Not sure how to get to a C1/C2 in speaking

[Valddu]

So I’m really happy with my progress in understanding Spanish so far. For the last 15 months I’ve been going for an input-based approach and consuming hundreds and hundreds of hours worth of books, shows, podcasts, and youtube videos. As a result, my comprehension has dramatically increased and that I’m more and more capable of using the language to watch and consume media I would normally consume in English.

However, I’m not really sure where to go from here. My speaking lags behind my passive comprehension, but I would like to improve to a level where I can speak fluently, with few pauses, and only minor errors. Right now I can have fluent conversations, but I often struggle to create complex sentences or whenever I need to consider whether to use the subjunctive. I’ve read a lot about comprehensible input, but it seems to me that Krashen never really explains the whole input suddenly becoming output stage. Sometimes he makes it sound magical, like after X hours you suddenly wake-up speaking the language like a native. Steven Kaufmann talks about speaking on his YouTube channel, but all I’ve really heard him say is that at a certain point you “need to speak, and you need to speak a lot.” Well, how much is a lot? Luca mentions something about how hitting the very high levels of a language requires you to create a separate persona in that language and fully inhabit it, but I have no idea what that looks like in terms of study.

I do about 2 hours of iTalki lessons a week and I frequently use Spanish with my toddler son to give him some exposure. I’ve definitely seen an improvement in my fluency, but again, I’m nowhere near as good as I’d like to be. So here are my questions:

1. Should I be focusing more and more on speaking? I’ve heard about people running drills by themselves (mini-speeches in front of the mirror, free writes, etc) and I could certainly start doing that. I could also increase the number of hours I spend on iTalki, but that would cost more and take away time I spend consuming media in the target language. I could also switch to trying to ONLY speaking to my son in my TL.

2. Should I just keep doing what I’m doing? Is speaking something that just naturally develops slower than all the other skills and that just given time and continued exposure I will eventually hit the level I’m looking for? It’s not that I haven’t seen progress—just that the progress has been slower than in my other skills. Do I need to just accept that and keep putting in the time/hours and I’ll eventually improve my speaking to a level I’m happy with?

[StringerBell]

This is something I'm in the process of trying to figure out, too. I bet other people can give much better advice than me. I think the idea that you have to do something a lot to do it well makes a lot of sense. However, my personal experience was that ramping up how much I spoke (in Italian) didn't really make a big improvement because there were some things that I just wasn't improving on by being corrected mid-conversation, I needed to spend some time addressing specific weakness.

With Polish, the vast majority of what I'm doing is input; I'm listening, reading, looking up words, etc... but I do very little speaking and writing. I keep coming in contact with tons of useful vocabulary and expressions, but when I want to use them, poof! it's like they never existed.

One thing I'm going to try to do more is to focus on just a few really useful expressions, copy a bunch of example sentences using them (either mined from native content or reverso context, etc...) and then try to create a few of my own sentences with those terms. The more time I spend with an expression and the more often it pops up in different contexts, the more likely I am to be able to use it myself.

I did a fair amount of text-chatting with a language exchange partner today, and I noticed that she used a few expressions that I'd like to use at some point. I wrote them down and I'm going to try to use them a few times in the near future. Do you have a LEP or anyone to send messages to?

I was doing the output challenge for a while, and it really helped. I was recording myself reading out loud stories, and I re-recorded the same ones like 10x. Every time I re-read something, I got a little better at it, and eventually some of the phrases started sticking in my mind. Plus, I started developing some muscle memory in my mouth for pronouncing certain words. Maybe you could try something like this?

With Italian, the main obstacle in my speech/writing production is that I have some black holes in my grammar knowledge. I did a ton of CI, which was awesome, but I never studied specific grammar rules. Now, I'm starting to go through a course book to patch up my holes, and I'm seeing that it's making some difference. Not with automaticity, but with knowing certain things (like which article to use or the ending/placement of an adjective) that before I was guessing at sometimes.

*While I'm still not "there" one thing that I did find very useful was to identify specify areas that were holding me back and then start to work on them systematically.

[StringerBell]

Right now I can have fluent conversations, but I often struggle to create complex sentences or whenever I need to consider whether to use the subjunctive.

Would it be possible for you to take note of specific sentences that you are struggling to create (during a conversation), or ones that require subjunctive, and then practice with them later on, either using Anki, bi-directional translation, scriptorium, or just trying to use them again yourself in future conversations?

I did something like this with some expressions and phrases in Italian that required the subjunctive, and now they are like second nature. I still can't identify every time the subjunctive should be used, but I'm slowly incorporating it more and more into my speech and I'm making a mental note when I hear it used by native speakers so that I can try to use it in the same context.

[Valddu]

This is something I'm in the process of trying to figure out, too. I bet other people can give much better advice than me. I think the idea that you have to do something a lot to do it well makes a lot of sense. However, my personal experience was that ramping up how much I spoke (in Italian) didn't really make a big improvement because there were some things that I just wasn't improving on by being corrected mid-conversation, I needed to spend some time addressing specific weakness.

