el reto
This is week 11 of my quest for fluency in Spanish. I’m taking things up a notch with the relaunch of my blog including this language learning section and the first of a series of video updates.
I studied Spanish for two years in highschool and somewhat more recently took a crack at Filipino for a few months. I’m also able to sort of put together some rudimentary phrases and fragments in a local dialect of Arabic pertaining mostly to my job—things like “Give me hammer,” “Clean that,” and “This job is shit!” But like a typical American, today I only really speak English. Why? I simply wasn’t willing to do what it takes to learn a new language. It’s really hard work and frankly can be kind of scary, as you really need to talk with other people in the language in order to learn it. If we want to learn a language we have to be determined and willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish the goal. In this spirit, I’m posting now as a way to declare some challenges, or retos, for myself.
One of the biggest reasons I relaunched my abandoned blog was to start a video log showing my progress in Spanish, another idea I borrowed from Fluent in 3 Months. The idea is that if you announce that you will post regular video updates of yourself speaking the language and showing progress, then this is a way to keep yourself accountable. You have to make progress and go through the daily grind in order to produce the videos. I don’t want to make things too stressful for myself nor do I want to spread out the videos so much that I may lose interest in the interim, so for now I will aim to produce a video update of myself conversing in Spanish at least once every two or three weeks.
I will go into more detail about my current study plan and habits in future updates, but here is the down and dirty. I began studying Spanish in earnest October 25th, 2016 when I took my first private class via Skype with a community tutor through iTalki.com. This was about two weeks before traveling to Peru where I was to spend two weeks alone before meeting up with my brother, Daniel, who also didn’t speak Spanish.
On my way to Peru I had a layover in Miami, which was the first time I’d entered the US in nearly two years. As a result of my extended stay and travel in the Middle East, I was detained for questioning for just long enough to miss my next flight. As I went around the airport I made a startling discovery –apparently Spanish is the defacto language of Miami! Everyone from TSA “agents” too busy to look up from their games of Candy Crush, to the chica at the pizza place, and the people at the ticket counters all spoke Spanish to me. So, I gave up English –as much as someone with two weeks of Spanish studies can— and began butchering the romance language.
I used Spanish as much as I could in Peru. I even spoke Spanish with friendly European tourists who could speak flawless English. I spent a lot of time trying to explain myself and was really surprised at how patient people were with me. There were only a very few times when someone was clearly getting frustrated with me, but I chalked that up to experience and continued the mission.
To be honest, I didn’t converse as much as I could have or probably should have by a great deal. I am not an overly social person and have even been occasionally described by others as anti-social. This is another challenge for myself, to force myself to become more sociable. A few days ago I discovered the mobile app Hellotalk, which isn’t available for download in Iraq, so I had to use a VPN to download it. After a couple of days getting used to the app, I posted a public audio message in Spanish declaring another reto for myself. I was going to talk to ten strangers on the app that night. For some of you that might not be a big deal, but it’s something that made me feel quite uncomfortable. I try to use the Hellotalk app with mostly audio messages to practice speaking and listening, but I really need to have live conversations. So when a Mexican guy asked if he could call me through the app I begrudgingly consented. The call consisted mostly of my new amigo giving me his opinions on American politics in English and punctuating it with rapid-fire Spanish that I couldn’t understand a bit of, but at least I gave it a shot! A big challenge like the one so many of us are undertaking, that of learning a new language, has to be broken down into smaller challenges, goals, and tasks. Since language is inherently social, I have to become more social in order to learn it.
The center of my language learning efforts revolves around my private lessons with the certified teacher and Peruvian native Gabriela on Skype through the language-learning site iTalki.com. I spend five hours a week over four separate sessions with her not including (usually) doing whatever homework she sends me in email after class. I take new words and sentences learned in class and add them to a custom Anki flashcard deck. I probably average two hours daily on Anki review but this varies a great deal and I can’t always manage to review everything that the app wants me to. For several weeks I used DuoLingo regularly but had to drop it because it was cutting into my time to study new things learned in my classes. By no means do I have a stable system or schedule completely established yet. It’s all a hectic mess that I’m desperately trying to make into something orderly and sustainable. I work an average of 60 hours a week, but aside from four one-hour sessions at the gym each week, I have few commitments outside of work.
In the end, I aim to have a decent flowing conversational level of Spanish by mid-May when I return to Latin America for my next vacation. Pull up a chair and see if I can reach my goal!
socooley 