![]() Similarly, in Spanish, I was learning what words meant, but I never practiced identifying how they sound in full sentences. You’re not going to learn “gonna” unless you hear it in a full sentence! Consider “going to” and “gonna” in English. Connected speech just doesn’t sound the same as single, well-pronounced words. The main reason is that hearing single words does not teach you how to listen. This was an improvement, but not the whole answer. Also, the daily cadence of an SRS was similar to Duolingo, so it was my natural tendency to stick with it. This new approach helped to build up my vocabulary faster and exposed me to more Spanish accents, as spoken by real people. I started to make progress by learning the 5,000 most frequently used Spanish words in Memrise, a spaced repetition system (SRS) app with a focus on listening. Here’s what I did to change what I was doing: Most importantly, the app was mainly focusing on single words and sentences are different I needed to hear a variety of accents, spoken at a natural speed Grammar practice wasn’t exposing me to all the most important Spanish words So why wasn’t it helping?Īfter doing some more research, I realized there were a few reasons: In fact, Duolingo had a lot of listening. I decided that if I wanted to speak and understand Spanish, I needed to focus on two things:Īs an introvert, listening was much easier for me. Even assuming that I was just spending five minutes a day, three years of effort is nearly 90 hours! Luckily, ending my Duolingo streak gave me plenty of time to explore better approaches to learning Spanish. Here’s What I Did to Learn Real Spanish While Still Getting the “Fix” of a Streak That was the day I broke my streak and started actually learning Spanish. I researched the most effective ways to set goals and stay motivated and realized I needed to replace Duolingo with new routines. It was time to go back to first principles and define what I wanted to accomplish so that I could make progress on my terms. It turns out learning new vocabulary spoken by a robot and always with a transcript, wasn’t actually getting me there. Like most other successful language learners, I wanted to be able to listen and speak- to communicate with the people around me. All I had to do was put my time in and I’d get rewarded.īut why did I want to learn Spanish anyway? The allure of gamification gave me a feeling of daily progress. Why? Because instead of thinking critically about my goals, I let Duolingo set my goals for me. I spent three years steadily floating along a Spanish plateau. How I Broke My Duolingo Streak and Started Actually Learning Spanish My conclusion is that I got stuck at this level because I’m so good at studying. Three years and I was stuck around lower intermediate level. The phrase ¿Puede hablar más despacio, por favor? (“Can you speak more slowly, please?”) was my best friend. But I couldn’t understand anyone speaking naturally. In my first three years learning Spanish, I was dedicated. But I wasn’t even fluent after those three years…Īfter reading about Benny’s approach to learning a language in three months, three years seemed like a long time. Studying for 1,033 days meant almost three years of Spanish learning. ![]() Don’t they say that it takes 10,000 hours to master something? But I didn’t feel like a master. ![]() When thought about it, I should have felt proud. That’s learning every day for 1,033 days-24,792 hours. ![]() I learned Spanish, every day, for 1,033 days. Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
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