Thank you for all your support, encouragements, and tips! Just uploaded the first video of my new series of Spanish videos. Check it out here: ua-cam.com/video/ZMvZbCJYX3Q/v-deo.html
Hola Tracy, as a Spanish teacher, all I can say is that the feeling of being "stuck" is normal, since there is a stage where you don't see the progress that clear. But the progress is happening for sure! It's all about being a bit more aware of what exactly you need to make you move forward faster. Let me know if you need any help! I have personally also experienced the same when learning Chinese mandarin, German, and French. But all the work is paid off in the end :)
for me the best thing is listening as much as possible to natives speak, find Spanish podcasts/TV shows/music you like. That’ll help you pick up how the natives speak, learn new vocabulary and help your comprehension. Then the next time you speak you’ll naturally sound more native, that’s at least how it has worked for me.
Ánimo, it takes tons of work but just keep going. One thing that helped me when I first learned English was to immerse myself in the language. News, radio (or podcasts these days), movies, newspapers and books. It made me dizzy at times but in the end, I became pretty proficient at it.
While I agree that it is possible to lose progress in a language, I would also argue that you could get it back most of it much quicker than you learned it in the first place! If speaking is your main goal, my preferred approach is to find ways to force yourself to speak, e.g. going to a Spanish speaking country or finding a language exchange partner. Best of luck!
I'd recommend checking out Alexander Arguelles videos: ua-cam.com/video/MqR3K1alUio/v-deo.html&ab_channel=AlexanderArguelles He has a lot of really cool tips for using small amounts of time every day to upkeep languages you've learned so you don't gradually forget them. He mentions two students of his from Korea who came to visit him in America, who he hadn't seen in around 3 years. He says one student had their Spanish pretty intact when another lost their confidence to speak. That's because the student who still had their Spanish fluency had thought in Spanish in the shower which was a tip Arguelles told him to do. Little tips like that you'll find all over his channel.
I'm learning Chinese Mandarin, and my reasons are about the same as yours! I also love languages. :) It might get difficult and discouraging sometimes but it definitely pays off once you can communicate with other people in their native language
Hey Tracy! Thanks for sharing this. I started learning Spanish 2 years ago when I finished my last quarter of University in Spain. Since then, I've been off and on with it, never being super consistent for more than 3 months at a time. I can relate to you a little bit not in the sense that I am on exactly the same level as you, because your level is a bit higher, but moreso on the fact of maybe feeling like I used to be more consistent with practicing and noticing Spanish coming easier to me back then (noticing more progress as well). Anyway, I'm glad I found your channel because I have a lot more work to do myself just to become more consistent and put forth effort to get me to that next level just like you have, and because we are similar in level, I'm especially excited to seeing how your journey progresses from here. Please keep sharing your Spanish progress. For tips...I think something that has helped me is just picking content for passive and active immersion that you're genuinely interested in. More interest = more fun = more hours learning. Zack
Hi Zach, thanks for sharing your stories and tips with me. I will surely make more videos in Spanish and record my progress. Hope we can inspire each other❤
Yep feeling the exact same thing. I'm an American that first learned French in school (somehow kept it and kept it up) and never really veared away from Fluency. I then took up Chinese and was basically fluent in Chinese for a long period. It took me about a year to be completely conversational, and at that point I moved to China and just added onto everything I had. Now while I can completely understand all of your videos speaking Chinese without subtitles I cannot put properly grammatical sentences together correctly, I can listen and hear everything without a problem. I remember when I was trying to pass the HSK 6 exam it was the exact same feeling you have. You are learning words that are on the outskirts of the "core words" of a language, and you rarely if ever get to SEE them much less practice. If learning a language is generally more about input, than how can you get more input on words, phrases and expressions that are rarely used? I went on to learning Spanish (in which I got to a B1 level very quickly because of French) and decided that I didn't want to go any further, I can actively and efficiently communicate in Spanish on a daily level and can even gramatically correctly describe things and for me that was enough to say that my goal had been met with Spanish. So I would ask what exactly is your goal? Is total fluency your goal? That was mine in Chinese but wasn't mine in Spanish. So the practicing towards the goal is important. Here is my advice (if you like to take it from people who are in the same sinking ship). You NEED input on the things you are learning. If you cannot find the input, then maybe you should focus on finding the input and then deducing new words from that. Dramas, TV Shows, Radio (that was big for me in Spanish) and writing down words and phrases you hear BEING USED ACTIVELY and pinpoint your learning on that, then review the material over and over again to get better context. Alot of the AI language programs help with that as well, Chat GPT can give you 100 examples of weird words you'd never use. Like for example lets say you learned how to say "The dove's tail is aerodynamic". While you are learning, that isn't practical. However if you are super vested in learning it, try finding material on the study of birds in Spanish or your target language. You either need to slightly adjust your goals, or focus your practice on what current input and information you do have. Hope that helps.
