Tell the monolinguals about your experience phoenix-smug

A lot more of you should be learning Arabic smdh badeline-disgust

  • bdonvr@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    10·
    8 months ago

    I’ve been working on Spanish for 4 months or so now and can speak about simple concepts and can get the gist of most everyday conversations.

    I’m using Dreaming Spanish which uses comprehensible input- just listening no studying grammar or vocab. It was a bit of a slog in the beginning because I could only understand things so simple that they were uninteresting. But after two months at three hours a day I started watching dubbed shows (usually kids shows) like Avatar and Pokémon and could mostly keep up with it. I think a few more months and I’ll be able to have a decent conversation without tripping up. If I keep my responses somewhat simple I can already do a lot. I have a lot of Spanish speakers at work and they have said my pronunciation is very good, and sometimes don’t believe I’ve only been at it 4 months.

    The method is really great IMO. I’ve tried Duo and other traditional methods in the past and never got even close to this far. It definitely helps my listening comprehension miles better. With the other methods speaking and reading seem like math problems where you’re trying to conjugate and put things in order… to me some things just sound “right” and I’m not sure why/couldn’t quite explain it.

    But now I’m hitting that intermediate plateau where it seems the more I learn, the more I know that I don’t know. If that makes sense. A lot of work ahead.

    • 中国共产党万岁@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      3·
      8 months ago

      i’ve heard great things about dreaming spanish as a mandarin learner. the comprehensible input approach seems like the way to go. the hard part is sourcing the right materials, but for spanish it’s awesome because that shouldn’t be a huge obstacle

      • bdonvr@thelemmy.clubEnglish
        3·
        8 months ago

        Indeed. We’re spoiled with Spanish. They have thousands of videos. I’ve seen people starting to do the same with other languages but nothing close to DS.

        If ever I learn a third language, it would be Mandarin. Hopefully someone can build up a similar library for Mandarin! (Or larger, ideally. Since it’s so different than English it takes like double the time)