I’m sitting at Melbourne Airport, about to fly over the Pacific to Santiago, Chile. It will be the first time I will have been to the Americas, and it will be as different a culture to Australia as I’ve been in. I’m a little bit nervous, a lot excited...the usual feelings one gets when travelling I guess. I’ll be meeting up with my girlfriend, Marcela, and staying with her family for some of the time in Antofagasta.
One of my main concerns in preparation for this trip was being able to communicate with people over there. Especially given that, from what I hear, Chilean Spanish is about the hardest version of Spanish to learn, because they speak quickly and use a lot of slang. A year ago, I could speak about two words of Spanish: “mañana”, and “vamos” (the first I learned from a work colleague, Drew, and the second from my sister, Rosie). And that was really all I knew!
I now know a lot more than that, though I’m not yet fluent. I thought I’d write about my experience so far in trying to learn the language.
My first experience with a foreign language was at Daylesford Primary School, where we were taught Italian, or LOTE as it was also called (“language other than English”). My Italian tuition continued into high school, until about year nine for me, at which point it was no longer compulsory. “What’s the point in learning, I’m never going to go there or use it, it’s a waste of mental energy”, I thought.
Well, that wasn’t quite true - I did go to Italy, in 2010 and visited my sister Rosie who was living over there for a year. Unlike me, she learned Italian until year 12, and subsequent to that. “It’ll come back to you!” she reassured me, before I got there. Well, that wasn’t true either. The problem was, there wasn’t much Italian to come back, because I’d never really learned much in the first place. The only things I could remember were some colours, numbers, a few animals, and “mi chiamo Ned” (my name is Ned). I could probably knew Spanish better a few months after commencing to learn it than I did Italian at my peak in year eight! And this was despite receiving marks of “A” or “A+” through my Italian classes. It seems the benchmarks for learning language in Australia are a bit lower than, say, Europe.
It never bothered me much that I was monolingual. English is all you need in Australia, being and island and being quite isolated from the rest of the world. Until I started learning Spanish a year ago, my attitude was this:
“There’s no point in me learning another language, I’m not going to use it, and if I learned it I’d probably forget it down the track anyway, so the exercise would be pointless. Also if I don’t have a strong motivation/reason for learning, I’m unlikely to stick at it for long. Anyway, my time can be much better spent on learning other things, like playing the piano, guitar or ukelele, or reading, or watching movies, or studying whatever subject I’m interested in. And besides, it’s not going to be long before technology progresses to the point where we have electronic implants in our ears or brains which automatically translate a foreign language that we’re hearing into our native language.”
Well, my motivation to learn another language came along after I started going out with Marcela (who is from Chile) in early 2017. Basically I wanted to be able to speak with her in her native tongue and saw it as a good opportunity to learn. And that automatic translation micro-chip hadn’t quite come along quick enough for me. My other motivation came from:
- wanting to better myself
- feeling a bit dumb being monolingual (when so many of my friends were at least bi-lingual)
- having heard that learning a language is of great benefit to the health of one’s brain (and my brain wasn’t really being put through its paces, having been funemployed for the past three years)
- My sisters partner is Mexican, my one-year-old nephew, Olin, would grow up bilingual, and three of my sisters can speak Spanish, and I wanted to be able to speak with them in Spanish
- Lot’s of my friends can speak Spanish so I knew I’d have plenty of people to practice with
- In case I stayed with Marcela long term, and went to visit her country, or something crazy like that!
My journey learning Spanish started pretty casually and gradually. Marcela taught me how to say a few things here and there. Then I started dabbling DuoLingo in July 2017 - a year ago almost to the day. I would just try and to a couple of lessons per day, and since then, only a handful of days have gone by where I haven’t practiced my Spanish on DuoLingo. I currently have a 94 day “streak”.
There’s a few things I really like about DuoLingo. It’s “gamified”, so it employs a bunch of little psychological tricks to keep you using it. You can maintaining a “streak” and some people go to great lengths to keep their streak going; you gain “lingots” (DuoLingo currency) for finishing lessons; you earn XP (experience points) for completing lessons and can therefore compete against friends who also use DuoLingo to beat their XP scores; and I guess it makes you feel like you’re making good progress - completing modules and levelling up comes with a sense of achievement. Oh, and also - it’s free!