Hola Tracey. Let me tell you what you can do to level up your spanish (I'm currently learning english at an advanced level, so I know the struggles your facing now): First of all, I'm not sure how good your spanish really is. I've just watched your video talking about the reasons why you chose to learn spanish, and if you didn't read any script and all you spoke in that video was impromptu then you're really very fluent. That being said, just as you've said in this video, the things you're learning now doesn't come up in your immersion that frequently. That's what is expected to be. So you're in the right path. Keep learning those things, and don't expect to come across them every day, because that's not how is suposed to be at this advanced level. At this advanced stage, there are two main gaps between you and a native speaker. One of them (probably the biggest one) is vocabulary. Just because you can pick up the gist of a sentence doesn't mean your vocabulary knowledge is suitable for that piece of content. The best way to realize this is through reading (and if you haven't started reading in spanish yet, it's definitely time to start doing it at this stage if you wanna break the intermediate plateu). When you read any material, which words did you already know before encountering them in that piece of content? Notice that this is a different question than asking how many words you were able to understand; one thing is your comprehension level and another different thing is your current knowledge. The first is always larger than the latter. That's because you can surmise the gist of the content you're consuming by leveraging on your current knowledge base. But you would have been unable to guess the meaning of those words before reading that material if I dictated them to you isolated with no context. So your job is noticing those new words you come across (when reading and also when listening, but specially when reading, because in all languages the written register is always more formal than the spoken one, so you'll encounter a lot of new fancy, "advanced" words) and jot them down by creating a numbered list (it's important that it's numbered) in google docs or Zoho writer or Microsoft Word or you can use a space repetition software like Anki if you prefer (I personally don't recomend spaced repetition systems, I think creating a numbered list in a document is a better way to learn and review your vocabulary for many reasons out of the scope of this comment) But how are you gonna jot them down? well, based on my experience, the best way is to write at least 2 or 3 example sentences (or even more if necessary) where that word is used properly, so that every item of the list is a paragraph containing a few sentences. You can find example sentences in dictionaries, but the 2 best sources are context.reverso.net and ChatGPT (by submitting the prompt: "show me example sentences where '*****' is used properly"). Try to not just jote down the word only in the way you originally found it in the material, but also some of its inflected forms (so if you encounter the word "claro", try to include variations like "clarificar", "aclarar", "claridad", "aclaración", etc in your example sentences), that way you make sure you're just adding lemmas (a.k.a "root words") as the basic unit of measurement in your document, since inflected forms of a given word shouldn't count as different words, because all of them are part of the same family. Try to select sentences that make it easy to surmise the meaning of the word. Try to add at least 20 new words a day, since many days you won't be so productive so your average number of words added will decrease every time you procrastinate, that's why you should aim for a adding a high number of words in every study session to compensate those unproductive days. The next step is reviewing your list. Based on my experience, if you add an average of 10-20 words a day you should review at least 100 words a day aswell, otherwise you'll forget them soon. For reviewing, you just read through your list and try to remember the meaning of the words based on the context of the sentences; if you fail to remember, then just look that word up again in any online dictionary. You can also create a separate list for idioms or collocations. After a while, write a composition where you employ a certain number of those words from your list. You can write a 500 word composition using 50 of those new words, and when you finish your writing, try to explain out loud the content you've just written so you force yourself to use those words when speaking. On average, how many new words out of 100 do you usually encounter when reading in spanish? and how many when you read in your mother tongue? you can use that number as a proxy for how much room for improvement you have The second main gap is the