who spoke Spanish) left, I was faced with the task of making myself the ambassador to the Spanish masses.

Now, I had heard the language growing up, being from that neck of the woods (figure of speech, really – no neck involved, or woods, for that matter), and had about a high school knowledge of it, more or less, but this was deemed insufficient. So, with visions of my previous experiences with cheap language products dancing in my head, I bought a pack of 1000 flashcards. It took me about a month to get through half of the deck, and I memorized them dutifully. So then, every time a customer entered the store – a customer that spoke no English – I was able to ask them what they were looking for, using lots of useful words like mesa, silla, barbilla, etc. Unfortunately, once they actually started to talk back, I was a bit lost.

And that’s pretty much where I remained for the next year, after which I found that I had only gotten through about 850 cards of my stack of flashcards, then had bought another deck of 1000 new cards, and gotten only 20 cards into that one… I began to suspect that I was getting nowhere. That’s when I stumbled upon Michel Thomas CD’s and tried his program. The method was brilliant, and the material really had a way of sticking. I thought I had done it; learned Spanish. So, after running through the tracks a few times, a tried my newfound knowledge on my customers… and encountered the same problem: zero comprehension on the response. Obviously something had gone awry.

I was not able to pinpoint my problem, however, and I just continued doing everything I normally did, setting aside a few minutes every day for Spanish. I continued this trend even when I took a 6 month vacation to Brazil. I would spend only as much time on Portuguese as  I had to, and the rest went to my normal English activities. The only thing that saved me from leaving Brazil with only a mediocre grasp on Portuguese was encountering the blog All Japanese All the Time, and at the same time, Spanish Only. The ideas and principles behind full immersion in these blogs really rang true to me, and I put the system into effect immediately.

I cut off all access to English; no books, no movies, no music, no talking. Everything English was considered an enemy of the State and was treated as such. I took no prisoners, and made Portuguese my language. I filled my iPod up with Brazilian music and audio clips ripped from movies and series. Every morning when I woke up, I put on my headphones and went about my day, listening to the sounds of Portuguese. I only took them off only when I had to. Whenever I got the chance I would read a book in Portuguese or watch a movie, but most of my input was from listening. After a month, I noticed my comprehension jump around 50%.

Unfortunately, my time in Brazil ended soon after that, and I had to come back to the US, but before I had a chance to re-settle I jumped on a plane bound for Mexico, where I currently reside. After three months of immersion (one spent in the US) I feel that I’ve come a long way. Every day has been filled with intensive viewing of American shows dubbed in Spanish, and (unfortunately) as little interaction with other humans as possible (seriously, I must fix this). So far, it’s paid off. My level in Spanish as of this writing is around lower-Advanced, and it grows every day.

After four more months of Spanish I must leave this sunny country to start a new language. I really would like to continue studying Spanish intensively, as I believe that one truly needs at least a year or two to become really proficient in a language. But right now, I don’t have an opportunity to spend more time in a Spanish-speaking country. So, although I’m still hard at work at Spanish, wheedling down the amount of words I don’t know (after a while you need to stop adding up the words you do know), I will be soon moving on to French, to study for a longer period of time. After that, who can say?

Further reading:

• English success story
• Learning More Languages at The Same Time?
• What Is Learning Spanish Through Immersion REALLY?

Further

About a week ago a reader named Mark sent me the following e-mail about how the heck he’s even able to learn grammar just from sentences:

I’ve been following your blog for quite some time now and decided to try and give this Spanish thing a try.

I already learned Mandarin to near fluency using the immersion method and wanted to see if it would also work for Spanish. I started out studying Mandarin in college for a year and a half through classes but only started seeing real progress once I immersed myself in the language. By then, I already had a solid foundation in grammar and it was easy to pick up new sentences.

With Spanish, I took a few courses in high school but don’t remember any grammar and hardly any vocabulary. I know how to pronounce Spanish and that’s about it. I bought Learning Spanish Like Crazy Light version and borrowed some children’s spanish books from my library. I also have the “Easy Spanish Phrase Book” along with “1001 Most Useful Phrases in Spanish” books.

Problem is, I really don’t know where to go from here. When I open these books and see these long sentences, I wonder how I can try and understand them. You say I shouldn’t try and learn grammar, but if I don’t learn at least SOME basic grammar, how can I put these sentences into Anki and understand what they mean? I don’t understand any of the sentences in the phrasebook and don’t know what I should do.

