I grew up in a predominantly Spanish-speaking area. My hometown is along the southern Texas-Mexico border, and so even though the language is not spoken in my own home, it is spoken in the homes of lots of people I care about. Because of this I have always been passionate about the language, even though I have never crossed the threshold of bilingualism.
When I was in first grade, my teacher gave me a set of Spanish flashcards to use over the summer, in case I wanted to learn. As a seven-year-old, I didn’t quite have the dedication to follow through with that, but I did learn that a pato is a duck, so I guess that’s something.
My desire to learn Spanish has never fluctuated, but my dedication to that goal has been pretty turbulent. I’ve downloaded and re-downloaded Duolingo probably ten times (or more) by this point in my life and I’ve gone through phases where I've tried to convince my boyfriend to only speak in Spanish to me (since he speaks Spanish). I took three years of Spanish in high school and three semesters of in college, and while I have improved, I’m still not where I want to be. Learning a new language is difficult, and crossing the threshold from being-able-to-sorta-get-by to total fluency is especially challenging.
As a soon-to-be math teacher, I’ve been getting into describing things with graphs lately, and so I drew this graph, which I think resembles how learning a second language has felt over these past few years.
For any other math nerds out there, this is a modified cube root graph that I vertically stretched and shifted to the right and up. I feel like learning a language is something that happens really slowly at first, accelerates, and then slows back down before plateauing. When I first started trying to learn Spanish, it was pretty difficult and everything seemed fresh and unfamiliar, from articles and masculine/feminine words to everyday vocabulary. These were the early days of Duolingo for me.
Then I started taking classes and I made a lot of progress. My vocabulary expanded, my grammar improved, I learned different tenses and conjugation. But ever since then, I feel like I’ve plateaued. I haven’t seen much development in my Spanish from the last class I took as a first-semester sophomore.
About two weeks ago, in a conversation with a close friend, I decided I wanted to start trying to learn Spanish again. I also decided I wanted to do it in a way that would be a little more natural and maybe even enjoyable. These are the five things I’ve started doing these past few weeks:
Watching a Netflix show in Spanish. I started with a kid’s show called Puffin Rock translated into Spanish and have since switched to a Mexican drama called Ingobernable (which is absolutely fascinating). I use a Chrome extension called Language Learning with Netflix that you can find here.
Journaling in Spanish. I’ve been trying to get back into the habit of journaling every night, because it’s a great way to unwind and process my day. To improve my language learning, I’ve started journaling partially in Spanish. I’ll begin my journal entries with about a page of Spanish, and then I’ll go back and use the translation app on my phone to correct my writing. Then I write in corrections and highlight words that seem like useful vocabulary, which I add to the list in #3.
Keeping a running list of Spanish vocabulary. Every time my boyfriend uses a Spanish phrase or word that is unfamiliar to me, I jot it down on a running vocabulary list I have in my Notes app. I have also been doing this with words I use in my journaling and phrases I see in Ingobernable.
Using Quizlet. I have always been an avid Quizlet user. Quizlet got me through basically every single class I’ve ever taken starting my freshman year of high school. I’ve even used it to remember people’s names (I’m not kidding). So using it for language-learning was a natural transition. I started out with a Quizlet of the 100 most common words in Spanish and I’ve just been adding words and phrases from the list in my Notes app.
Practicing with people. This is probably the most beneficial, and it’s unfortunately the one I do the least frequently (mostly because I get nervous). But even practicing Spanish with another person (especially someone whose fluent) for just a minute has helped me out enormously. Practice makes perfect, and even though it’s awkward and a little scary, it really is so essential. Benny from Fluentin3months.com recommends creating a basic conversational script and memorizing it so you have something to go off when practicing conversations. It’s up to you. But the most important thing is to start.
Well, that’s all I have for you today. Stay inspired, stay dedicated, and stay lavender, ladies!
— Theresa
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