u/scottadams364

I purchased the 1000 card Spanish frequency deck a few months ago, I’ll reach the 1000th card in a couple weeks. I think Refold claims that these are the 1000 most frequent words that are not cognates or near cognates, and that the rest of the top 4700 words are (near) cognates. Does anyone know how accurate that is?

When I finish the deck, I was thinking about speeding through a 5000 most frequent words deck, which the creator built straight from an official frequency dictionary. In theory, if Refold’s claims are accurate, almost all the cards will either be repeats from the Refold deck (quick easy button or suspend), or (near) cognates that should be quick and easy to learn (less time spent on retrieval and reviews, mostly with easy button deferment).

There are many basic words I don’t know that haven’t come up in the Refold deck. That tells me that they are probably cognates that I could even guess correctly, but I haven’t been exposed to them. Ripping through a few thousand cognates would greatly increase my output vocabulary. When I need to pull a word now that’s “probably” a cognate, I will be more confident to say it if I can remember that it’s in fact correct.

Takeaway question:
Has anyone confirmed to any degree if the whole “3700 of the top 4700 words are cognates) claim?

I put maybe 20 hours into Español Al Vuelo, and I was understanding like 95% or better. I recently moved to Spanish Boost Podcast, I’m a few hours in. It is a couple notches more advanced in both vocabulary and speed, as expected. I’m understanding around 85%. There are definitely more words that I don’t know than in the last podcast. Do you think this level of comprehension is acceptable for CI?

Where do you get your content for reading, like graded readers or otherwise? I want to read primarily on my phone. I don’t mind purchasing some stuff as needed, but do you buy PDFs, or kindle books? Import purchased content to LingQ? What have you found is your process? People say “200k words read” etc, how are they tracking that?

EDIT:
Thanks for the suggestions. I purchased a Juan Fernández kindle book for $6. I probably won’t be reading so much that the cost is an issue, so buying is the simplest route.

I’m early intermediate in Spanish. I only find a couple hours a day for study (which includes any CI) because I’m doing things with my family. Well my wife will be in Europe for 2 weeks in the fall (I’m in Arizona). Besides work and having my 13 yo with me (he’s pretty low maintenance and independent), I’m pretty much a free bird for 2 weeks. I’d love to take this opportunity to dive deep in a useful way into my Spanish. Does anyone have ideas how I can use this time? I currently do 1 hour a week of iTalki conversation, should I just book a couple hours every day and rack up like 20 hours of output? Anyone ever find like a local community that does pure conversational meetups or anything like that? I feel like I could cram 3 months of progress into these 2 weeks if I’m smart about it, but not sure how exactly. Would love some ideas.

Does anyone know of a great video doing a thorough deep dive on common profanity and how it’s used? Ideally it would be mostly stuff that would apply in Mexico.

I don’t think I’ve watched DS in about a month. Almost all of my input since then has come from Español Al Vuelo. I quite enjoy the podcast, and since I rarely dedicate fully focused time to input, I’m usually doing something that prevents me from actively watching a video, so the audio only format is working best for me. For now I’m keeping my DS subscription because it’s a cheap backup option, and I owe Pablo a little more money since it’s what got me into comprehensible input. I really disagree with the pure ALG approach, but comprehensible input is definitely a key ingredient of a well-rounded approach. I’m interested to see if I have progressed enough that I can jump from difficulty 50 to difficulty 55 or so on DS after these additional hours away. Eventually I will run out of episodes of this podcast, and will move onto the next, which I think will be either Spanish Boost Podcast or Español a la Mexicana. One of those seems like the logical next step. I hope I enjoy it as much as this one.

I just booked a cruise for next spring, and the itinerary includes 1 port stop in DR. This will be the first time since restarting my spanish study that I’ll have a sure opportunity to speak with a native. When I’m there, I’ll be half way to my 2 year goal of being conversationally fluent (“comfortable” is more accurate). In the past 3 months my skills have increased at a rate I’m pleased with. I’m looking forward to seeing how much better I can get by then. 1 day is a silly motivation, but there will be more travels in the future!

I posted after my first session about how much fun I had. Then I posted after my second session, with a different tutor, about how different and frankly bad it was. I tried third tutor, which was definitely better than the second, and I wouldn’t necessarily hesitate to book with her again. But I’ve since had two more sessions with the first tutor, and man, he’s so great, enjoyable, and it’s always such a positive productive experience. I just really lucked out that I had such a good fit my first try. If anyone has tried iTalki once and didn’t have a good experience, I would recommend trying a few more people, because it might be you just haven’t found the right person yet.

I’m curious if others relate to this. When I’m listening to CI, I hear sentences and automatically think, “yeah I definitely knew that’s how you say that.“ In the moment it feels like, “that’s how I would’ve said it too.“ But then when I’m speaking (at a level 4, I know, shame on me), I REALLY struggle to form sentences, even when in hindsight I feel like I should’ve known how to say that. It just doesn’t come out the way I’d expect it to in real time, and even with major hesitation, I often fail to find the right words. Does anyone else notice this disconnect?

I just had my second iTalki session. I tried a different tutor to test out multiple options, even though my first tutor was really good. I'm lucky this was my second experience and not my first, or I wouldn't come back.

From the get-go she was talking too fast for me. I asked her to speak slower, and she did, a little bit. She asked questions and as I struggled to answer, she would interrupt me too soon to ask a follow-up question or give her own personal opinions about the question. She would ask me something like, "What do you like to do in your free time? For example, maybe this, or that, or this, or that, or this, or that..." It was too much input at once and just wasn't feeling conversational.