What do you suggest I do? I have tons of Spanish podcasts that I listen to, but I still can’t understand anything. It’s very discouraging. Mandarin has very little “grammar” and no tenses, unlike Spanish, so it was easy to just pick apart different sentences. As a complete beginner, I don’t know what the logical next step is in my learning Spanish.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Normally I’d just advise to pick up a reference grammar (the type without any exercises), read the grammar point (but not to memorise them) and add the sentences to your favorite SRS program. Now, this is completely fine and all, but I think there’s an easier way to do this, with less worrying about grammar.

I started learning Spanish in college and it wasn’t after I learned everything about Spanish grammar that I started building my immersion environment. In other words: I never applied this format to my SRS cards, but now that I’ve done a lot of research to how the ideal flashcard should look like, I came up with this format. This is what I told Mark to do:

Lets say you have this Spanish sentence:
“No quiero verte.”

To begin, I’d translate the sentence literally, like this:
Not want [I] see-you.

Of course, this sentence is really short, but you should start out with short sentences anyway.

Then, you write down the correct English translation:
I don’t want to see you.

This results in the following SRS item:

——–

F R O N T
No quiero verte.

B A C K
Not want [I] see-you.

I don’t want to see you.

Notes:
“No” always comes before the verb.
“Quiero” is the first person singular (present) of “querer”.
“Ver” means “to see” (verb)
“Te” refers to “you”.

——–

Now you have an item that explains you everything. You’ll notice that after a bunch of cards and many hours of input later, you don’t need all those notes anymore and that it’s enough to put Spanish-> English sentence items and later on Spanish sentence -> Spanish definition of unknown words items.

Adding these notes is even doable for a complete beginner. But to avoid mistakes I’d still pick up that reference grammar, put the Spanish sentence on the front of the card, and simply take over the notes from the grammar book. This will be your only time you actually “study”, although not in a formal way; the rest of the time is reserved to get some massive input.

As you can see it’s totally possible to learn a language from scratch without ever formally study grammar.

Still, even though Spanish has a freaky grammar at times (compared to some other languages), that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to learn it from just getting input. I mean, if you can learn words from context like Mark did with Mandarin, why wouldn’t you be able to learn grammar from context? It’s just another part of the language, it isn’t more difficult. So just pumping in the Spanish into your head, even though you won’t understand a thing, helps. I know it sounds weird, but it has been proven by several linguists, and you just need to experience it to believe it can.

Use your SRS to get a bit of a feeling for the language and to explain some things to yourself, but just get that Spanish input going and you’ll see it goes automatically.

Good luck learning, mate!

Further reading:

• Studying grammar can help – part 2
• Studying grammar CAN help
• How to treat the rules: read about them but don’t learn them

Further

It has been a while since I talked about the wonderful Spaced Repetition System. It’s not that I don’t like them anymore, it’s just because everything seems to be written about it, leaving little for me to tell.

Today’s subject is something probably many talked about before me, and they probably did it better as well. But I don’t care, not all of you know those people and if you do; a little bit of repetition won’t hurt you.

So, collecting sentences for your SRS. Personally, I often feel no sentence is good enough for my deck, leaving me with little to no new sentences. Khatzumoto of AJATT seems to want to add just about everything there is to add. He thinks that many are like him, but I tend to think many are like me (I guess we’re both a bit narcistic, hehe). Either way, both flavours are possible.

Khatzumoto’s “problem” is at least less grave; he adds too much and then deletes a bunch, but in the end he has quite some sentences left. I add a little and delete. Result: my deck isn’t growing and sometimes even gets smaller. My problem, like I said: I think most sentences just don’t have “it”.

To me, a sentence that has “it” has the following qualities:

• Input + 1 (just one or two new words or a new grammar point).
• Is clear without further explanation.
• Isn’t dry/dull.
• Contains real language.
• Is useful for me.

That means that I often don’t collect sentences from books I’m reading. It can be a perfect sentence regarding the input + 1 principle, but is dry as hell at the same time. On the other hand it can be a really funny sentence, but with too many unknown/difficult words. So do I add it to my deck? No. Should I do it? Probably, yes.

That’s why I love dictionaries so much. They contain sentences of the right size, aren’t heavy with difficult words in their examples and are even funny at times.

So what I do when I see a new word (I’m past adding sentences for the sake of learning a new grammatical structure) is looking if the original context is okay. If not, I’ll look for a good example sentence in a dictionary. Chances are that the sentence from the dictionary is often way better than the original sentence.

Still, I recommend you using the original sentence when you can. Why? Simply because it’ll help you remember the word/concept/whatever better, simply because you know the broader context (chapter, book, story, song) and thus have an emotional connection with that context. Do you have an emotional connection with your dictionary sentences? Often not.

Photo by jetheriot

Further reading:

• SRS Practices: Writing Down Your Sentences
• Frequently Asked Questions About Sentences
• SRS Practices: I Have an SRS, Now What?

Further