output accuracy. This can be grammar correctness (like saying "I've been living here since a long time" instead of "for a long time", or mixing up ser with estar), and word choices (like saying "he's a high man" instead of "he's a tall man", or employing too formal words like 'radiate' in contexts where a normal native speaker would just say 'give off'). For this area, you can just read a piece of content in your target language, translate it into your native language, wait one or two days and retranslate it back to your target language, and notice the differences between your version and the original. Jot down those differences and once you've racked up enough of them, write a composition in which you employ those new patterns you've learned Another thing you can do is to read something or watch a video and summarize out loud (in your target language) what you've just read/watched. You'll see that you'll stammer and get stuck and find yourself at a loss for words compared to if you were to summarize it in your native language (if not, then that type of content is too easy for you, so you should move on to another kind of content). So that way you can see the things you can improve on. Hope it helps :) David.
Hi David, thank you so much for your thoughts and advice!! They all make a lot of sense to me. I have been doing the word list thing but I should try to do more reviewing as you said: "add an average of 10-20 words a day" and "review at least 100 words a day." Good luck with your Spanish learning journey as well :)
Thank you for all your support, encouragements, and tips! Just uploaded the first video of my new series of Spanish videos. Check it out here: ua-cam.com/video/ZMvZbCJYX3Q/v-deo.html
Hola Tracy, as a Spanish teacher, all I can say is that the feeling of being "stuck" is normal, since there is a stage where you don't see the progress that clear. But the progress is happening for sure! It's all about being a bit more aware of what exactly you need to make you move forward faster. Let me know if you need any help! I have personally also experienced the same when learning Chinese mandarin, German, and French. But all the work is paid off in the end :)
Hola Celso, gracias por su comentario. Voy a ver sus videos ahorita :)
for me the best thing is listening as much as possible to natives speak, find Spanish podcasts/TV shows/music you like. That’ll help you pick up how the natives speak, learn new vocabulary and help your comprehension.
Then the next time you speak you’ll naturally sound more native, that’s at least how it has worked for me.
Thanks for the recommendation :)
No te preocupes, estabas aprendiendo muy bien antes y estoy seguro de que podrás volver a hacerlo mejor como antes.
Ánimo, it takes tons of work but just keep going. One thing that helped me when I first learned English was to immerse myself in the language. News, radio (or podcasts these days), movies, newspapers and books.
It made me dizzy at times but in the end, I became pretty proficient at it.
Although I would avoid certain music like ranchero or bachata. You may be able to pickup more by listening to Spanish pop/rock.
No te rindas! Te tengo toda la fe.
Como Latinoamericano me es un honor que la gente quiera aprender español.
Muchos éxitos 💚
Hola Juan muchas gracias❤❤
While I agree that it is possible to lose progress in a language, I would also argue that you could get it back most of it much quicker than you learned it in the first place! If speaking is your main goal, my preferred approach is to find ways to force yourself to speak, e.g. going to a Spanish speaking country or finding a language exchange partner. Best of luck!
Thanks! I am forcing myself to speak Spanish by starting a series of Spanish videos on UA-cam channel :)
I'd recommend checking out Alexander Arguelles videos: ua-cam.com/video/MqR3K1alUio/v-deo.html&ab_channel=AlexanderArguelles
He has a lot of really cool tips for using small amounts of time every day to upkeep languages you've learned so you don't gradually forget them. He mentions two students of his from Korea who came to visit him in America, who he hadn't seen in around 3 years. He says one student had their Spanish pretty intact when another lost their confidence to speak. That's because the student who still had their Spanish fluency had thought in Spanish in the shower which was a tip Arguelles told him to do. Little tips like that you'll find all over his channel.
thank you! i will take a look :)
I'm learning Chinese Mandarin, and my reasons are about the same as yours! I also love languages. :) It might get difficult and discouraging sometimes but it definitely pays off once you can communicate with other people in their native language
yes exactly! 我们都加油
@@traceylan 对对！Just subscribed, excited to see your journey
@@alfonsolombeida3769 谢谢你！一起加油
Hey Tracy! Thanks for sharing this.
