Image by Tiểu Bảo from Pixabay
It has come to the point that I feel so bored with learning Spanish that I just can’t watch another video or listen to a minute of podcast. I guess every language learner experiences this moment of crisis at one point or another when reading or listening is still an uphill battle but the excitement of the beginner is gone. The fact is that in the beginning the progress is more conspicuous, and one feels one’s improvement, which fuels one’s enthusiasm as if the language is reciprocating your love and handing you rewards for every little bit of effort you make.
And then the improvement stops and one comes to a plateau, where the struggle remains the same but the progress stalls. It feels like one’s love for a narcissistic friend or relative–one just keeps giving love but never receiving any love back. Anybody who tries to connect with a narcissist will feel like bumping one’s head against a brick wall. Not only that, the narcissist’s innate antagonism against you makes you feel that you are hated but tolerated, which is completely demoralizing. As soon as one feels this way, one should escape as fast as one can.
I digress. Now coming back to Spanish, which is at the moment not responding to my effort, but still I know it is not an emotionless narcissist and if I keep working on it half an hour a day, it will eventually reward me with comprehension in the distant future. Let’s hope that the distance is not too great and the reward is especially sweet.
I’ve been trying different ways to make the learning more tolerable. Here are several things I’ve tried. And last week, I “invented” a little game, which I was quite proud. And this is it:
Invent A Word Game
I invented this word (or phrase) game. For example, I can write in google.translate.com several words with corresponding short phrases. I use words with two or three or more meanings, like share, bark, time, fine, mean, work. And google will tell me the Spanish words and phrases. It is interesting to see that when English uses one word, for example a word like “time” to mean both repetition and duration, Spanish will use two different words. I will type out sentences like “What time is it?” and “How many times do I have to do this?” and “through space and time”. English use the word “time” for all three occasions, but Spanish would use three different words.
Well, I won’t say it is an interesting game, but it gives one a little bit of diversion to see three different words in Spanish. I think it can be interesting if I can come up with one or two puns for “time”, but I am not smart enough to do that. And I’ve long given up trying to be smarter than I really am.
I think next I am going to try English homophones (words sound alike but spell differently), like bolder vs. boulder, site vs. sight, hole vs. whole, dual vs. duel. Since Spanish have so many English cognates, I expect that Spanish will also produce similar sounding words for these homophones. Well, let’s see.
Language Tests
I’ve tried different language tests, which can wake up one’s competitive spirit and give one a bit of motivation.
ChatGPT
I haven’t figured out how to use it to aid my Spanish learning. It is said it can create stories or jokes etc., but I used it and didn’t feel like its story or joke very much. Probably my instruction to ChatGPT was too boring, which made ChatGPT yawn or frown or bored.
Poems
I’ve tried one or two simple Spanish poems, but my language skills are not good enough to let me enjoy them.
YouTube Shorts & Instagram
I’ve tried this and I really like it. So every day, I would try some YouTube shorts and IG posts for Spanish.
Songs
There are many English Spanish dual subtitled songs on YouTube, but since I am not very musical, I can’t really enjoy them. I guess a person who likes music or songs can enjoy it more for language learning.
Haoyan Do 
Learning a new language is hard but I definitely feel that listening to music and media with the language makes it more interesting to learn, as I always get so excited when I am watching a movie in the language I am learning and I can make out some of the meaning. 🙂
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All good suggestions but I hope you will encourage yourself to continue because if you can learn English as well as you have you can learn anything!
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Thank you for your encouragement. Like always. I have to say learning English was quite painful for me since the method was all wrong and it was a lot of effort for very little result for many years. Unfortunately the vocab memorization and grammar rule method are still prevalent in language education. That’s the sad part.
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Well, I have to preach to myself as well because I want to learn Spanish, too but I haven’t really started anything. At least you are doing something. We do have a lot of small Spanish-speaking shops around for when I get ready to practice in real life. We also have a lot of people in our church who speak Spanish and are waiting for me to learn.
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I have to say Spanish looks frighteningly complicated. I am glad English doesn’t have so many verb conjugations. I would have gone totally mad if it does. I guess the easiest way to learn Spanish is to turn on the dual subtitle in Chrome browser. Then listen to youtube videos for half an hour a day. It is said when one accumulates 600 hours, one will be comfortable with it. I am only half way there. LOL. You have such a supportive environment for Spanish learning. I really envy you.
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I learnt basic Spanish from watching Telenovela’s. They’re so dramatic and amusing. But I stopped watching them as an adult since I no longer have time for such stuff and forgot most of it. I would definitely recommend Telenovela’s since there are so many narcissistic characters in them and I know that’s something you are interested in.
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Great suggestion. Let me watch it to see if I can understand it. I won’t be able to follow complicated stuff. Right now I am still at the baby B1 level. LOL. And I can only do simple things and comfortable with uncomplicated stories. Gosh, narcissism is everywhere nowadays…
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Try YouTube if it’s too hard. Type a word in Spanish (be careful tho) and see what you find. I like typing in “acuarelas” or “pintar con mí” and seeing what I can get.
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Lol it’s fine you can watch it with subtitles switched on. It’ll still help you learn especially with pronunciations and things.
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I tried, but my Spanish is not good enough to follow. I have to try simpler stuff first. LOL.
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Lol maybe in the future when you get better at Spanish.
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Well, I don’t know anything that’d help per say, but what I like doing is sitting with a dictionary or verb book (a free online dictionary for Spanish is spanishdict.com) and I write a short story.
You also can do a Wikipedia entry search and read random crap on Wikipedia or if you’re an inspiring etymologist (joke) then you can look stuff up on wikitionary and write about it.
Cheat if you have to. You’ll still learn. It’s not a test, it’s your progress and if you don’t work on it, you won’t learn.
You also can blog in Spanish. I’m trying to do something like that but BOY is it exhausting?😂
ChatGPT is nothing I tried but I’m too lazy to use or try AI but maybe you can do something with that.
You also can speak gibberish sentences with Spanish sounds like a baby or like you have something wrong with you and try to get the sounds correct. (This one is fun. I cannot sing in Hindi or in Spanish very well so I babble some songs so they’ll be still fun to sing then look up lyrics.
Last but not least, make one of those word chart where there’s tiny lil words in one image (I don’t know what they’re called). It’ll be like the word “feo” and you make words that are synonyms that help with remembering.
As well, doing art. Like typography or drawing.
The big scary one is recording yourself talking on a tape recorder or your phone. Whatever you have. 😂
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I can only do very simple things with Spanish and blogging in Spanish is 😂 too much for me. However, I like your idea of looking up random crap on Spanish wikipedia. I’ve never thought of that. That is brilliant. Right now I am very interested in certain topics and I will look it up now.
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Enjoy! And man, I get it. I felt exhausted after typing a paragraph in Spanish.😂
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Next time when I want to look up something in a dictionary or in Wikipedia, I will look it up in Spanish first. That’s a great idea.
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You can also do it on Google or Bing as well. They work with most languages.
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It’s normal to get bored with a new language. ChatGPT is weird. If you don’t prompt it correctly, you don’t get a good result
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So true. It can be very boring indeed. And ChatGPT is not much of a help at all since it doesn’t make it more interesting for me. LOL.
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I admire your perseverance! Find a Spanish cafe, you might find someone there willing to help you 🤗☕
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Haha, I think I will do that when I can understand a portion of what the cashiers are saying in the store here when they talk among themselves. I can’t even understand one word yet despite learning the language for less than two years. I am a slow learner. LOL.
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