The Unconfident Spanish Learner's Blog

Spanish
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Level 2, Challenges 1, 2 and 3

I’m back after being really ill last month.

I have finished Level 1 but I don’t know…it felt like it went past without much fanfare or sense of accomplishment. I’m not sure why.

I’m seriously lacking in motivation right now. All the people I know who speak Spanish either went to Spanish-language school or got to study it from a young age, culminating in a degree. Or they live with Spanish speakers. Feels pretty impossible for someone like me to achieve what they’ve achieved. I’d love to be on a course but they were fully booked in my city and new term doesn’t start till September (some are fully booked already for September).

The first three lessons of Level 2 were OK, although I am forgetting to use a all the time. I’m unsure of the grammar behind it, but it seems to crop up everywhere.

Anyway, feeling pretty rubbish about it all right now and wondering if maybe learning a language isn’t for me- why do I want to do this anyway? I ‘wanted’ [felt I ought to] learn Welsh because I thought it would help me fit in in a new country, and I suppose I thought Spanish would be fun and open up a lot of opportunities. I can’t seem to get very interested in things though.

Anyway, that is my update after what feels like a long time!

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Sorry to hear you’ve been unwell. Welcome back, and I hope you are feeling lots better and stay well from now!

I can relate; my health hasn’t been great lately and I’ve not done much active learning as in lessons, just watching television and looking up the odd word in a dictionary. Motivation has not been high.

Still, every tiny bit of improvement helps. A new word here, a sentence understood without subtitles there. You don’t need to be a “master linguist” or have any qualifications at all, unless you really, really want them, and what other people have achieved doesn’t matter.

There are Spanish shows online, a whole thread on this forum for Spanish music videos, etcetera. Just because you aren’t in Spain doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to engage with the culture. There’s probably something you’d like if you went looking. Pick something, give it a go, be proud of yourself if you catch words you understand (and do not get down on yourself if you don’t catch as much as you think you “should”) and just… let yourself move at your own pace.

Maybe do sign up to one of those September classes before all the spaces go, if you feel class learning will suit you.

If you stop right here “only” able to understand more Spanish than most of us who don’t speak it, that’s cool too. Having a clue how to pronounce things on the menu at your local tapas place, or greeting the staff in basic Spanish, is still valuable. Language ability doesn’t only “count” if you’ve achieved such fluency that you can defend your dissertation in it.

And by the way, noticing that you keep missing a, and getting frustrated by that… is very likely a sign that you’ve almost got it. :grinning_face: If you haven’t read/listened to any of Aran’s musings on the process of learning, and the power of mistakes, you probably should!

Very likely someone here can explain the grammar for you if you ask, which may help you to make it stick.

Tl;dr: You know the drill. Take the pressure off yourself. Do what works for you and don’t compare yourself to others. Celebrate every achievement, however “small”. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Level 2, Challenges 4-8

I feel like I’ve done a lot this week! I actually found all of these challenges a really manageable level of difficulty- it didn’t feel like there were any huge jumps in difficulty.

I bought a grammar book. All the tenses are intimidating- there are just so many with only tiny differences in usage and people online are saying ‘yes, you need to learn and use every one’. I’m sure sometimes that some people who’ve learnt a language to fluency get a kick out of telling beginners how complex and difficult it is. :roll_eyes:

I have signed up for a class in September. It’s a long way away but I’ve realised that class learning is the only way I learn. A friend who started with Spanish the same time as me on Duolingo and YouTube videos has just been accepted straight onto an ‘Advanced Beginners’ course as he’s able to talk about himself, ask questions and describe his holiday… Meanwhile I’m here mumbling “My son works for the council”.

I just don’t feel like I could have an actual conversation yet with anyone. I’m trying to study all the verb endings but I just feel like I’m floundering around not making efficient use of time or resources.

