From April 8 to July 6, I took part in a language learning challenge: 90 one-hour group classes on Zoom in 90 days. Complete the challenge and the classes are free. Within the span of these three months, I knew that I would have to defend my thesis, finalize the completion of my Master's degree, start a new job, and move to another state. Even with all of this going on, I felt painfully stuck in my Spanish studies, and was eager for any chance to reignite a sense of progress.
I had done a bit of Rosetta Stone for Spanish when I was in middle school, but that was the only exposure I had had to the language before this time. In high school, I was much more interested in French, and also spent time studying Russian, Swedish, and Mandarin Chinese. I had lost any interest in Spanish and didn't see a role for the language in my future.
I started studying Spanish again around the turn of the new year in January, 2017. Multiple motivations to familiarize myself with the language once again were popping up all over in my life, so I started with Duolingo and completed the Spanish tree there. Beyond that, I didn't engage in much focused study, but did try to listen to music with lyrics in Spanish, watch Youtubers whose content was in Spanish, etc.
In 2018, I made it a New Year's resolution to improve my Spanish. I initially planned to document my progress in a series of monthly videos, of which I only made two. Nevertheless, I feel that I did accomplish my goal of improving my Spanish. I reached a level where I could exchange text messages relatively easily in Spanish, and I did this frequently on language exchange apps in order to practice. However, this was an inefficient method and didn't lead to much speaking and listening practice. Busy with school, I found myself arriving into Spring 2020 without significant change in my overall confidence and fluency in the language.
Spending an hour speaking with a Spanish tutor each day for three months completely changed my relationship with the language. These are the changes I have noticed:
1) I first began to not mind the discomfort that always set in the moment I tried to speak or express myself. The willingness to risk sounding stupid in order to improve was something I always had known I needed, but it took more effort than I realized to put that into practice. My listening improved each class as I heard daily variation in dialect and teaching style. And though each incremental improvement was small, the daily accumulation of experience made it easy to feel the progress I was making.
2) I learned that there were many aspects of grammar that I was just hoping I would passively absorb through exposure. Yet, when I was taught them explicitly, I realized that just sitting down, isolating a certain tense, construction, or set of phrases, and practicing them was saving me so much time in the learning process. For me to have absorbed these things passively, it would have taken much more time and given me much less confidence along the way.
3) I was surprised that, when asked to read a passage, I would so easily trip over my words and pronounce phrases poorly. Reading out loud for ten minutes a day before the lessons quickly improved this, but it was something I never made myself do before. It also helped me improve my accent and remove American-English fillers from my speech.
4) Disciplined, daily practice is not preceded by motivation, but it does cultivate it! Before this challenge, I was not consistently motivated to put in daily practice and use smart methods to study Spanish, but, coming out of this challenge, I feel a deep love for the language-learning process and for the Spanish language that I didn't have before. I am excited to take my three months' worth of notes (spanning two notebooks and several Google docs!) and dive in to the topics that I know I still need to practice more.
All in all, this was one of the highlights of my year so far. I am glad for a break from the classes as they were intense, and I think I need some time to review and practice what I learned, but I am proud of myself for taking on this challenge and thankful that I now can watch Netflix series, listen to podcasts, and engage in meaningful conversations in Spanish with confidence.
No comments:
Post a Comment