Refold Approach to Language Learning: Spanish ~1900-Hour Update
B2 DELE and return to TV
This is my sixteenth update for my Spanish learning journey with the Refold approach. 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 my fifteenth update, see here
For my sixteenth update, see here
For more information about the Refold approach, see here. For a basic Spanish Anki vocabulary deck, see here.
General Progress
Reached 1900 hours of immersion. Took the B2 test, but won’t get my results back until August. Continued reading a lot: hit over 400k words for both April and May and I am on track for about 150k in June. Completed about 50% of the grammar book. Realized I need to be watching a lot more TV.
I’ve finally taken the B2 test, which I feel closes the first phase of my Spanish learning journey. I think I passed the test, considering I only needed to get a 60% overall to do so, but it was harder than expected, so we will have to see when I get my results some time in August. More on this in a specific section below, but I found the reading (surprisingly) and the oral sections to be the most difficult.
Since the exam I’ve been struggling to figure out how to move forward with Spanish. Work and training have recently ramped up quite a bit, and I’m having a hard time fitting in time for even one language, let alone add on Italian. Ideally I would just completely take a break from Spanish and completely focus on Italian, with maybe a lesson to check in with my tutor once a week. But after the B2 test, I feel like my Spanish isn’t good enough to do that, meaning that if I want to progress in Italian, I have to juggle both languages, which I don’t have the mental bandwidth for. At the same time, if I want to learn more Romance languages, which I do, I have to start at some point. If not now, when?
Yet on the other hand, my Spanish needs a lot of work. I’ve recently been watching some Spanish TV shows, and I’m shocked at how low my comprehension is without subtitles. Although, looking at my immersion hours, perhaps this makes more sense: I’ve been neglecting listening practice because the main way to improve seems to be through TV, which I have quite a bit of innate resistance towards. Podcasts and audiobooks are quite easy because the audio quality is always clear and people aren’t using slang. This is not the case in TV, where there’s often music or background noise making the characters difficult to hear, and a lot of words are slang that I haven’t picked up from books. The unfortunate reality is, despite what I think of the medium, if I want to get to the next level of Spanish, I have to do far more listening, mostly in the form of watching TV.
The grammar book is going swimmingly still: I’m about 50% of the way done, and it’s been exceedingly helpful for both noticing grammar concepts in immersion and with output. Would recommend for any intermediate and beyond learner.
Finally, I’m wondering if some kind of serious digital detox and focus on recentering my mental and physical health might help with all of this. I’ve been sleeping for less than 7 hours a night for a long time now, and I am filled with a sense of anxiety/busyness at pretty much all times. These two things are almost certainly related, and I can do some good by scaling back various commitments, but I also spend a lot of unnecessary daily time on the internet (3+ hours) that could be refocused on immersion, or just shrinking the size of my to do this. I hope to start this detox, based on Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism in July.
Open questions: How do you find more time in your day for immersion? Has anyone done a digital detox?
DELE Exam
I will write slightly more about this when I get my scores back in August (probably the 2000 hour update), but I want to do a short recap of the test here before it fades too much from my memory.
I took the test about a month ago in Washington D.C. through the Isabella and Ferdinand Language Academy. The written portion of the test was at an elementary school in western D.C. (which was a really fun e-bike to get to from where I was staying near Penn station: huge win for bike infrastructure in the city), and the oral portion was at an Armenian church a few miles away. The test started early on Saturday morning, and took about half the day. In the written portion there were three sections: reading, listening, and writing, each taking about 80 minutes. To pass, I needed to get a 60% on the reading and writing combined, and a 60% on the listening and oral combined.
I was expecting the reading to be very easy. It was not, despite having read over 100 novels in Spanish. The questions were very nitpicky (oftentimes multiple things were true, you just had to pick the most true one), and I had trouble with the last exercise, which was a fill-in-the-blank activity for verb conjugations, adjectives, and prepositions in a short story.
Listening was a piece of cake and consisted of answering a few multiple choice questions after hearing a passage on the radio.
Writing was probably the easiest for me: you only had to write two essays of 150 words each (but they want different grammar constructions).
