Refold Approach to Language Learning: Spanish ~1600-Hour Update
Slowly but surely moving "más allá" from the intermediate plateau
This is my fourteenth 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 more information about the Refold approach, see here. For a basic Spanish Anki vocabulary deck, see here.
General Progress
Reached 1600 hours of immersion. Making fewer and fewer mistakes outputting. Reading a variety of genres, but trying to focus on individual authors, still with an emphasis on medieval Spanish history. Struggling with finding a place for regular listening in my daily routine. Began prepping for the DELE B2 test, although I have not signed up yet. Continuing with some Italian and Catalan vocab and light reading.
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 on the blog (paid subscriber when?)
I’ve also hit some other exciting milestones. over 100 hours of output, and 93 books completed (56 of which were originally written in Spanish!
I’ve decided to commit to taking a DELE B2 test some time in 2025. I’m planning on taking the test at the Ferdinand and Isabella Academy in DC, sometime between March and May. I have not signed up yet, but I hope to have done so by the next update at 1700 hours (update the earliest test I can take is April, so I will sign up in the new year).
I’d also like to take a DELE C2 exam, but as I stated in the last blog post, the effort required to pass this test would either take many years of low-level study, or an extended period of intense immersion. A pass on the B2 test also allows me to do whatever I want pretty much with the language (except for translating Olvidado Rey Gudú).
In terms of my routine, I’m still reading a ton, trying to regularly incorporate listening, doing Anki, and having a Spanish lesson twice a week. Balancing Italian reading has proved difficult (I struggle to get 1 hour of Spanish reading every single day), but Catalan and Italian vocabulary and sentence mining cards have been going swimmingly. More on all of that in each respective section.
Open questions: Have you taken or passed the DELE? What has your immersion experience been past 1500 hours?
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”, which I have been appreciating much more taking lessons from Mailen.
I have changed my mind once again about translations. In the past I had thought of translations as a little bit of a waste of time: if I’m not going to read the book in my native language, I better be able to read the book in its native language. This YouTube video shifted my opinion quite a bit. Basically the argument contained there is that translation and interpretation are also forms of art: you get to read the authors words with a layer of interpretation on top of them, which adds a certain richness to the work that isn’t maybe there in the native language. Translations of books I’ve already read in English, such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings seem like fruitful areas to notice these things, now that my Spanish is good enough to pick up subtle differences in word choice. I’ve also been thinking of reading English and Spanish translations of the same book from a third (probably Asian or Semitic language) and comparing the atmospheres in the two languages.
Reading made up about 1/2 of my immersion time for the last 100 hours (~52 of the 100 hours I tracked). I’m not sure if this reading strategy is maximally effective, but I don’t really care. I like reading, and I give myself plenty of opportunity to practice listening and speaking with my biweekly lessons. I also try to read aloud for 30 minutes a day, which also helps with speaking.
I’ve read seven books between this update and last, including one book that was a reread. One of these books was a translation from Japanese, but the others were all originally written in Spanish. I’ve also been reading two blogs in Spanish here on substack: Jardín Mental and Mapas Milhaud.
In the easy category, I read La biblioteca de los nuevos comienzos by Michiko Aoyama, which was a translation from Japanese. This book consisted of five short stories about people of varying age struggling with things in life: their careers, relationships, sense of meaning, etc. and finding guidance and solace in the book recommendations of the librarian of their neighborhood in Tokyo. The message was maybe a little simplistic, but reading it made me feel good.
In the medium category, I read five books. The first book was GGMs En agosto nos vemos. This book was published posthumously, and it’s easy to tell because the narrative of the main character, a women who goes to an island every year to visit the grave of her mother and hook-up with a random guy, feels incomplete. It still has the Gabo magic though. I also read two history books: Castilla en llamas, which was about the various civil wars in Spain leading up to the reign of Isabella and Ferdinand (and best argument against monarchy ever), and Breve historia de la Reconquista, which was exactly what was described on the tin. I enjoyed the first of these books much more than the second: the long time period involved in telling the story of the entire Reconquista made it difficult to follow what was really going on. I also read a polemic about suburbanization in Spain, La España de las piscinas, which I review here, and reread Los cuerpos del verano, which I review here.
In the hard category I read Capitan Alatriste, which is an Indiana Jones-style adventure set in “El siglo de oro” in Spain. I don’t know why I seem to find Perez-Reverte so hard, but something about his use of idioms, old-fashioned vocab, and unusual sentence structure trips me up.
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: 842 hours, approximately 7 million words. 56 books originally written in Spanish
Future Plans: Continue to read across genres, but shift focus to non-fiction to better prepare for DELE.
Open Questions: Why is Arturo Perez-Reverte so hard for me? Recommendations for nonfiction originally in Spanish?