As time went on and I got more into learning Spanish, I ratcheted up my study and diversified my approach. I started listening to Pimsleur while I was working with a friend, Tom. I got the Michel Thomas course from Charlie early on, and dabbled in that. Later I started the “Mexican Spanish” course on Memrise. I dabbled in Clozemaster. And at about Easter 2018, I purchased a text-book from Amazon: “Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish” after doing a bit of research to pick a good text-book.
Getting the text-book was great, because I was getting a bit frustrated with not understanding the structure and grammar of the language, with not much explanation being provided in DuoLingo. One thing I’m critical of DuoLingo about is that you kind of have to intuit the rules for conjugations and grammar, or memorise them - it’s never really explained. I don’t think you can learn all the aspects of Spanish (reading, speaking, comprehension, listening, writing, etc) just from one source. That’s why I had the audio-courses of Pimsleur and Michel Thomas to learn conversation, and some grammar/structure (particuarly from Michel Thomas); Memrise to learn vocab; DuoLingo to learn pronunciation, listening, writing, and some grammar; Clozemaster to test vocab; DuoLingo Stories to learn listening and comprehension; and the text-book to learn grammar/structure properly, as well as some vocab.
If I’d just used a text-book, for example, I’d not have learned pronunciation, conversation, or listening. If I’d just used DuoLingo, I’d have struggled to learn grammar and structure.
Some people find text-books a bit dry, but I was at the point where I had a thirst for learning it, and I was able to be very disciplined in my study. It’s amazing the difference it makes in learning something when you actually want to learn it! I got through most of the book within a week, partly motivated by the fact that Marcela would soon be returning to Chile for an indefinite period, and the few remaining weeks would be my last chance to practice/speak Spanish with Marcela.
When I booked my trip to Chile (I booked it in mid-May, 2018), I of course had another strong motivation to learn. I adopted a mental study plan entailing:
- 200 XP per day on DuoLingo
- Two DuoLingo “Stories” per day
- 50 new words/phrases per day on Memrise
- Half an hour of listening to Pimsleur each day (while riding my trainer)
- Half an hour of listening to Michel Thomas per day (while riding my trainer)
- One Clozemaster lesson per day.
And I stuck to this plan, more or less, for the six weeks until my trip, in amongst various other errands and tasks to organise before I left. I downloaded a few torrents containing a total of a few hundred Spanish-learning books/text-books/courses, with the intention to pick out a few of the best recommended ones to work through. I was going to go through the “Practice Makes Perfect” series, but I never got around to it in the end. I do have about fifty Spanish text books in PDF form on my phone though, in case I need them!
So, where is my Spanish at now? Well...I think I’m a pretty slow learner, but I figured consistency and persistence would be the best way to learn, and that’s been my approach. I wanted to learn as much as I could before getting to Chile, to give myself the best chance of picking up the language and approaching fluency while there.
So...here’s some stats, for anyone that understands them:
- I’m at level 23 on DuoLingo, with 165 crowns and 25,735 XP
- I completed all seven parts of the Spanish (Mexico) course on Memrise, with 3,485,673 points, and level 13.
- Level 26 in Clozemaster
- I completed the three Pimsleur courses, as well as the “Pimsleur Plus” course.
- I completed the Michel Thomas Foundation Course, Advanced Course, Spanish Vocab and Spanish Builder courses.
- Completed Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish text-book, including all the exercises.The spot where I spent a whole lot of time over the past few months!
Hopefully all this study serves me well! Perhaps I should have gone along to more than zero language exchange nights, and practiced more with friends. Though I have practiced a little with some friends (thanks Marcela, Meli, Jess, Solagne, Rosie, Germán, Rachel and Leah).
I’ve really enjoyed the journey of learning Spanish so far, and I expect to continue learning for some time. I can’t wait to become fluent! ¡No puedo esperar para llegar a ser fluido!