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Fantastic, a class has many assets. Im an annoying glass half full kind of guy lol. If its far away in distance its a great chance to listen to challenges, music, podcasts whilst driving there and back. Thats what i do whilst walking to gym. But a class will introduce you to others. Possibly same level. Although classes are a mixed bag of beginners, returning beginners, intermediates who haven’t moved on etc. But you’ll have someone to ask questions in English and Spanish. The teacher and those annoying non moving intermediates lol. In the scale of things attending a class is high on list of things to do. You’ll Possibly get hand outs, work in pairs, get emails of homework and places to learn online. Maybe even someone from near you is travelling too. You could share the journey or meet up between classes. A good idea ASAP is to form a WhatsApp etc group. Where yous can write, speak in recordings and read Spanish. Tons of advantages if you dig in.

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Level 2, Challenges 9-15

Only a short update as I’m busy at the moment but still working through the challenges.

Found 10 and 11 so hard but the rest very manageable.

Struggling with determining when it’s de and when it’s sobre.

Also all the siento vs. pareció vs. pienso stuff is so confusing. (yes I know those are all different tenses and different people)

I think I definitely need a class environment. I just can’t think how I’d have an actual conversation with anyone about anything yet. I’m expanding my vocabulary using another app at the moment. And trying my best to fit those 40-minute-long (!) tourist course lessons in too.

That is it for now anyway.

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Challanges 16 and 17

I am completely struggling now. There is just such a vast array of different tenses and bits of grammar being thrown about now.

Has anyone else done these two? Did you feel the same about them? I feel like I’m constantly treading water with this course and always a few steps behind, never quite catching up to myself.

My mind is just going blank on all those lengthy phrases I could parrot from Challenge 15 just fine when I did it.

And the listening exercises are just indecipherable to me now. They’re just noise. It’s so disheartening just as I was getting back into it. Feeling like I never get a chance to properly learn a structure before we’re whisked away and the structure changes.

Why ‘What did you think about it’ is sometimes Qué te pareció but sometimes Qué te pareció SOBRE ESO is a mystery to me. Oh, and sometimes it isn’t even sobre but de! And of course sometimes they didn’t even want you to say pareció but pensaste!

And one thing I just cannot get right is saying vayas. Doesn’t help that I don’t know what tense it is or why we use it. By the end of Challenge 17 I’m still saying ir Every. Single. Time. That it is supposed to be vayas.

I would ask for an explanation but I don’t even know what it is I don’t understand. Fed up and frustrated

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It does sound as though you’re having a particularly difficult time. I’d be inclined to suggest that you might prefer a different approach, were it not for the fact that you have actually done very well to get so far through Level 2.

Can I ask a couple of questions, to see if I can help?

Have you had any conversations in Spanish yet?

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Thank you. I do get at least 75% right when I do the challenges for the first time (haven’t actually tried to measure so it’s an estimate) but yes I do find it incredibly hard going.

This isn’t a criticism of SSi by the way; I’m sure it’s a good method, I suspect I am just bad at languages. Which is a shame because I desperately want to learn at least one.

I think my main thing is confidence- to answer your question, no I haven’t had a conversation in Spanish. I’m not really sure what I’d talk about and I just don’t have the nerve to.

Not expecting you to have the answer to that of course, I know it’s a hard problem! Other areas of life I’ve managed to improve confidence but with languages it’s never come- it’s got worse actually.

The other thing I struggle with is not having grammar explained. I’ve just done Challenge 20 of Level 2 and having it explained that parecio is for talking about opinions made it so much less confusing. Also having an explanation of the difference between fue and era made things easier.

Of course, it’s very, very possible that I’m just not putting in enough effort (it does seem like a huge number of the successful learners I meet are retired, hence more likely to have more free time), or that I’m just not cut out to speak languages.

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Getting 75% right on the first try is not in any way shape or form “being bad at languages”!!!

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I think you might just be lacking a little context, actually.

As Verity says, getting 75% right when you do the challenges for the first time actually puts you comfortably in the top 10% of our learners (if not higher). It would make you better than all but a handful of the celebrities I’ve coached for our Welsh language TV show.