After the third or fourth time I told her she was speaking too fast for me, she went on a speech about how it's not going to do me any favors if she speaks slower and that I need to get used to listening to regular speed speech. She went on for five minutes about why that's the way it should be done, and her experience learning English, etc. Basically it's sink or swim and being forced to keep up will benefit me in the long run. She said she'll slow down if that's what I want but she doesn't recommend it. I told her I listen to 1 hour a day of comprehensible input that progressively gets more advanced, and that when I pay for the session I want to be using it to speak. If I have to keep saying "sorry I wasn't getting that" and asking her to repeat herself, it's not very productive. I only spoke for 10-15 minutes of the hour in total, and it felt uncomfortable, intimidating, and discouraging.

After that experience, I feel like I struck gold with my first tutor. I had booked two days in a row with her get something on the books because I knew I was going to have free time two days in a row. Now I want to cancel my lesson for tomorrow. Is that crappy, how do I navigate that? Even if I have to pay for tomorrow's cancelled session, it doesn't matter, because it was stressful and not enjoyable.

I’m wondering how many people used the platform like this. I took 3 years of high school Spanish over 25 years ago, so I have a foundation. I’ve been on this journey for a couple months now. I listen to an hour/day of comprehensible input (early intermediate level), study Anki Flashcards, and use ChatGPT a LOT to explain whatever questions cross my mind (details/nuances). I spend at least 2 hours a day on Spanish related learning.

I had 1 (90 minute) iTalki session so far. I said “I just want to talk, my speaking abilities are poor so I need practice. Please guide the conversation and give some corrections along the way, but I want to use almost all this time to keep speaking.” The session was enjoyable and I feel like doing this 1-2 times a week over time would be quite beneficial. Who else uses iTalki for a conversation partner rather than to LEARN their language?

I decided to jump right in with iTalki, and booked an HOUR AND A HALF session! I had a rare free afternoon and figured screw a 30 minute trial session, I might as well make use of this opportunity. It definitely wasn’t pretty, but I am so pleased that I was able to successfully communicate almost completely in my target language (Spanish) for the whole session. As the time went on, I felt myself getting more comfortable. The main improvement I was noticing in real time was my ability to pivot if I didn’t know how to say something, and think of another way to say it. The tutor I selected turned out to be a great fit and I look forward to having this in my tool kit of resources.

I get frustrated that so much of the language seems to be random, only learned by memorization and repetition over time. I think “why do thay say this instead of that, it doesn’t make sense?” Then I think about all the off-the-wall stuff we have in English and how automatic it is for us. For example, an actor is IN a movie, but ON a tv show. You’re IN a car but ON a plane (cue Seinfeld music). I’d have no idea how to explain to an ESL student why, but we all know which one sounds right. At this point with Spanish I’m still doing a lot of translating and mental gymnastics, but I hope at some point it all just subconsciously makes sense.

The road map in Dreaming Spanish, the way it’s written, implies that you should be able to communicate basics in Spanish at level 4 (but it also says that you shouldn’t start speaking yet, which in itself is contradictory). I'm not an ALG purist, so I do practice speaking, but even still my ability to understand is far ahead of my ability to speak. Do you guys notice this as well? For those at more advanced levels, did you find that a certain point your output skills advanced at a rapid rate?

I want to share a way I came up with to practice speaking my target language. When I need to type on my phone or computer, for example for emails or text messages, I speak my message in a translation app in the language I’m learning with voice to text, and copy the translation into English. It helps me practice speaking and I can see if what I've said was good or not. And I can reverse the translation to learn things to improve, like what I said wrong or how I could have said it better. I'm doing it now. Then I make the necessary corrections to send.

The problem I have many times is that I don't know what I should say to practice, but with this, I have specific things to say. And I learn new things in a way that I’m more likely to remember, and my pronunciation needs to be pretty good for it to work.

My main tip is that you have to set the keyboard in the language you speak to correctly recognize the words, but it’s really easy to switch back-and-forth both on the phone and the computer.

If anyone has ever heard of a resource to buy Uniform Plumbing Code flashcards for Anki, I’d absolutely love that. I know IAPMO makes physical sets.

I’m currently a solid A2 level leaning toward B1. I really live Qroo Paul’s teaching style and disposition, and I’m interested in joining his Spanish Crew. I’m tempted to go all in off the bat for $150 lifetime instead of $20 monthly. Has anyone here joined and have good or bad things to say about it?

At 300 hours, I'm comfortably watching DS videos around difficulty 50. I'm having trouble finding outside CI content between Chill Spanish (too easy) and Learn Spanish and Go (a little too hard). Chill Spanish is a good option while I'm working because it's not too distracting, but the benefits are probably fairly minimal (still better than nothing during that time). Perhaps a solid option when I can focus more is Learn Spanish and Go, and just accept that my comprehension will only be around 80%. But even then I'm thinking DS is still my best option for awhile. Any ideas of podcasts that fall between those two?

Anki is ideal for long term retention. I use it for language learning myself. But there are times that I:

1 - want to review cards multiple times in a short setting, and
2 - don’t want those cards getting lumped in with my future reviews.

For those purposes, I still will use Quizlet. I can review as little or as often as I please without limitations or commitment. This goes for my language studies as well. I can study a bulk of themed vocab, like animals at the zoo, or food items, etc. Temporarily, without the SRS algorithm getting in the way. Great for when I complete daily Anki reviews but still have juice to study more. With Quizlet I can fill in extra time gaps without overloading my future reviews.

Do others do this too?