Refold Approach to Language Learning: Spanish ~1400-Hour Update
There's a fork in the road coming, but either way, Spanish will be in my life for the long-term
This is my twelfth update for my Spanish learning journey with the Refold approach. Welcome to everyone who is coming to this page from Medium. I’ve moved to Substack because of better customization options (mainly the ability to add other pages to the blog), and a general reduction in click-bait. Articles, as at Medium, will always be free, but there is an option to be a paid subscriber.
For my first update, see here.
For my second update, see here.
For my third update, see here.
For my fourth update, see here.
For my fifth update, see here.
For my sixth update, see here.
For my seventh update, see here.
For my eighth update, see here.
For my ninth update, see here.
For my tenth update, see here.
For my eleventh update, see here
For more information about the Refold approach, see here. For a basic Spanish Anki vocabulary deck, see here.
General Progress
Reached 1400 hours of immersion. Started trying to read poetry. Experimenting with different methods of getting some listening in every day. Started reading out loud every day. Had my first unplanned conversation with a native speaker. Thinking about my path forward after 1500 hours.
Still feeling very positive from my last update. I’m really enjoying my biweekly tutoring sessions, the books that I’m reading, and the Spanish Language YouTube Channels that I’ve found. I’d like to find a few more locals in Baltimore to talk to, and ideally a girlfriend that speaks Spanish (mainly kidding), but I’m very happy with the position that Spanish has in my life right now.
However, as one of my tutors, Rafa, brought up, I’m getting close to being at a crossroads with the language. My Spanish skills are sufficient to do whatever I want in the language: I can read whatever books, watch whatever movies, and generally get by in Spanish speaking country for work or travel. If I wanted to be done with Spanish, this would be a great place to stop and just continue to enjoy books, conversations, and immersion without any more deliberate effort and shift my focus to either another language, or another area of my life.
However, I’m still very far away from being a native-like speaker. I can’t read poetry, I make grammatical and vocabulary mistakes in pretty much every conversation that I am in. There’s still so many cultural references I don’t understand. If I want to overcome these barriers, what I’m doing now isn’t going to cut it. I have to increase my immersion time and do some deliberate study of the language. It would probably be motivational for me to sign up for a DELE exam (B2/C1/C2) in the near future to try and actually codify my level in the language.
I’m holding off on making a decision yet, but I’m leaning towards the later option because this would formalize my work in the language to something that I can use as a qualification for a job, and because I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I also love the place I’ve found for Spanish in my life, and would be happy to expand it.
On the other hand, I have other languages I want to learn, and I don’t actually need this test for anything right now. And the commitment (probably increasing immersion time to 3-4 hours a day+ an hour of explicit test prep) would be significant.
Open questions: Have you taken a DELE test? What do you think I should do in my situation.
Reading
Nothing has changed, and I’m still reading plenty. One of the primary reasons I have been learning Spanish is for the literature, and “culture shock”.
As with last time, I tried to read widely over genres and difficulty levels. Due to my lent challenge and wanting a little bit of a return to my normal fare of fantasy novels, I read mainly translations from English during this update. I plan to not do this much in the future. I have a go-to trashy fantasy series originally written in Spanish (Sendero de Los Guardabosques) that I can read if I need a break from hard stuff, and I want to branch out in terms of genres anyway. The fact that I also really enjoyed Allende’s Largo Petalo de Mar, and find it quite easy to read, gives me hope that I can find fallback options that aren’t translated fantasy. Translations also actively make the quality of the writing worse: it would have been more enjoyable for me to read the Shattered Sea books in English for example.
The translations that I read were a John Green Book (Tu Mundo y el Mio), Medio Mundo and Media Guerra, which are part of Joe Abercrombie’s Shattered Sea Trilogy1, and Harry Potter 2. This last book was to assist with my Italian, and I read most of it out loud.
In the easy category, I read the seventh book in Pedro Urvi’s Sendero de Los Guardabosques series. This book (El Rey del Oeste) was a pretty big step up in quality from the previous entries in the series. The first half of the book was actually genuinely scary, and because of the conflict between the two halves of the fantasy kingdom of Norghana, there were some interesting moral quandaries between our protagonists. Again, this is a fantastic book for learners!
In the medium category, I also read one book. This was Largo Petalo de Mar, which I reviewed here. I found this to a pleasant, thoughtful read, but with a little bit too much vocabulary to be in the easy category.
In the hard category I read Historia como Sistema y Otros Ensayos de Filosofia. Review is incoming for this book, but basically, as the title suggests, Ortega y Gasset posit that we should use narrative (or history) a system of philosophy. What does he mean by this? Previously, Ortega y Gasset posits, we used both faith in God, and then reason as the basis of philosophical systems. Ortega y Gasset argues that we need to use narrative as the basis of a historical system. Some facts can only be understood in the light of historical developments, both in our own lives and in the world at large. Very Heraclitian.
I’ve also started reading some poetry in Spanish! Right now I’m making my way through the collected works of Luis García Montero. I found out about his poetry through Aunque Tú no lo Sepas which has been made into a famous rock song, and I’ve fallen in love with his simple style and descriptions of everyday scenes. Although I can’t really speak to understand the poetry all that well (poetry is hard for me in English) it is beautiful and makes me feel things. Fotografías Veladas por la Lluvia made me cry, and honestly the whole selection of Un Invierno Propio really captured the essence of winter.
I’ve started collecting all the books I’ve read that were originally written in Spanish and sorting them into these three categories on another page of my blog. This should be updated with each blog post.