The oral section was the portion that I had practiced the most, but also the one I was most nervous for. I’m not very good at speaking in English, let alone in Spanish. That being said, this section was relatively straightforward: you are given to exercises to prepare: one involving a photograph and the other a survey. You have to talk about each for about 5 minutes using a variety of grammar constructions. There’s also a third exercise that you go over with the examiner directly with no preparation time. I think I did fine, although I worry I didn’t use enough subjunctive. We will see when the scores come back in August.
Reading
I read a lot leading up the test: over 400k words in both April and May. I have read less this month, but that’s because I’ve been watching more TV. I enjoy reading a lot, still have some work to do in understanding complicated literary fiction, and can usually find something to sentence mine every few pages. However, I think the emphasis needs to be shifted towards listening quite substantially (maybe a middle-ground is audiobooks).
For this update I read nine books (the same exact number as last time), including one book that was a reread. Three of these books were a translations, all from English1, 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. This update puts me at over 100 books read in Spanish, and nearly 12 million words read. Both are big milestones.
In the easy category, I read four books. One of these was a translation of Joe Abercrombie’s The Heroes, which I’ve read in Spanish before. Another was a translation of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s: Ciertas cosas oscuras, which was a fun, if cliche vampire novel set in CDMX. The last two books in this category were by Isabel Allende. Zorro, which I was reading last time, was the origin story of the famous California comic-book character from the 1950s. This book was also fun, but I find myself tiring of Allende’s cliched writing and simplistic morality. Which perhaps is why I hated Más alla del invierno, the other book of hers that I read in this category. This book follows three people: a Chilean, a Guatemalan, and a New Yorker during the NYC blizzard of 2015. Each of the characters’ backstories was excellent, but I found the present-day story to be extremely disturbing and unnecessarily politically partisan2.
In the medium category, I read three books. The first was another Allende book, Mi país inventada. This book was more of an autobiography than a novel, which helped the work avoid the classic Allende problems of self-insert characters and political pandering. I also read a translation of The Farthest Shore by Ursula Le Guin, who is just as wonderful in Spanish as in English. I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first two, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t very good. Finally, I read a collection of short stories titled Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego by María Enriquez. The stories could all be classified as horror, but featured very few supernatural elements. Most were about the poverty and terrible experiences of the most maltreated parts of Argentinian society. I really highly recommend the title story, which you can read here.
In the hard category I read two books: Distancia de rescate by Samanta Schweblin and Plan de evasión by Adolfo Bioy Casares. Both were difficult not necessarily because of their Spanish, but rather because of their narrative structure. The first is told through a probably imaginary dialogue, while the second is narrated through a series of letters. Both of these forms add some distance between the reader and the narrator, making it difficult sometimes to figure out what is going on. Out of the two Distancia de rescate is definitely better3, and if you really want to read Casares, La invención de Morel is much much better.
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 desperately needs an update.
Total Immersion time: 1040 hours, approximately 9 million words. 72 books originally written in Spanish, 104 books in Spanish in total.
Monthly word totals: April: 550k , May: 450k, June (so far): 125k
Future Plans: Move over to audiobooks, but again, just reading as much as possible
Open Questions: Recommendations for nonfiction originally in Spanish?
Sentence Mining
I’m up to 2961 cards now with a 89.7% lifetime mature retention rate, but a lower 87.9% rate in the past month. This rate has been creeping up as the new FSRS algorithm kicks in, so I’m not concerned that it’s still under 90%: we’ll get there, especially if I sleep and recover better.
I’ve also started using a plug-in for Anki that allows me to study ahead for the next few days reviews. This is a nice way for me to be able to do more Anki when I’m motivated, and take some of the pressure off days that I’m not feeling particularly motivated.
I’d still like to get to 10k total Spanish cards, but this will probably take another ten years. In any case, I like doing Anki, so I don’t see slowly chipping away at this goal being too much of a problem.
Open Questions: None
Writing
My main source of writing prompts continues to be book reviews. I’m not doing much writing post DELE, but I would love to practice more informal writing, perhaps in letter or email format. If you’re interested, send me an email, or a message on the Refold Discord server. I’m more interested in physical letters than email, but am open to both. Not really looking to text: I would rather voice chat.
Output time: 9 hr tracked, including DELE
Open Questions: Anyone want to be pen pals?
Listening
I didn’t to much listening between this update and last: only 20 hours total. However, pretty much all of those hours have been in the last week. Horrified by my low level of understanding when I turned on a Spanish show for fun a few weeks ago4, I’ve been binging various Spanish rom com shows. My favorite thus far is Machos Alfa, which follows four gen-x men and their spouses in the world of evolving gender politics.
