Refold Approach to Language Learning: Spanish ~1800-Hour Update

Mi sueño gramática ha sido or how I learned to stop worrying and love the grammar book

Photo by Jeremy Lishner on Unsplash

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.

1. For my first update, see here.

2. For my second update, see here.

3. For my third update, see here.

4. For my fourth update, see here.

5. For my fifth update, see here.

6. For my sixth update, see here.

7. For my seventh update, see here.

8. For my eighth update, see here.

9. For my ninth update, see here.

10. For my tenth update, see here.

11. For my eleventh update, see here

12. For my twelfth update, see here

13. For my thirteenth update, see here

14. For my fourteenth update, see here

15. For my fifteenth update, see here

For more information about the Refold approach, see here. For a basic Spanish Anki vocabulary deck, see here.

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General Progress

Reached 1800 hours of immersion. Reading is still my primary form of immersion: aiming for 300k words/month. Found some new output options, including multiple Spanish speaking groups in Baltimore. Started tracking my writing immersion. Serious grammar study for the first time. Last minute preparation for the B2 test.

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 as a journal of my journey. It also helps that these posts seem to get the most engagement on this blog. We are getting close to the B2 test I signed up for in May, and after that I think I am planning on putting Spanish on the back-burner to focus on Italian. It’s about time to start an L3 if I want to be a polyglot

I have signed up to take the DELE B2 exam at Ferdinand and Isabella Academy in DC, on May 25th. I’m feeling much less nervous than in January after spending months doing practice exams with my iTalki tutor. There are some points that will definitely be tricky on the oral portion of the exam (such as the photograph question), and it will be interesting to see how my spelling holds up without spell-check for the written portion. However, aside from this, I think the exam will generally be not too much trouble.

That being said, there’s still a lot more prep that I would like to do. I haven’t had time to do the 3 hours/day I said I was going to do (it’s been more like 1.2 hours/day). Historically, it doesn’t seem that making time goals has worked out super well for me, and the plan that I wrote out on the last blog post involved a little too much task switching on a daily basis. Instead, I’d like to commit to frequency based goals. 2 lessons/week, 1 session with the grammar book a week, 1 session writing by hand/week, and replace all English content consumption (reading, Substack, YouTube) with Spanish. I think this last part is especially important as it repurposes time I am using for other (stupid) things, rather than trying to carve out new time.

In the future, I’d also like to take a DELE C1/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 failed,¹ and in terms of my goals with the language I’d like to have an “apto” on the B2 rather than a failed C2 exam. I’m planning on switching over my focus to Italian after this exam for at least the second half of 2025, and will thus revisit the question of higher level Spanish exams in 2026.

Open questions: What is your “crunch time” immersion routine? How are you approaching explicit grammar study?

Reading

What I’m reading right now

In contrast to many other Refold learners, and language learners in general, who by and large seem to be allergic to reading, written content (primarily books) is my main form of immersion, making up about 60% of my hours between this update and the last. These days my reading is generally extensive: I will do intensive reading until I find 5 unfamiliar words (in phrases with 100% otherwise known words) or grammar structures, and then just read extensively the rest of the time. If I’m reading on kindle I will continue to highlight n+1 passages for pretty much the whole time I’m reading². I’ll convert these passages into Anki cards on the weekends or during spare moments at lab. I generally try and have two books on deck at a time, one easier and one harder. I have given up trying to alternate non-fiction and fiction: it’s too hard to find non fiction I want to read, and the “forcing” of this pattern causes me to read less overall li think.

Moving forward I’m trying to concentrate less on having a specific set schedule for how much reading I want to do every day, and treat immersion more as a way of life. Feel like reddit-ing, reading blogs, or watching YouTube? Read instead, or in the case of YouTube, do it in Spanish. This is the approach that I like taking with running/triathlon, and I think it could pay dividends in other activities that are much more similar to sport than an academic subject, such as language learning. Worrying about details seems counterproductive when I could just see so much improvement from just trying to increase my “easy” volume as much as possible³.

For this update I read eight books (the same exact number as last time), including two books that were rereads. Two of these books were a translations, one from Hebrew, and one 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 no books. This could potentially explain why my reading volume was so low in February and March. I am currently reading Zorro by Allende which I feel like lands in this category.

In the medium category, I read five books. The first was Amos Oz’s Judas, which was translated from Hebrew. The book deals with the meaning of treachery on multiple narrative levels and is set in the winter of 1956 in Jerusalem. This I found the writing in this to be very good, but had trouble connecting the disparate plot threads together and with the theme of the book. I also read two science books: the translation of Nick Lane’s The Vital Question, which was about the origin of (complex) life, and Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s Discourses on how to be a good scientist, much of which was out of date: I don’t learning German is required to be a good scientist anymore. Finally, I read the first two books in Liliana Bodoc’s Saga de Los Confines, the first of which I had read before. This series focus on a fantasy version of South America that resists invasion by hyper-evil Sauron-like Spaniards, and I found it to be a refreshingly new take on the standard European sword and sorcery that is normal to the genre. The writing is very poetic, and reminds me a lot of Lord of the Rings, but with a much more environmentalist bend.

