After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

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Ojalaseaunplanasowe
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After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby Ojalaseaunplanasowe » Mon May 30, 2022 11:52 pm

I'm a native English speaker who's been studying Spanish for the last 8 year years. Half that time I've lived in Mexico, and half that time I've lived in my home country, off an on. I'm back in Mexico, hopefully for good, and want to make sure that I continue to improve until I'm at a near-native level, albeit with an accent. Getting rid of my accent would be great, but realistically I think the best I can hope for would be that it would soften a bit over time.

This year I noticed a big improvement in my Spanish, as if all the years of listening started to congeal or something. I'd now describe my ability as "yes, I speak Spanish, but badly," whereas before I'd never really say I spoke it. By speak it, I mean that I can converse in a variety of situations without too much strain or effort.

Despite living in Mexico, I've never really been in a long term fully immersive situation. I have to work in English, and I often had English-speaking friends. As my level has improved, this is starting to naturally change, and now I have friends who I only speak Spanish with. I think my life may head more in the direction of using quite a bit more Spanish, and sometimes I do have days where I use more Spanish than English.

I read about Krashen, AJATT, Steve Kauffman, etc., before I started learning. I read this forum and the old one a lot, and posted a bit, but at this point I can't remember what my user name was.

Most of my learning has been from input, but I also had to get around in the country by myself, so I never had much of a real silent period, not was I really striving for that. I did and still do private lessons once a week for an hour, but I'm not a good student, and I always tent to hijack any attempts my teachers make to actually teach me grammar or anything -- we end up chatting for an hour, and overall this has probably been more useful for me, but not I think it's coming back to haunt me a bit, since I could really use some grammar memorization or something.

There were years when I was in my home country where I just watched an hour or so of a dubbed TV show -- so during my 8 year journey there were four years where my input was limited and I didn't speak at all.

Here in Mexico many English speakers don't achieve a high level of Spanish. Some get pretty good, and have a functional level, but it's a level that's still well before where they function at in English. If the situation were reversed, and they were native speakers of another language trying to learn English, they'd be considered very bad at English. Every gringo I've met here has their level fossilized somewhere. Many don't learn anything more than phrases to get around -- IE they learn output without any input, which doesn't make any sense. Europeans seem to get to very high levels. I'm sure there are many exceptions.

I want to make sure I keep improving. I don't want to get stuck where I am now.

The bulk of my learning has been from dubbed TV shows and audio books. This year, I've listened a lot to local radio. I've had a lot more conversations this year, in all sorts of contexts. Something that massively helped was listening to short 5 to 20 minute clips on repeat (hundreds of times). I also started watching local TV shows, since I'm trying to say things in a more natural or Mexican way, rather than the way they would talk in a dubbed show.

Where do I go from here? I'm assuming all of you have much more experience than me, and have been in this kind of situation before. What should I focus on? Should I start shadowing? Should I watch even more TV? Should I start memorizing grammar, since I've never worked on it before, and I still use the subjunctive and conditional wrong sometimes, and I can get confused with whatever tense it is where you say 'hubiera sido mejor si...' or some tense similar to that one... One problem is that I don't even know which constructions seem to trip me up, and I don't have anyone to point them out to me. I tried to get a good expert online teacher who was supposed to analyze my speech and point me to my errors patterns, but he told me I had an A2 level, and talked to me like I was a moron in a weird slow voice. I don't know what level I have, but it's not A2.

Do I spend more time reading? Reading and writing are my strong suit in English (not that you'd be able to tell from ths post), but in Spanish I made listening my strong suit my doing so much more of it, and neglected reading in favor of audiobooks and TV. Only recently did I start writing in Spanish, so that I could communicate with friends, and it was a strange experience 'translating' my auditory stuff into the written word.

If I just keep on listening and interacting, will I continue to improve?
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luke
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Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby luke » Tue May 31, 2022 8:29 am

Ojalaseaunplanasowe wrote:I want to make sure I keep improving. I don't want to get stuck where I am now.

Where do I go from here? What should I focus on?

Do you have an intuition of what you think would help?
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Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby DaveAgain » Tue May 31, 2022 8:52 am

Translation (English>Spanish) should give you a better understanding of shades of meaning, you could do that.
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Ojalaseaunplanasowe
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Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby Ojalaseaunplanasowe » Tue May 31, 2022 2:44 pm

Leave everything and go! I quit my job and moved. No job here, no close contacts, nothing. Best decision I ever made.
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Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Tue May 31, 2022 2:47 pm

You’ve had a lot of input, which is great. Keep that up. You don’t end up practicing grammar with your tutors. That’s fine. Conversational skills are important, and it’s hard to practice that on your own. I think it’s time for you to tackle a methodical grammar book on your own. I’ve heard good things about this one:

Gramática de uso del español: Teoría y práctica A1-B2 (Spanish Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/8434893517

Start from the beginning and just work through it page by page. You will solidify what you already know and learn new things that you can then practice with your tutor.