At the recommendation of Alexander Arguelles, I’ve further split my reading in 15 minute chunks where I try and do 5 minutes of reflecting, or just allowing what I’ve read to just percolate into my mind. I don’t do this with easy books like the Sendero de Guardabosques series, but for poetry and philosophy it’s essential. I plan to tackle some of my Ten Books to Read Before I Die before the next update (Pedro Páramo, Cien Años de Soledad, y Unamuno)
Total Immersion time: 731 hours, approximately 5.9 million words
Future Plans: Do some deliberate rereading. More Isabel Allende. Tackle some of my ten books that are in Spanish. More poetry.
Open Questions: How does one improve at poetry? Recommendations for Spanish Fantasy
Sentence Mining
I’m up to 1980 cards now with a 92.37% lifetime mature retention rate, but a higher 93.14% rate in the past month. This retention rate is still too high, meaning I can increase card intervals without worry. I’ve recently downloaded an add-on called Straight Reward that increases the ease every time you increase the length of your “good” streak. I’ve also increased the max ease to 320%, so this should hopefully lower my retention rate. Another cause of this potentially is that I’m just doing too much reading, and seeing the word again, which artificially lowers its interval. One solution to this may just be to sentence mine more. Or just abandon Anki for Spanish: it’s potentially served its purpose.
Again, the A/B/C test is over. I’m trying to make mainly image cards, but will default to spanish dictionary definitions if this is hard. I use English as a fallback.
I’ve also been going through an idiomatic expressions deck for Spain at a very slow rate (one card a day). These cards aren’t sticking very well, but I am learning them slowly but surely.
As I go into potentially studying for the DELE B2/C1/C2 I’m going to definitely be using Anki again, but I’m not exactly sure how. If anyone has DELE Anki deck recommendations let me know.
Open Questions: when do you quit Anki? DELE study deck?
Writing
I’ve continued to write Goodreads reviews for the books that I’ve listened to and read. I’ve started posting them weekly-ish on this blog, and I also go over them with a tutor on iTalki.
When I’m reading philosophy or poetry I’ve also been taking notes in Spanish during my 5 minute rest period. I’ve also started to try and journal at night a little bit in Spanish (1-2 paragraphs).
As I potentially prepare for the DELE exam, I think I’ll have to do some more explicit writing practice. Maybe I’ll post those on this blog
Open Questions: What methods do you use to practice writing?
Listening
I only added 16 hours of listening since the last update, mostly on the Harry Potter Audiobooks and El Libro Negro de Las Horas. This is something I want to improve on, although I do always get some listening in every week because of my Italki lessons.
I’ve also been watching YouTube videos from a couple channels: Linguriosa (linguistics and languages) and La Biblioteca Argéntea (Fantasy and Science Fiction books reviews and discussion).
I know I need to be better getting listening in. I’m hoping this will be easier as I improve my attention span and cut out distractions from my life.
Total Immersion time: 616 hours
Future Plans: 30 minutes of listening to audiobooks daily, biweekly conversation practice, and 30 minutes of an interview conversations every other day.
Open Questions: Do you sentence mine musical lyrics? Film recommendations?
Speaking
I’m continuing to take lessons on iTalki, aiming for roughly two lessons a week of an hour each. I’m approaching the 20-30 lesson mark with some of these teachers, and they are starting to feel like old friends, it’s really quite wonderful and motivating. I cannot recommend starting output as early as you feel ready to actually have a conversation enough.
Each of my three main teachers have taken on slightly different roles. With Rafa, I end up having pretty deep conversations about philosophy and current events, which really helps to move vocabulary I have from passive immersion into the active part of my brain. Rafa and I will also spend 5-10 minutes on grammar corrections at the end of class, which has been paying gradual dividends.
Alejandro and I mainly just chat about things I’m reading and stuff that is going on in both of our lives. However, he does live corrections in a document that he sends to me at the end of the lesson that I have been using for sentence mining. For less advanced learners, I know he’ll also do cross talk, and learning via storytelling.
Misael is very focused on exposing me to Latin American culture. He’ll usually have a short, interactive presentation that we’ll go through together that contains a lot of questions for me that we will discuss. Recently, we’ve also started reading short stories from Argentinian and Uruguayan authors together.
I’ve also recently started a literature class with Mailén, where we’ve been discussing various Spanish short stories. I’ve only had one class so far (I have my second tomorrow), but I really really am enjoying them. It’s like being back in English class, but this time with Spanish literature.
One other thing I’ve started to do is to do about 10 percent of my reading out loud. I’ve been combining this with my attempts to grow in faith this spring by reading the Bible in Spanish out loud when I wake up and before I go to bed. This was a recommendation from Alejandro, and has also been touched on by Steve Kaufmann and Alexander Arguelles.
Finally, I had an hour long conversation with my Cuban uber driver in Houston entirely in Spanish this past weekend! Honestly amazing to be able to use the language in the real world.
Output time: 53.75 hours
Explicit Grammar
None, but I think I need to for the DELE
Future Plans
As I eluded to in the introduction, I need to make a decision about whether to double down on Spanish and shoot for the DELE exam, or to chill and focus on Italian. I’m leaning towards the former. I’d like to try and raise my immersion time to 4 hours a day by the summer if I go this route.
Other Languages
I will be focusing on Italian this year: starting by reading through the Harry Potter series. I talk about this in my 50 hour Italian update. More to come
Health
Spring has sprung and I am rejuvenated. Going to my college friend’s wedding in Houston really rejuvenated my spirits, and I’m excited to live again. This may also have something to do with the increased insolation in Baltimore now that it’s spring.
Overall Impressions
Things are frankly going great. I hope to be back soon with a 1500 hour update. I plan to make the decision between the DELE exam and chill and focus on Italian by then too. Either way, I’ll do an update at 2k and 3k, as well as after receiving the results of my tests, if I do them. Anyway, happy immersing!
Open Questions: How did you go about transitioning to beginning an L3? How do you decide when you are “done” with a language?
Full immersion link data link.
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Josh