Hi, welcome to the forum, Creativa!
(warning: a long post, sorry.
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Creativa wrote:However, I struggle with low confidence in my speaking abilities, and I lack discipline.
I mainly want to learn Spanish because that’s the language my family speaks (and Portuguese), but none of my siblings speak it and I really don’t want the language to die out in my family. I truly want to persevere a piece of my heritage.
Both confidence and discipline can be worked on. Confidence often gets naturally a bit easier as you improve, and further improves with experience. Discipline is a challenge, but you can find many various attitude towards it in our community. Some members achieve great results by being really discipline, they are regular in their learning, stick to the schedule, they are awesome and worth following. Some of us (including myself) have learnt to more or less circumnavigate our problems and challenges in terms of discipline, schedules, and other such stuff.
But based on my small observation of heritage learners all over the internet (as my "heritage langauges" are all three or four generations ago, I am not part of the group), I'd highly recommend you find other reasons to learn, other things to enjoy, and otheir ways to feel reward. Your heritage is good. But don't put all your eggs in one basket, when it comes to motivation.
1. Is it too late for me to become fluent? I’m 18 years old but I’ve been learning on and off since 15. I’m considered intermediate-low on a proficiency rubric which I think is B1.
Not at all. It's normal to achieve a high level in one's twenties or thirties, or even much much later. Have a look in the logs section. We have a few members well above that age (even already retired!), and they are so impressive! 18, that's very young. Don't believe the stereotypes. If 18 was too old to learn something hard like a language to a high level, it would also be too old to learn anything else, like for example getting a university degree.
2. How can I increase my confidence in speaking to other people? Specifically my family. They aren’t the easiest to impress.
-improve your Spanish. It is much easier to be confident, when your confidence is backed by real skills and knowledge. Empty confidence with no skills would be just laughable. Confidence at B1, when you already know quite a lot of stuff but are painfully aware of all that is still left to learn, that's hard.
-Don't be too harsh on yourself. You will mess up many times, you will make mistakes, you will not always speak or interact in the best way you'd want to present yourself (well, that happens even in one's native language). Don't psychologically punish yourself. That's the way to the anxiety hell, not to confidence. It's ok. You're growing. If you don't manage to speak up, or say a nice and complex sentence, or react quickly enough right now, you'll try again next time.
-Don't take impressing your family as your priority. Families are pretty much always the hardest to impress, not only with the language skills. A lot of other aspects will get into this mix, that can motivate their reactions and attack your confidence. Individual members' levels, family traumas, experiences speaking Spanish in the US (I have no doubts some of them have experienced xenophobia and other such "nice" stuff), expectations, overall attitudes towards praising or criticising young family members... Don't rely on it. Impress yourself, impress other people (you can impress us with any miniprogress in your log, if you make one in the logs section. And we are also good at cheering for each other in moments of hardship), the family will eventually get on board. At the latest in a few years, when you're a proven C2, and so at ease in Spanish that nobody sane could doubt your achievement!
3. How do I self-teach myself? I’ve been listening to YouTube videos, music, news and changed my language settings but struggling to come up with a clear and effective schedule.
I'd highly recommend getting a coursebook and following it. A B1 one, a B2 one, perhaps C1. And of course a lot of input, but not only it, or the results won't be optimal at all. I'll return to this a bit later, when reacting to your "I prefer CI" statement.
4. Will I ever reach a convincing accent? Specifically Castilian. I have a Spanish teacher who started learning in college and his American accent is very obvious but I’ve read that after the age of 12 you’re pretty much stuck with your native accent.
What do you mean by convincing? Absolutely native accent? Probably not, you are not a native. But a light neutral accent (not the usual American atrocity. Or the usual atrocity clearly identifying other nationalities either), that's definitely achievable.
You are not stuck due to your age, don't forget that most people with a bad accent in a foreign language (for example millions of non native English speakers) started way earlier than you, and it didn't save them. Others above have already touched the limits of the critical age theory. But above all: it's primarily about what you do. The fact that most people fail at getting a good pronunciation and accent (including your Spanish teacher) is not caused by age. Their failures are mostly due to not having put in the work, not having paid enough attention, or to having been taught wrong and not corrected enough. Not the age. The age is just a comfortable excuse not only for many students, but also for many lazy teachers.
One method of learning I absolutely can’t stand, is consciously learning imperfect, preterite, and other forms of grammar. It makes me feel like I’m stuck in a classroom. I definitely prefer comprehensible input.