Also, since you are in country and have easy access to a range of Spanish books, I would suggest reading a bunch of easy books. Go the library and check out chapter books for kids. Think Goosebumps or Judy Moody. Books you can read quickly and easily. The kind of books you probably wouldn’t want to actually buy but you can use to really solidify your reading skills. I would definitely read out loud to yourself to really make the connection between the sounds and what you see on the page.

Good luck and have fun! (I’m totally jealous BTW. I’d love to spend a day at the library reading Judy Moody in French!)
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Ojalaseaunplanasowe
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Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby Ojalaseaunplanasowe » Tue May 31, 2022 2:48 pm

Do you mean translating writing? I've never done that, but I've often translated between people in real time IE between Mexicans and gringos in various situations.

Gringos have the WORST language learning ability, motivation, and expectations! The only ones I've met who really speak at a high level have lived here since they were little kids.
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Ojalaseaunplanasowe
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Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby Ojalaseaunplanasowe » Tue May 31, 2022 2:49 pm

Thanks for the suggestions about the books. I should add that I can read regular novels (Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, for instance) but it's always slow going. I can read Harry Potter pretty well. Is there value in going to books below the Harry Potter level?
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Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 31, 2022 3:11 pm

It seems to me you are doing the right things and on the right track. Consider that, as you said yourself, you have mainly watched dubbed TV and spent a lot of time initially with English friends speaking in English. Which will have retarded some progress initially. So when you look back and think 'damn it, it's been 8 years!', in reality you'd have to subtract all the time you didn't speak Spanish or interact only in Spanish with Spanish speakers, which perhaps knocks it down to fewer years of intense exposure.

You said this:
As my level has improved, this is starting to naturally change, and now I have friends who I only speak Spanish with.

It's a sign that indeed things are coming together. Listening to the local radio as you are doing is a great idea, as is reading the paper habitually, even if you don't read the whole thing. If anything it provides material for conversations for things going on that people will be concerned with and also some of the phraseology. The more you speak with people, the more they feed you the very language you need and which you can adopt and use.

Also there will always be some gaps. Don't become obsessed with eliminating them all or that the gaps you see yourself will be glaringly obvious for everyone else, or that they'll care all that much. The more you talk to people the more examples you get (some of those might even be 'grammatically wrong', yet common currency) to use yourself.
Last edited by Le Baron on Tue May 31, 2022 5:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby BeaP » Tue May 31, 2022 3:27 pm

The question is: How much time do you have? How much time can you dedicate to learning every day (even on the worst days)? How quickly do you want to improve? Extensive learning (listening and reading a lot without analysing the texts in depth) helps a lot, but it's time-consuming. Reading is beneficial, but if you only have an hour a day, and you dedicate it to reading, you'll progress at the same rate as you've done with listening. So you'll see visible improvement after years. I read some pages before bed, because I don't want to spend my free time with something that brings results slowly. I look up some new words in spanishdict and wordreference, check the definition, the sample sentence and the synonyms. I note them down and revise them before the next reading section.

Ojalaseaunplanasowe wrote:Something that massively helped was listening to short 5 to 20 minute clips on repeat (hundreds of times).

My experience is the same. I've downloaded the audio material of good quality coursebooks with their transcriptions. These dialogues usually contain the basic grammar patterns as well, they are always very dense, serve as an illustration to the main teaching points. I try to listen to them whenever I can. If I learn collocations and patterns by heart this way, I can use them automatically when speaking. I can listen to the material of 2-3 units in 10 minutes. I sometimes repeat after the speakers or read out the dialogue with them.

Grammar books help a lot if you've studied from input. Most people recommend Gramática de uso. It's available on 3 different levels, and its main advantage is the format: 1 page theory, 1 page exercise. You don't need to memorise the rules, but if you read and understand them, you'll be able to correct a lot of mistakes in your own speech. Because of the input you've already had most things will be familiar, you'll just get to know why people use this or that in a certain situation. You'll become aware of things that'll help you with accuracy. Doing the exercises in writing, if needed multiple times also helps a lot. I think one unit can be done in 15 minutes.

Europeans get to high levels because we see the importance of languages already as children. I drive for 3 hours and I'm in a different country with a different language. Although our schools don't excel at language teaching, a lot of us get at least a solid grounding in grammar and the usage of coursebooks: learning techniques, exercise types. I personally got a good base of English and German in school, passed the B2 exam from both before turning 18. I sometimes think that some of the most successful students are those who don't over-complicate things: Get a trusted coursebook and work through it diligently until the end. Don't look for new methods or theories all the time. Use the language whenever they have the possibility.
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Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Tue May 31, 2022 3:32 pm

Ojalaseaunplanasowe wrote:Thanks for the suggestions about the books. I should add that I can read regular novels (Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, for instance) but it's always slow going. I can read Harry Potter pretty well. Is there value in going to books below the Harry Potter level?


I think (occasionally) reading below Harry Potter could help build up speed. I can (very, very slowly) read classics of French literature. (Took me five months to finish Le Rouge et Le Noir!) I would love to plow through a stack of Goosebumps in French. It’s just like teaching kids to read. Sometimes they should reading above their level to stretch themselves, sometimes they should read below their level to consolidate their skills. You have the advantage of easy access to books below your level which is great.
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