I’m definitely going to be watching a lot more Netflix in the coming updates. This is a huge weak area for me that I think will help a lot with future DELE tests, and Spanish in real life.
Total Immersion time: 695 hours, 2 million words from audiobooks.
Monthly Hours: May 1.7 hours, June: 19 hours
Future Plans: More Netflix
Open Questions: Film recommendations? RomComs?
Speaking
I’m continuing to take regular lessons on iTalki. After reading, this was my biggest source of immersion, with around 20 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 two 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.
I’m back to doing literary analysis with Mailén. We read some María Enriquez and I have Samanta Schweblin on deck with her.
I’d like to try out some other tutors on iTalki soon, but I think this will have to wait until work calms down a little.
I also found a Spanish happy hour group that meets on Thursdays at Ministry of Brewing in Baltimore. This has been a consistent source of immersion for me and is about 1/3 native speakers. With non-natives in this group I seem to find myself in much more of a teaching.corrective role, which makes me feel good about my ability, but also frustrated about the lack of work other people seem to be willing to put in to improve5. I’m hoping this group will connect me to other local Spanish speakers and help me make more Spanish-speaking friends.
Finally, I bet a Colombian au pair on the train back from DC a few weeks ago. I’m hoping to meet up with him to bike or chat when my schedule gets a little less crazy.
Output time: 168 hours
Explicit Grammar
Doing explicit grammar practice has been somewhat of a revelation for me about the potential flaws in the Refold methodology. To make a long story short, explicit grammar has been really really helpful for me both in outputting and in more explicitly understanding some of the remaining sticking points I have with reading.
I’ve mainly been using some exercise books, which were highly recommended by a trusted Goodreads user (Roy Lotz). These books cover everything, from gender to common prepositions to the subjunctive, and I’ve been jumping around the book trying to spread out my learning on different topics. I’ve done about half of the book so far, which probably represents about 20 hours of explicit study. After I’m done, I’m planning on going through the book and Ankifying any issues I might have, before starting on the C2 book.
Future Plans
I want to focus on listening for the rest of this year as this is a clear weakness of mine. I would still like to keep up with reading, but will scale back my goal word count to closer to 100k words/month. Depending on how the DELE went, I may either retake the B2 or try for C1 in November. Finally, I need to figure out what to do with Italian, as I’m pretty divided.
Other Languages
Right after the DELE test I started ramping up my Italian study. I got Harry Potter out of the library again and started watching a couple shows on Netflix. However, almost immediately I ran into problems. I had Spanish books to finish as well, and was having choice paralysis between deciding what to immerse with that day. My comprehension is also still not great with Italian (although surprisingly good for basically only 50 hours of Immersion), so I would also find myself reaching for English or Spanish books and shows instead of their Italian counterparts. Finally, I was also having quite a bit of crossover confusion between Italian and Spanish. As of writing this article, I’ve put Italian to the side, but frankly, I need to stop doing this at some point, preferably really really soon. I’ve signed up for an Italian class in the fall at Hopkins, so hopefully that will force me out of this situation where I keep dropping Italian.
Health
Things are looking up health-wise. I’m running again and down ten pounds, but I still need to work on my focus and my sleep.
Overall Impressions
Glad to be done with the DELE, but still have a long way to go when it comes to Spanish, especially listening. I’m very divided on my path forward to learn other Romance languages, and hoping for some clarity from other Refolders.
Open Questions: What is the fastest way to improve listening comprehension? How do you go about maintaining a language when you started an L3?
Full immersion link data link.
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Josh
Although one is by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, who is basically a Spanish author.
The protagonists cover up the murder of an innocent woman and don’t turn the murderer in to the police because she’s also woman. Then there’s also quite a bit of illegal immigration apologia. My heart goes out to people living under the rule of cartels in dysfunctional Central American countries, but might the better solution to these problems be breaking the back of the cartels, rather than importing these very problems into the United States?
It also has a Netflix adaption.
Without subtitles. With subtitles, my understanding is near perfect
You do not get good at Spanish by outputting once a week. The amount of people at this group who’ve never read a book in Spanish (or even tried) continues to amaze me. That being said, everyone has different reasons for doing things and “getting good” may not actually be that high on other people’s list.