Sentence Mining
I’m up to 2192 cards now with a 92.05% lifetime mature retention rate, but a lower 88% rate in the past month. I’m not sure what’s been lowering retention recently: maybe since I haven’t been reading quite as much, the Anki reps are starting to reflect my true retention time. It’s also possible since I’ve ramping up Anki in other areas (science, Catalan, German), that’s there’s some amount of interference with Spanish. I’m feeling excited about Anki again, and think I will keep going with Spanish sentence mining until I get to 5k cards.
Open Questions: DELE study deck? Anki Endgame?
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.
I've also been journalling in Spanish, but quite inconsistently. I would like to make this into more of regular habit: is there are Spanish writing prompts subreddit like there is for English?
Output time: 1 hr (tracked, much more untracked)
Open Questions: What methods do you use to practice writing?
Listening
I’m having a hard time with listening again: out of the ~90 new hours of immersion I did since the last update, only 13 of them were from audio sources. I think my difficulty with audio is two-fold. First: I have a pretty draconian tech policy on most of my devices. It’s quite hard to access YouTube on my phone or my computer. This makes “oh I’ll just watch a Spanish YouTube video” a little more challenging for the average person. Secondly, I tend to want to multitask while I’m listening to audio, which while doable in English is not possible in Spanish because my comprehension is too low. I usually end up turning off the podcast/audiobook in frustration, rather than continue to listen.
I could just give up on listening and stick to reading, but I don’t think this is compatible with my goals. I want to pass the DELE test, which has a heavy listening component. And I want to have conversations with real Spanish speakers, which means being good at listening. I have a couple ideas on how to move forward.
One option is to immerse with audio during my morning exercise bike. This provides a structured time a couple times a week where I have scheduled myself to be in the same place, so that immersion is guaranteed to happen. While I will be multitasking, biking is a pretty brain dead activity, and it's easy to focus on something else. In practice, I have found this challenging (the bike makes it difficult to hear), and I have preferred to do my Anki on the trainer instead.
Another thought is to just schedule my listening. If multitasking is the problem, then creating an environment in which I don’t need to multitask in order to immerse is the solution. This will require me being a bit more organized in general, but there’s no reason why I should be able to make time for a 15 minute YouTube video every day.
I listen to music regularly (very much enjoying the new Love of Lesbian album), but have found it too difficult to track to use for immersion.
Total Immersion time: 649 hours, 2 million words from audiobooks
Future Plans: A YouTube video daily, other audio sources at least 3 hours a week.
Open Questions: Do you sentence mine musical lyrics? Film recommendations?
Speaking
I’m continuing to take regular lessons on iTalki. After reading, this was my biggest source of immersion, with around 25 hours of lessons since the last update. I have at least one lesson every single week, but I aim for two more often than no.
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 haven’t had a lesson with him for a while, but I’ll resume soon once my real life calms down.
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. I’ll also do the majority of my review corrections with him.
I’m continuing literature/test prep classes with Mailén, where we’ve been discussing various Spanish short stories, and have been working through Horacio Quiroga’s collection of short stories. I’ve also recently begun B2 DELE test prep with Mailén, which has been going great, although the exercises have been a bit easy, making me thinking I should maybe try for C1.
I have no current plans to resume the language academy.
I’ve talked to a rotation student in the lab a few times whose family is from Mexico and I’m hoping to have some speaking opportunities with the nanny of a family friend who is from Ecuador as well.
Output time: 110 hours
Explicit Grammar
Focusing on subjunctive tenses and use cases in my Anki sentence mining. I’m finding these tense distinctions to be rather challenging, and may need to resort to some explict grammar study (preferribly in Spanish). Also started making grammar sentence cards where I understand all the words, but not a phrase or particular construct in the sentence.
Future Plans
I gotta schedule my immersion and make it much easier for myself to immerse rather than doom-scroll (or worse). I’m hoping preselecting YouTube videos, as well as having a couple different levels of challenge with books will make this easier to do. It’s not that I don’t like immersion, but when you’re in stresso/depresso mode it can be hard to do anything other than scroll.
Other Languages
Balancing Italian reading has been tough, but I have been enjoying making a top 1000 word Catalan deck (with audio). I hope to find more balance with these two languages in 2025.
Health
I’ve been in stressed/depressed mode for a long time, and I’m not entirely sure how to get out of it. At the end of the day, I do think a large part of the problem is the damn phones, but I can’t seem to kick that addiction. Trying to be patient with myself and prioritize sleep, food, and social activity above all else. I am a little worried about the impetus to be hypersocial coming from some kind of running-from-myself kind of place, so to that end I’m trying to build in book date nights for myself into my schedule where I deliberately spend time alone away from other people and the internet. Anyway, language learning helps with all this, as it is a very fair hobby, and has introduced me to some really awesome people over iTalki.
Overall Impressions
Feeling like I’m slowly but surely climbing out of the intermediate plateau, but would like to spend a bit more time with Spanish. Struggling listening and mental health, but think both of those are very solvable problems.
Open Questions: How did you go about transitioning to beginning an L3? How do you decide when you are “done” with a language? How do you keep improving at an advanced level?
Full immersion link data link.
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Josh