I started learning Spanish 2 years ago when I finished my last quarter of University in Spain. Since then, I've been off and on with it, never being super consistent for more than 3 months at a time.
I can relate to you a little bit not in the sense that I am on exactly the same level as you, because your level is a bit higher, but moreso on the fact of maybe feeling like I used to be more consistent with practicing and noticing Spanish coming easier to me back then (noticing more progress as well).
Anyway, I'm glad I found your channel because I have a lot more work to do myself just to become more consistent and put forth effort to get me to that next level just like you have, and because we are similar in level, I'm especially excited to seeing how your journey progresses from here. Please keep sharing your Spanish progress.
For tips...I think something that has helped me is just picking content for passive and active immersion that you're genuinely interested in. More interest = more fun = more hours learning.
Zack
Hi Zach, thanks for sharing your stories and tips with me. I will surely make more videos in Spanish and record my progress. Hope we can inspire each other❤
Yep feeling the exact same thing. I'm an American that first learned French in school (somehow kept it and kept it up) and never really veared away from Fluency. I then took up Chinese and was basically fluent in Chinese for a long period. It took me about a year to be completely conversational, and at that point I moved to China and just added onto everything I had. Now while I can completely understand all of your videos speaking Chinese without subtitles I cannot put properly grammatical sentences together correctly, I can listen and hear everything without a problem. I remember when I was trying to pass the HSK 6 exam it was the exact same feeling you have. You are learning words that are on the outskirts of the "core words" of a language, and you rarely if ever get to SEE them much less practice.
If learning a language is generally more about input, than how can you get more input on words, phrases and expressions that are rarely used? I went on to learning Spanish (in which I got to a B1 level very quickly because of French) and decided that I didn't want to go any further, I can actively and efficiently communicate in Spanish on a daily level and can even gramatically correctly describe things and for me that was enough to say that my goal had been met with Spanish. So I would ask what exactly is your goal? Is total fluency your goal? That was mine in Chinese but wasn't mine in Spanish. So the practicing towards the goal is important.
Here is my advice (if you like to take it from people who are in the same sinking ship). You NEED input on the things you are learning. If you cannot find the input, then maybe you should focus on finding the input and then deducing new words from that. Dramas, TV Shows, Radio (that was big for me in Spanish) and writing down words and phrases you hear BEING USED ACTIVELY and pinpoint your learning on that, then review the material over and over again to get better context. Alot of the AI language programs help with that as well, Chat GPT can give you 100 examples of weird words you'd never use. Like for example lets say you learned how to say "The dove's tail is aerodynamic". While you are learning, that isn't practical. However if you are super vested in learning it, try finding material on the study of birds in Spanish or your target language.
You either need to slightly adjust your goals, or focus your practice on what current input and information you do have. Hope that helps.
Yeah, i def need to refocus and think about the goals and find relevant input. Thanks for sharing so much❤❤
Hola Tracey. Let me tell you what you can do to level up your spanish (I'm currently learning english at an advanced level, so I know the struggles your facing now):
First of all, I'm not sure how good your spanish really is. I've just watched your video talking about the reasons why you chose to learn spanish, and if you didn't read any script and all you spoke in that video was impromptu then you're really very fluent.
That being said, just as you've said in this video, the things you're learning now doesn't come up in your immersion that frequently. That's what is expected to be. So you're in the right path. Keep learning those things, and don't expect to come across them every day, because that's not how is suposed to be at this advanced level.