With Polish, the vast majority of what I'm doing is input; I'm listening, reading, looking up words, etc... but I do very little speaking and writing. I keep coming in contact with tons of useful vocabulary and expressions, but when I want to use them, poof! it's like they never existed.

One thing I'm going to try to do more is to focus on just a few really useful expressions, copy a bunch of example sentences using them (either mined from native content or reverso context, etc...) and then try to create a few of my own sentences with those terms. The more time I spend with an expression and the more often it pops up in different contexts, the more likely I am to be able to use it myself.

I did a fair amount of text-chatting with a language exchange partner today, and I noticed that she used a few expressions that I'd like to use at some point. I wrote them down and I'm going to try to use them a few times in the near future. Do you have a LEP or anyone to send messages to?

I was doing the output challenge for a while, and it really helped. I was recording myself reading out loud stories, and I re-recorded the same ones like 10x. Every time I re-read something, I got a little better at it, and eventually some of the phrases started sticking in my mind. Plus, I started developing some muscle memory in my mouth for pronouncing certain words. Maybe you could try something like this?

With Italian, the main obstacle in my speech/writing production is that I have some black holes in my grammar knowledge. I did a ton of CI, which was awesome, but I never studied specific grammar rules. Now, I'm starting to go through a course book to patch up my holes, and I'm seeing that it's making some difference. Not with automaticity, but with knowing certain things (like which article to use or the ending/placement of an adjective) that before I was guessing at sometimes.

*While I'm still not "there" one thing that I did find very useful was to identify specify areas that were holding me back and then start to work on them systematically.

I found a resource that’s been helping me think about my approach to improving my speaking: the Matt vs. Japan YouTube channel. He’s brining up a lot of the issues that you are in regards to finding your blind spots and systematically addressing them. He’s an interesting guy if you look into him, he basically follows the AJATT method where the goal isn’t C1 or C2, but hitting a level that’s almost identical to a native-speaker in terms of word choice, pronunciation, and structure. He essentially advocates for the following:

1. Tons of massive input—to the point that you can comfortably understand native materials and spot errors that non-natives make.
2. Finding a language “parent” who’s speaking style you’ll try to emulate over time.
3. Daily practice of about 20 minutes where you shadow the speaking of this “parent.”
4. Daily self-recordings where you discuss a topic you haven’t prepared yourself for 5-10 minutes. Watching the video afterwards to catch mistakes an errors.
5. Using Anki to address these errors systematically.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t really advocate for lots of iTalki or conversation, although he also brought up using an app to send messages back and forth with native speakers.

[El Forastero]

My advice: Practice indirect speech as much as you can, as fast as you can, with real content.

You have a lot of input in spanish and that's ok. Did you try to talk about that input after having watched or read it? What do you do in english after watch a video you consider interesting or thought-provoking? I suppose you discuss about it with friends or some contacts online. Well, try to do the same in spanish. And the more controversial that topic, the more complexity you need to use in order to contrast ideas and expose what was that content about

In Italian, I found an interesting radio emision that analyse the news and very often has a guest to be interviewed. Normally, I understand almost 90% and that is not very demanding, but trying to report the content, paraphrasing the guest's opinion or explain the controversial topic is really challenging. You need to change verb tenses, demonstratives, possesives, time / place complements and pronouns, so is very complete practice. At the beginning, you need to pause the content in order to have enough time to prepare your sentence, but with the practice you can omit this step.

By the way, I can notice you have a good writing in english: Your sentences are complex, your paragraphs are well structured... Why don't you try to write the same content in spanish? I'm not talking about or the main idea, but about the complexity, even the style. In the spanish subforum your questions surely will be answered

[rdearman]

I found an interesting radio emision

Typically I'd say "radio program" or "radio broadcast".

[AndyMeg]

I would do lots and lost of shadowing to audio (or audiovisual) material at native speed. (That's what I'm currently doing to improve my spoken english. I'm using transcripts as well). Sitcoms are a great option for that.

[Kraut]

In the first stage I translate L2 into my mother tongue German and go back and forth in my mind for a while until I'm sure all has sunk in and I also can visualize a situation.
For repetition and consolidation I record my German translation and do something like consecutive interpreting into Spanish, speaking aloud. Depending on how fast the recording is and how long the pauses are, you can make this very demanding (and exhausting).
Of course the chunks I do are not as long as these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFsKulFcauY

[golyplot]

By the way, I can notice you have a good writing in english

Apart from the mistaken use of the word "emission" instead of program/show that rdearman already mentioned, there's another English mistake here. You can't say "a good writing", and "I can notice" is also sounds strange.

I would have said something like "By the way, I noticed that you can write well in English."

(I hope I'm not derailing the thread with the corrections, but you did ask for corrections in your signature)

[El Forastero]

(I hope I'm not derailing the thread with the corrections, but you did ask for corrections in your signature)

Yes, I did. And thank you very much, I didn't answer because this is not my thread.

I was thinking in spanish when I said "my writing", as if "writing" were a noun that means "writing skill". And I use emission because I was thinking in french: I remember saying "Programme de radio" and french people correcting me. "C'est une emmision radio".