In the hard category I read three books. The first was a philosophy book by Ortega y Gasset, El tema de nuestro tiempo, which deals with the failures of rationalism and relativism as governing philosophies of our times, proposing instead a living, evolving philosophy, which I really liked. The difficulty in this book came somewhat from the vocabulary, but mainly from the ideas contained therein and the references to other philosophies. I also finally finished Cien Años de Soledad. I talk more extensively about the book here, but it’s difficulty for me primarily from the vocab and lack of interest I had in the plot⁴. Finally, just yesterday I finished Tu sueño imperios han sido by Álvaro Enrique. This novel is about the first encounter between Montezuma and Cortés that becomes increasingly meta-textual and hard to read. This was difficult for many reasons: new Mexican (indigenous) vocab, convoluted plot structure, lack of dialogue markers and deliberate obfuscation by the author himself. Despite all this I really liked the book and want to re-read it when my Spanish is 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: 976 hours, approximately 8.4 million words. 64 books originally written in Spanish, 94 books in Spanish in total.

Monthly word totals: February: 35k, March: 180k, April (so far): 420k

Future Plans: Just read and sentence mine as much as possible bro.

Open Questions: Recommendations for nonfiction originally in Spanish?

Sentence Mining

I’m up to 2456 cards now with a 91.5% lifetime mature retention rate, but a lower 87.6% rate in the past month. I set my desired retention to 90% on the FSRS algorithm, so this new rate is a little bit low, which is concerning. However, I hope that the algorithm does its job eventually and I can get back up to 90%, but my Anki retention has been low overall recently, perhaps suggesting that something in my life is affecting my brain power in general (maybe lack of sleep?).

Most of the cards I added this time were explicit grammar cards. I’m concentrating on gender, a common source of error for me, and correcting common output errors.

Open Questions: Why has my retention cratered during the past few months?

Writing

I started explicitly tracking my writing since the last update. My main source of writing prompts continues to be book reviews, but I’ve also done about 3-4 practice DELE questions, both of which I go over with my tutors. I could definitely write more, but I’m feeling pretty good about the DELE from the feedback I’ve received from my tutors. The next month I’d like to make sure I get at least one writing session a week, but after the DELE I’m not sure what place writing will have in my Spanish journey. It’s definitely the weakest of my four skills and the one that I will need to work on the most for a potential C2 exam.

Output time: 6 hr tracked

Open Questions: Source of writing prompts?

Listening

I didn’t do much listening this update. I only added 13 new hours between this update and last, and seven of these were re-listening to a Wizard of Earthsea. In addition to that I watched a bit of YouTube, rewatched some of El Cid with my roommate, and watched the film Alatriste, which is based on the novel series of the same name set in the Spanish Siglo De Oro.

I’m not too concerned about my listening abilities for the DELE, given all the exercises have been very easy for me, and speaking practice also forces me to listen to my tutor. That said, during watching Alatriste, I did wish that my comprehension was a bit higher. This will be a skill I focus on in 2026 I think.

Total Immersion time: 676 hours, 2 million words from audiobooks.

Monthly Hours: February: 2 hours, March: 7 hours, April: 2 hours.

Future Plans: Replace English with Spanish YouTube

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 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 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. 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 currently mainly doing test prep Mailén. We’ve been going over my written activities every class and doing 2-3 oral practices as well. I hope to return to our literature classes after the test.

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.

Output time: 144 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.

That’s not to say that the grammar translation people are correct. Rather I think that grammar study is an extremely useful way to get more out of your immersion. Since explicitly studying the subjunctive I’ve noticed the different tenses and their in my immersion much more frequently and have an easier time outputting. The way I would suggest that you think about the optimal use of grammar study is as a light spread between two big pieces of immersion bread. If I were to do this again I think I would start grammar study much earlier.

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 a quarter of the book so far, which probably represents about 10 hours of explicit study.

Future Plans

The DELE is coming up so I’ve been focusing on that. After the test I think I’m going to scale back on Spanish while I ramp up my Italian. This probably will look like reading a couple books a month, Anki, and a weekly lesson.

Other Languages

These are on pause until June.

Health

Things have been not great. I injured myself running in February and had to spend a lot of time on PT. I’ve also been sleeping terribly and have gained 20 pounds since 2023. I’m trying to deal with the sleep first, which I think is stress-related. I’m planning on moving all of my Spanish out of the early AM, and getting more serious about electronics before bed. As I stated earlier I think this is affecting my Anki retention, but it’s also affecting my motivation in general.

Overall Impressions

Despite health issues, I think things are going as well as can be expected for this test. Reading continues to pay dividends, and while I feel like I’m ready to take a break from explicit Spanish study, the language has gotten to a point that it will always be part of my life.

Open Questions: How did you iron out your output mistakes? How do you go about maintaining a language when you started an L3?

Full immersion link data link.

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I blog about language learning, biology, the science and art of learning, and many other things. If you feel inclined, please subscribe or consider buying me a coffee.

Josh

1. I’m thinking of Shane Godliman and Giovanni Smith here who jumped straight into C2 and failed. They also never recapped why they failed and so strongly overestimated their own abilities, which I found to be extremely disappointing and a sign of the skill overestimation that is endemic to language learners.

2. If I’m tired I’ll skip all this

3. The same is true with running, an arena in which I routinely fail to take my own advice.

4. We attempted a Refold book club, but because of the difficulty, or just the general difficulty that people seem to have with reading even in their L1. Huge shoutout to Timmy on the Refold server who finished the book and had a good discussion with me about it. Honestly was pretty frustrated with this book club experience because of people not reading, and even more so to those promoting a Brandon-fucking-Sanderson alternative. We should definitely choose an easier book next time, which I hope will help.

5. 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.