Refold Approach to Language Learning: Spanish ~1700-Hour Update
Grammar is helpful, actually
This is my fifteenth 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 my twelfth update, see here
For my thirteenth update, see here
For my fourteenth update, see here
For more information about the Refold approach, see here. For a basic Spanish Anki vocabulary deck, see here.
General Progress
Reached 1700 hours of immersion. Still reading plenty, but more widely across genres and authors. Established a small and consistent YouTube routine. Beginning explicit grammar exercises, and more time with deliberate practice in writing and speaking (in lessons). Putting Catalan and Italian on the shelf until after the B2 test in May.
I was planning on stopping these updates until 2k hours or a successful B2 test, but my readers are interested in what I have to say and I think it’ll be helpful for my own records to have these posts looking back. And these posts get some of the most views and interaction on the blog.
I have signed up to take the DELE B2 exam at Ferdinand and Isabella Academy in DC, on May 25th. Despite the confidence of the Refold Discord community in my abilities, I am getting a little worried about the test, at least in terms of the written and oral sections. I consistently make mistakes with the subjunctive and gender of adjectives in my speech, and this is going to be an issue preventing me from getting an “Apto” on the test.
I’d also like to take a DELE C2 exam, but my Spanish is clearly not at that level yet. Many of the Spanish learners I’ve seen following Refold on YouTube who’ve jumped straight into the C2 exam failed1
In terms of my routine, I’m approaching this next few months in a more structured manner. I’m aiming to do at least three hours of Spanish practice a day. Half of this routine will be reading split into two session (30 minutes in the morning, 60 minutes in the evening). I’ll do 15 minutes of YouTube a day, and 15 minutes of Anki. Additionally, I’ll have either an hour of writing practice, grammar practice, or a lesson with a tutor. This routine might vary a little: if I’m on the bike trainer in the morning I might do a bit more listening and less reading for example. I also need to get my number of Anki cards up to hit that 15-minute park
Open questions: What is your “crunch time” immersion routine? How are you approaching explicit grammar study?
Reading
What can I say, I’m a bookworm. Reading made up about 2/3 of my immersion time for the last 100 hours (~70 of the 100 hours I tracked). In addition to reading aloud, I have switched to doing most of my sentence mining longhand, as well as copying additional sentences and paragraphs with grammar points I don’t understand. This was a recommendation from my Spanish tutor Alejandro, and is supposed to help with internalizing native-like grammar structures.
I’m trying to read for 90 minutes a day: 30 minutes in the morning and one hour in the evening. This changes depending on my exercise routine, but that’s generally what I’m aiming for. The thirty minutes in the morning will usually be 15 minutes of something light, like a translation, or the slop I’m reading now, followed by 15 minutes of something a bit more weighty. In the evening I’ll generally read only light stuff after grammar study, although on the weekends I may spend more time with something more difficult.
I’ve read six (or eight depending on how you count Lord of the Rings) between this update and last, including two books that were a rereads. Three of these books were a translations, one from French, and two from English, but the others were all originally written in Spanish. I’ve also been reading two blogs in Spanish here on substack: Jardín Mental, Ingeniero de Letras, and Mapas Milhaud.
In the easy category, I read El Hobbit by J.R.R., which was a translation from English of the Hobbit. I’m not sure this books needs any explanation, but there was plenty of new vocabulary (mainly of the natural variety), and the book was a joy to read.
In the medium category, I read four books. The first was Las travesuras de la niña mala by Mario Vargas Llosa. This book followed a Peruvian simp who moved to Paris and his on-and-off again relationship with “the bad girl” who continually abandons him, but also comes crawling back when things become too difficult. It’s supposed to be a retelling of Madame Bovary, and a meditation on love, but it read much more like a warning against simping. She’s not worth it guys. I also read Poeta Chileno by Alejandro Zambra at the recommendation of my Spanish tutor. This book was mainly concerned with the relationship between a dude and his stepson during and after the his relationship with the stepson’s mom. Both the main character and the stepson are poets, which simultaneously helps them to feel their emotions more truly, but also creates distance between them and other non-poetically inclined character. Translated from French, I read Platform, which I review here. Finally, translated from English I read El señor de los anillos, which is just as good in Spanish as in English. I’ve read this before, approximately ~700 or so immersion hours ago, and still found a surprising amount of difficult grammatical structures and vocabulary that I didn’t know.
In the hard category I read Las palabras rotas, by Luis García Montero which is a collection of rather philosophical essays explicating individual words that Montero thinks needs to be reclaimed from cynicism. Each essay is followed by one of his poems. This was really enjoyable, but sometimes the argument was a little hard to follow due to the academic language. And poetry. That’s hard even in English.
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.
Total Immersion time: 914 hours, approximately 8 million words. 59 books originally written in Spanish, 89 books in Spanish in total
Future Plans: Read a good balance of fiction and non-fiction, up sentence mining, long-hand copying passages with grammatical points I don’t understand.
Open Questions: Recommendations for nonfiction originally in Spanish?