From what I've observed, most CI lovers love to hate grammar learning, but are actually really in need of it. They tend to speak badly exactly because they mess up their conjugations, they are just guessing approximatively the grammar, sometimes they've learnt it wrong from deduction, they get stuck on prepositions... It leads in most cases to a huuuuuge difference between the passive and the active skills.
Once you are comfortable with all that grammar, sure, get rid of learning it, forget its terminology, and just use it. But most B1 learners are definitely not there. You are standing right under an avalanche waiting to happen at B1-B2. The avalanche of tons of new stuff mixing up with the basics. That's one of the reasons, why so many people start Spanish and learn the basics and claim "Spanish is such an easy language". And then suddenly there are really few people from B2 up.
In order to not feel like "stuck in a classroom", I'd highly recommend to learn your grammar and other such annoying stuff efficiently. Don't make the usually classroom mistake, don't run in circles and get stuck with every grammar feature for eternity. Learn it reasonably well, move on, review as needed, move on. Either with a normal coursebook, or with very efficient workbooks or equivalents (Gramatica de uso del espanol is awesome. Anaya ELE workbooks are good, and they have also vocabulario and other such topics. Kwiziq is a digital grammar drilling workbook).
I am sorry to tell you the bad news, but it is necessary to learn the grammar. There are more approaches to it, but pure CI simply doesn't work for vast majority of people. You can either complete a few workbooks and move on, or you can Anki a lot of examples as cloze deletion cards, that's a sort of self-made workbook that some people prefer and base on their CI. Or you can try something else.
But avoiding grammar, like most CI dogmatists, that leads just to waste of time and poor results. It's like playing an instrument, expecting to jump straight away to the concert masterpieces, without "wasting time" on technique and "boring" etudes.
I’m a high school student and I can probably dedicate 30-45 minutes to learning the language while in school, but I always find myself burnt out with school work, or a week will go by and I’ve realized I haven’t practiced at all, so I’m critical of myself.
Don't be. You have an important workload at school, of course you are tired. A few tips based on my learning even in medschool: Find what works for you. Don't force yourself to "everyday a bit", if it simply doesn't work for you. For example, I'd highly recommend one or two longer and more study oriented sessions per week, like 2-3 hours. Then a few more times doing more leisure stuff. At B1, it can already be a tv show. Or your SRS reviews. Or Kwiziq (that digital grammar workbook) can feel like a game while being very good.
Look at your schedule. Which days are more exhausting at school and which leave you more energy? What do you do on the weekends? Are you more a morning person, or an evening/night person (like most teens)? Take all that into account. Don't push yourself to 30 minutes every day, if it doesn't suit you. But push yourself to for example 5 hours a week, or 10, or whatever amount is reasonable to you.
Make a reasonable plan, adapted to your needs, and try to show discipline in sticking to it. Not by sticking to an unreasonable fantasy based on someone else's imagined ideal schedule.
And my family does tease me every time I try speaking in Spanish, criticizing my accent or accusing me of not trying hard enough
, hence why I don’t want to sound like my Spanish teacher. I understand it’s mostly in jest but it’s not the best motivator and has made me feel uncomfortable speaking in front of them, so I practice by myself, like when walking my dog for instance.
In those situations, they're clearly being assholes. They decided not to teach you Spanish natively, so they cannot mock you for not being a native. They are not nice about the consequences of their decision. They are not helping. Their "jests" are not really meant as a motivator, it's their fun and your humiliation, even if they might not be fully aware of it. They don't seem to be offering any constructive help, such as regular visits with a grandpa or aunt to speak only in Spanish. So their opinion doesn't matter right now. Yours does.
So, that's why I'd really like to encourage you to find other kinds of motivation, there is so much to love about the Spanish speaking cultures!
Be kind to yourself, treat yourself more like a normal intermediate learner. You are not a failed native, you are a normal intermediate learner. You need to impress yourself, then you'll also impress the others. One day, perhaps you'll tell your family in excellent Spanish how cruel and unhelpful they've been about this. They'll probably end up with tears in their eyes, being all proud and like "of course we meant well and look how we helped you", but you'll know better. Intention and impact are not the same thing.
Learning Portuguese would be nice too, and I can already read some of it, but unfortunately it’s uncommon in most parts of the United States so it would be impractical (most of my Portuguese family lives overseas).
Well, you can start in a few years. And perhaps it will be much easier, as your Portuguese family won't be there to criticise you, they'll get to enjoy your progress and results during visits that you choose to make. And it will be your second foreign language, rather similar to Spanish.
