Yes, I know that makes me sound like a particularly cruel person - but what this reveals is that you are pushing yourself far beyond your comfort zone, and that means you’re giving your brain the kind of really intensive linguistic exposure that very few learners can push themselves hard enough to do… so well done you!
That 75% rate for Challenge 25? That is far, far, far higher than you need it to be, and shows you’ve done a stunningly good job of internalising the Level 1 material - leave it for now, don’t do it again (until maybe the night before you travel).
What’s happening is that you’ve never gone this fast before - and it’s taking you into neurologically uncomfortable and unsettling experiences - but press on, and trust that all this exposure IS going to give you very valuable learning (it’s not the end of the process, but it is a huge and important part of it).
I’d even say, since you’re having a sprint, that although the advice about taking a rest is excellent advice, you might want to try pressing on for now - if you feel as though your levels drop significantly the next time you do a day with 3 sessions, then flag that up here, and maybe we’re getting to ‘take a break’ territory - but for now, I’d recommend pushing yourself a little bit, and maybe shouting at me instead of the PC [Since it is unquestionably my fault your brain is currently this tired].
Thanks Aran and everyone for the feedback. So what I’ve realised from looking back over my diary to previous times I’ve struggled -and over the last couple days- is that my most “negative” experiences are when I complete the challenges late at night or back to back with no break between them. So I restructured my day today, difficult as I’m generally a night owl, but I did challenge 7 at 1pm in my lunch break, 8 just after I finished work and 9 mid evening. That’s worked much better, Monday I did 3 challenges back to back at about 11pm and really got frustrated. I think as well as being out of my comfort zone I was just really tired.
So going to follow same routine tomorrow and leave the late night learning time for listening exercises and Spanish Radio. Oh and on that note, am actually picking up a fair bit of what they’re saying on there now, I obviously can’t follow it completely but I get the odd phrase and can tell if they’re talking about politics, immigration, film review etc. Was very excited yesterday when someone on radio said they had been talking to someone last weekend and also they had to think about something again, I was grinning like a fool because I understood it, but no idea who they talked to or what they had to think about lol.
Anyhow, thanks again for all the support and I’m persevering. Will let you know how 10-12 go tomorrow
That sounds like a HUGELY valuable piece of personal learning you’ve gone through - tiredness is definitely a really tough extra challenge for your pre-frontal cortex - so structuring your approach to break things up and not end up with too much stuff at night is almost certainly going to be a very, very valuable switch for you.
And to be honest, whenever I see someone thinking this carefully about their learning, I’m absolutely certain they’re going to end up as fluent as they want to be…
Sorry haven’t updated for a while, was really busy before leaving UK and rarely had internet since.
Managed to finish both levels before arriving in Spain and now it’s just practice, practice, practice!
Listening to Spanish radio as much as poss, reading bits n pieces from the newspapers and having few conversations in Spanish. Told one of the local bar owners that I’m learning so he is now helping me by refusing to acknowledge anything I say unless I try to say it in Spanish first. He’s actually a great help and is correcting me as needed.
Went to a Spanish tapas bar today and spoke only Spanish there too. Hubby was amazed that we got we wanted from menu. (I didn’t tell him that while my white wine was lovely I’d actually wanted red but got confused when ordering)
Off to Spanish village tomorrow and will try to have a few conversations there too.
I hope your trip is going as well as your Spanish appear to be. Now that you’re surrounded by Spanish all the time, are you finding that you are understanding more and more every day?
Sorry for delay in replying, lost Internet for a while.
Trip was great, used a lot of what I’d learnt and picked up a few new things. The most fascinating thing was the unintentional “eavesdropping” that I did. We went on a couple rural bus and train journeys and I was so surprised at how much of the conversations going on around me were quite clear and easy to understand.
That sounds like a hugely impressive level of success - it’s usually one of the last things that people start to get the hang of - huge congratulations!