What might be happening here is that because you lack context to assess your progress, and you have some confidence issues, it’s particularly hard for you to put up with the lack of control that this approach forces on you - so naturally you want explanations and grammar to give you that sense of control - and we don’t provide that, because in our experience it slows the process rather than accelerating it.

You’ve successfully got through a lot of the language - the tail end of Level 2 is no joke. We used to take people on week long immersion experiences in Welsh after doing just Level 1, and they got through it (with challenges and frustration here and there, but also with a lot of success).

I think the next step for you is clear.

You need to find someone you can spend an hour with, just saying whatever you can manage to say in Spanish, and not falling back on any English at all. There will be lots of pauses! And there will be lots of lines of conversation you just have to give up on, because you can’t finish them - that’s okay. Ideally, it would be someone you know, because that will feel easier with your current levels of uncertainty.

But a single hour would show you that you’ve done much, much better than you currently realise.

I don’t have a lot of spare time, so I’d be very grateful if you’d have a real crack of the whip at finding someone else to do this with, but if you draw a complete blank, tag me in here and we can do an online call together :slight_smile:

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Thank you very much for your advice.

And thank you for not taking my ‘blog’ or my frustrations as criticisms of the SSi method! :slight_smile:

I have a friend who is learning Spanish. He started at the same time as me but has zoomed ahead and was able to go straight into intermediate-level classes. I’m sure he’d be willing to try to have a conversation. I just need to break the ice about it.

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Oh, that sounds absolutely ideal! Let us know how it goes. But really, really commit to the hour without any English - you need to go through the ‘stuck, can’t think of anything!’ stages to give your brain the room and time to start to produce… the normal thing is to try for five minutes or so, tell yourself that you’re not doing very well, and give up - and that doesn’t give your brain what it needs. So sit with the discomfort, spend the time trying, and by the end of the first hour you’ll already have given your brain a huge boost. If you do an hour a week, or even an hour a month, you’ll start to see the success that you’re not feeling at the moment :slight_smile:

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Update: finishing Level 2

Not sure if anyone’s interested but I have finished Level 2 now!

I’m working my way through the Tourist Course which is a good pace for me personally.

Sometimes I go back to the last Challenge of Level 1 and that seems OK. I do have a lot of questions though about grammar points which I’ll have to make in another post.

Haven’t reattempted Challenge 25 of Level 2 yet as I can’t face it at the moment. Challenge 24 made me realise how I barely know anything from that whole second level.

Anyway, that is all there is to report!

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That’s a huge achievement! You’re doing so much better than you realise. And with 24 and 25 of Level 2, just revisit them once a month or so and you’ll see how it will gradually start to feel less impossible. :slight_smile:

But the absolutely central thing - have you had that conversation with your intermediate friend?!

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Thank you.

No, I’m afraid I haven’t. It is still possibly on the cards though.

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Now you’ve done this much, you really do just need time in conversation for it all to blossom. If you’d like to do an hour online with me, let me know :slightly_smiling_face:

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Very Negative Update

Tried Challenge 25 of Level 2 again and can honestly say this is the lowest I’ve ever felt about my Spanish ability. I just don’t know how I have forgotten so much so quickly.

I still don’t understand the difference in usage between de and sobre even though that’s simple stuff, and after the 25-minute mark I could barely get out three words.

Has anyone else of the few of you still doing Spanish done this challenge?

All the después and antes stuff completely threw me and I have so many questions. I just don’t understand why I’m so bad at this still!

Sorry for ranting everyone but I seem to have got worse over time, and I just can’t feel positive about it when I’m always making mistakes-silly mistakes which I ought to know by now. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was actually saying something, but I just go blank.

I know I’m supposed to be speaking it but I can’t see myself speaking when I’m this bad at the practice exercises.

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Thank you for the offer but I’m sure you’re very busy and I think I’d be better to stick to talking to other learners. I do appreciate the thought though

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Take a break, and don’t be so hard on yourself. Putting pressure on yourself is a very effective way to be unable to speak at all - I had a phone call the other day in English, and was… talking… like.. this… by the end of it due to stress.