Kevin wrote:Hello everyone. This is my first time posting to the forums and I am glad to be a part of this forum!
I am 24 and I really want to be a polyglot. Right now I have a very burning passion to learn French and Spanish. My goal is to get to B1+ level in them and one day travel to France and Spain. My goal is to hopefully achieve a B1 level by the summer of 2020 and go then.
For me, I really do love learning both of these languages, but I have read from a lot of posts that most people recommend only learning 1 language at a time. But for me I have a strong desire to learn both. Some are saying do 2 years of study in one language and then move on to another. But My goal is to be a B1 in both French and Spanish in 2 years by the summer of 2020. I have mainly just used Pimsleur to learn the basics for now and have finished the first level of french and am almost done with the 1st level of Spanish. What I have done was I started with the french and entirely focused on that for a month, and when I hit a plateau I would take a break. But instead of just taking a break and doing nothing I decided to learn Spanish and did several of the lessons on Pimsleur for, again, another month. Then I went back and brushed up on what I learned already and was able to bust through the plateau from French. The same thing applied when I hit a plateau in Spanish and came back to it again I busted through it too. I have have found this helpful when needing to take a break from a language and work on another rather than just not learn at all.
My goal is to be a polyglot and be at a B1+ level in both French and Spanish.
My question is, is it okay to learn both? Would it be fine to maybe focus on one for 4-6 weeks and then switch to the other for another 4-6? I find this helpful to not burn out in one language, and when I come back to it later I often am able to progress. Would you say this is okay to continue doing? Or would you recommend me focusing on just one language?
Also, one another quick question. The resources I am using for both French and Spanish are Pimsleur levels 1-5, Assimil, Teach yourself, Schaum's grammar outline, and the FSI. I plan to do all of those in order, as well as the Using French Assimil as well. Do you think these resources combined with practice speaking with someone will get to a B1 level?
Thank you guys!
Iguanamon and Speakeasy have pretty much covered the bulk of what I'd say. Keep cool, pick one and run with it for 6 months, and see how you feel after that. I think that it's feasible for someone like you to reach at least CEFR A2 in 6 months of regular but not excessive study (say an average of about one hour per day, and maybe 1.5 hours on each of Saturday and Sunday divided into two 45-minute halves: one before lunch, one before supper) using all the freebies out there (hint: the DLI
Headstart courses for
French and
Spanish (3 variants based on geography) are superior alternatives to the respective full courses by Pimsleur for those languages), although you've already shelled out for some learning material already.
Alternating languages every 4 to 6 weeks doesn't sound bad but since you're practically still a monoglot, there's a real risk that whatever you had learned in 4 to 6 weeks of studying the first language will have been forgotten or noticeably overriden/degraded by what you've studied in the second language over the following 4 to 6 weeks. It doesn't help your cause that French and Spanish are fairly similar, and your command in either language just won't be strong enough in either language for some time to keep interference at an acceptably low level.
The nearest experience that I've had to yours is many years ago when I started learning Croatian while working on Polish. At times I had difficulty keeping the languages apart and I was doing this as a full-time working stiff by day, so my motivation to study something varied from one day to the next. As I see it, the differences between my experience and what you want to do are the following:
1) I was a high-beginner in Polish at that time, and already had got experience learning other languages on my own in the preceding years (and was no longer a monoglot).
2) I began learning Croatian once I had resolved to travel to Croatia within 6 months (including booking plane tickets). There was an obvious goal for me but...
3) ...I wasn't interested in learning it to that high of a level. The concrete steps for learning were to complete "Teach Yourself Croatian" and "Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language" before taking off, and then see what would happen. I didn't worry about Pimsleur, FSI or other courses.
Looking back, I wouldn't have taken on Croatian while also studying Polish without that trip to Croatia in mind. There was the interference that I had to deal with, and the fact that Polish was much more accessible to me since I had been going at it for a longer time and had Polish friends with whom I regularly met or chatted.
At certain points in your studies, it'd be worthwhile getting a certain sense (mainly in reading/listening comprehension, and writing) of how much you're retaining by taking practice exams at the desired level (A1, A2 etc.) of
DELF (French) or
DELE (Spanish). You can find plenty of links to legally-available copies of practice exams in Google using "DELF", "DELE", "sample exam", "mock exam", "practice test" and similar. You could also buy workbooks of practice exams but I think that this would be more suitable if you were to end up registering for an exam to certify your knowledge.