Sentence Mining
I’m up to 2334 cards now with a 91.9% lifetime mature retention rate, but a lower 89% rate in the past month. I think this rate is slowly but surely converging on my desired FSRS retention, so it’s not me, it’s just the algorithm. There might be a slight bias towards higher retention because of common words I see in immersion, but these honestly have such long review intervals now that they should not be affecting the retention rate much. My goal is still 5k cards, and to get my Anki up to at least 15 minutes/day (right now it is at about 5). It doesn’t help that I’ve finished the C2 idioms deck either, so my only source of new cards has to be sentence mining.
Open Questions: Grammar study deck?
Writing
I’ve continued to write Goodreads reviews for the books that I’ve listened to and read. I’ll go over them in batches with a tutor about once a month. I also tried to use the language exchange app HelloTalk again, but I found to exacerbate my phone use, and to not be very efficient (lots of the same kind of conversations, people wanting to switch to English all the time, lack of knowledge of their own language).
I’m planning on starting to practice DELE prompts 2/7 days a week for an hour. I have a workbook with these, and one of my tutors has also provided me with some others.
Output time: 2 hr tracked
Open Questions: How can you have an efficient language exchange without being on your phone all the time?
Listening
Before writing this post, I had the feeling that listening was going much better than last time. In some ways this is true, I watch a YouTube video in Spanish almost every day, but in terms of raw hours, it’s not that much better than last time. In fact, I immersed with listening for the exact same amount of time between 1500 and 1600 hours as I did between 1600 and 1700 hours.
That being said, I think there is something to be said for my subjective feelings of improvement. The semi-daily YouTube actually has helped a lot, even if it’s not a lot of time compared to reading, as compared to just listening to audiobooks.
Of course I am still consuming book related content via Spanish BookTube, but it is still much more of a dialogue or speech than simply listening to a story. Other than the above video from Néstor Baruque, I’m also enjoying Pasos y Paginas, booktrovertida, y Carla Alcario2
I also listen to audiobooks about once a week when I run. These have to be things I sort of know the story for, so as not to lower comprehension too much.
Total Immersion time: 663 hours, 2 million words from audiobooks
Future Plans: A YouTube video daily, other audio sources at least 3 hours a week.
Open Questions: Film recommendations? More BookTube recommendations?
Speaking
I’m continuing to take regular lessons on iTalki. After reading, this was my biggest source of immersion, with around 12 hours of lessons since the last update. I have at least one lesson every single week, but I aim for two more often than not.
Each of my four 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. Rafa is the teacher who I have the most lessons with (almost weekly), and I’ve come to look forward to them as one of the highlights of my week.
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. I just started taking lessons with him again, and we’ve focusing much more heavily on grammar leading up to my test.
I’m continuing literature/test prep classes with Mailén, where we’ve been discussing various Spanish short stories, and have started Ana Maria Matute’s collected works. I’ve also recently begun B2 DELE test prep with Mailén, which I will emphasize more when we resume lessons after she gets back from summer vacations.
I recently started lessons with Franco, who is a philosophy and classics student in Argentina. We are reading Plato together in Spanish, which is exactly the kind of crossover that I am looking for. I’ll have more to say about Franco in the next update, but our two lessons so far have been great.
I have no current plans to resume the language academy.
I had a few almost dates with Mexican Au Pairs here in Baltimore, but nothing came of them, and I’ve left the dating apps, hopefully permanently.
Output time: 122 hours
Explicit Grammar
It’s time to start actually learning grammatical rules leading up to the DELE exam. To that end I’ve taken a couple of different approaches.
One is to watch videos from a por DELE, and to practice the speech patterns Ana gives in her videos with myself or tutors.
I’ve also bought some grammar exercise books, which were highly recommended by a trusted Goodreads user (Roy Lotz). I’m going to start using these today, so I’ll have much more to talk about the next update.
Future Plans
Maybe what I needed this whole time was a deadline, because boy am I feeling motivated! Still have to cut out some distractions (like scrolling and posting on theMotte), but having the deadline of my test in May has lit a bit of a fire under my gringo ass.
Other Languages
These are on pause until June.
Health
Things have in general been better since I got back into the swing of running, but my sleep and diet still needs a bit of work. The depression has gotten quite a bit better for the same reasons, but I still would prefer not to be maidenless.
Overall Impressions
Feeling very motivated to prepare for this test, which has helped in the past few weeks to get me to immerse every single day. I have a clear plan to address areas of weakness in my speech (gender and subjunctive), and a solid daily routine (90 minutes of reading split into 2 sessions, 15 minutes of Anki, 15 minutes of listening, and 60 minutes of grammar study/output with tutor/writing practice). Mental health has been a bit better, probably because running is going better for me, and I’m doing better on the phone use front. Language learning helps with all this, as the variance in my abilities is very much related to how much time I put in, and how well I take care of myself (sleep, screen use, diet, etc.)
Open Questions: How did you incorporate explicit grammar study into your language learning routine? How did you iron out your output mistakes?
Full immersion link data link.
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Josh
I’m thinking of Shane Godliman and Giovanni Smith here who jumped straight into C2 and failed.
Who I have an intellectual and real crush on