Learning Spanish MIA-Style

[jonnyspanish]

I'm not sure if this is the right sub-forum to put this thread, but I'm looking for people who are serious about learning Spanish MIA style. I am a B1 level student and recently came across MIA and read a lot of Matt's work. Most of MIA and AJATT are for people learning Japanese but I want to have a discussion with serious Spanish language learners just on applying MIA to learning Spanish. (I was also led to this forum while searching MIA spanish and seeing Karen's long thread!)

I have so many questions about MIA and how it can apply to Spanish learning. About listening (my weakest area), about how to use Subs2SRS, etc.

This is just an introductory post I guess to see if there are others here who share that same journey and want a place to discuss immersion as it relates specifically to Spanish language learning. If so, I'll post more questions and stuff!

[iguanamon]

First, welcome to the forum, jonnyspanish! I had to google "MIA"... but there is nothing new under the sun. I regularly use media in my multi-track approach to language-learning, especially at the intermediate level. The OP is talking about the "Mass Immersion Approach". Our member emk did something similar with Spanish using Avatar, a series which he had watched before in French. This was based on an experiment by Sprachprofi Understand Your Favourite TV Series in 30 Days.

Caveats: emk had already self-learned a language (French) to a high level before, as had Sprachprofi herself. Self-learning a language to a high level gives a learner certain advantages in pattern recognition, knowing how they learn best, and confidence in knowing that the task can be achieved. The OP is already at B1, according to their profile. This is a great time to start working with a series, and, if the OP has computer skills to do it- subs2srs.

A series is better to work with than a film because of being able to get accustomed to the actors'voices over time; situations repeat- not identically but similar enough to be useful. A dubbed animated series like "Avatar" is a good place to start because the language is challenging enough to be useful but not overwhelmingly so- without too much complexity and not slang laden. The dub is usually clearer speech than full-on native series. The learner has half a chance to be familiar with the series in their native language- if they are English-speakers and the dub is from English- a common situation. An issue with using dubbed series for subs2srs is finding a series with subs that match the dubbed audio- they often don't match.

At B1, a native telenovela may be accessible to the OP. There is a book called The Telenovela Method that may be useful to consult. This would be difficult, but not impossible.

I wholeheartedly support and advocate the use of native media in learning, but I do not think it is the answer to everything in self-learning a language. The method is more effectively used in combination with a good grammar course, reading and writing. If a Spanish-learner could devote an hour a day to FSI Spanish Basic Course or Gramática de uso del español and an hour a day to subs2srs, I think they would be on to a winner. ¡Suerte!

[Decidida]

I'm still at Dr Seuss level for immersion. LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSjJSfsxUNQ

[smallwhite]

I thought we were going to talk about where to have tapas when we skip class tomorrow.

[sporedandroid]

I’ve used subs2srs a lot for Hebrew. I started off with about a vocabulary of 500 words and pretty much no grammar. I suggest you make subs2srs decks for things you have trouble with and align with your goals. You could go with particular dialects and subject matter. I for example made decks for movies and tv shows about Judaism. That helped me learn some vocabulary related to Judaism along with regular vocabulary people would use in conversation.

For listening comprehension I often played the audio over and over in a row to help me catch more details. I’d often be surprised by the new details I could hear when I revisited the card a few days or a week later. Since this is fairly narrow listening a good supplement to it would be podcasts. I remember going through a phase where I could understand sounds pretty well and knew vocabulary, but struggled to figure out what people were actually talking about.

I personally like podcasts because they often stick to one topic and often elaborate on things. So it’s easy to pick things up from context. One thing you could do is some intensive reading on topics the podcast will cover.

[Valddu]

I’m a huge fan of Matt vs. Japan and MIA and have been applying a lot of his principles for the last year and a half. I SRS with Readlang because it’s so easy to mine sentences that way and I pack in a lot of daily hours of active and passive immersion. I don’t agree with everything he says though—for example, I don’t think monolingual dictionaries are inherently better and I don’t believe that early output leads to fossilized errors. Most of what he says though is spot on and perfectly congruent with the ideas espouseD in this forum. Check out the Super Challenge here, for example. That fits right in with MIA.