At this advanced stage, there are two main gaps between you and a native speaker. One of them (probably the biggest one) is vocabulary. Just because you can pick up the gist of a sentence doesn't mean your vocabulary knowledge is suitable for that piece of content. The best way to realize this is through reading (and if you haven't started reading in spanish yet, it's definitely time to start doing it at this stage if you wanna break the intermediate plateu). When you read any material, which words did you already know before encountering them in that piece of content? Notice that this is a different question than asking how many words you were able to understand; one thing is your comprehension level and another different thing is your current knowledge. The first is always larger than the latter. That's because you can surmise the gist of the content you're consuming by leveraging on your current knowledge base. But you would have been unable to guess the meaning of those words before reading that material if I dictated them to you isolated with no context. So your job is noticing those new words you come across (when reading and also when listening, but specially when reading, because in all languages the written register is always more formal than the spoken one, so you'll encounter a lot of new fancy, "advanced" words) and jot them down by creating a numbered list (it's important that it's numbered) in google docs or Zoho writer or Microsoft Word or you can use a space repetition software like Anki if you prefer (I personally don't recomend spaced repetition systems, I think creating a numbered list in a document is a better way to learn and review your vocabulary for many reasons out of the scope of this comment)
But how are you gonna jot them down? well, based on my experience, the best way is to write at least 2 or 3 example sentences (or even more if necessary) where that word is used properly, so that every item of the list is a paragraph containing a few sentences. You can find example sentences in dictionaries, but the 2 best sources are context.reverso.net and ChatGPT (by submitting the prompt: "show me example sentences where '*****' is used properly"). Try to not just jote down the word only in the way you originally found it in the material, but also some of its inflected forms (so if you encounter the word "claro", try to include variations like "clarificar", "aclarar", "claridad", "aclaración", etc in your example sentences), that way you make sure you're just adding lemmas (a.k.a "root words") as the basic unit of measurement in your document, since inflected forms of a given word shouldn't count as different words, because all of them are part of the same family. Try to select sentences that make it easy to surmise the meaning of the word. Try to add at least 20 new words a day, since many days you won't be so productive so your average number of words added will decrease every time you procrastinate, that's why you should aim for a adding a high number of words in every study session to compensate those unproductive days. The next step is reviewing your list. Based on my experience, if you add an average of 10-20 words a day you should review at least 100 words a day aswell, otherwise you'll forget them soon. For reviewing, you just read through your list and try to remember the meaning of the words based on the context of the sentences; if you fail to remember, then just look that word up again in any online dictionary. You can also create a separate list for idioms or collocations. After a while, write a composition where you employ a certain number of those words from your list. You can write a 500 word composition using 50 of those new words, and when you finish your writing, try to explain out loud the content you've just written so you force yourself to use those words when speaking.
On average, how many new words out of 100 do you usually encounter when reading in spanish? and how many when you read in your mother tongue? you can use that number as a proxy for how much room for improvement you have
The second main gap is the output accuracy. This can be grammar correctness (like saying "I've been living here since a long time" instead of "for a long time", or mixing up ser with estar), and word choices (like saying "he's a high man" instead of "he's a tall man", or employing too formal words like 'radiate' in contexts where a normal native speaker would just say 'give off'). For this area, you can just read a piece of content in your target language, translate it into your native language, wait one or two days and retranslate it back to your target language, and notice the differences between your version and the original. Jot down those differences and once you've racked up enough of them, write a composition in which you employ those new patterns you've learned
Another thing you can do is to read something or watch a video and summarize out loud (in your target language) what you've just read/watched. You'll see that you'll stammer and get stuck and find yourself at a loss for words compared to if you were to summarize it in your native language (if not, then that type of content is too easy for you, so you should move on to another kind of content). So that way you can see the things you can improve on.
Hope it helps :)
David.
Hi David, thank you so much for your thoughts and advice!! They all make a lot of sense to me. I have been doing the word list thing but I should try to do more reviewing as you said: "add an average of 10-20 words a day" and "review at least 100 words a day." Good luck with your Spanish learning journey as well :)
好久不见了！
好久不见！ 期间手机丢了😢