How I'm learning Spanish
Language learning is not something that comes easy to me. My default learning style is to seek out concepts, rules and frameworks, and I’m relatively bad at domains that require a lot of rote memorization and reps. The two that come to mind in that category are language and mathematics, though I’m somewhat passionate about both, in spite of—or perhaps because of—their elusiveness.
I’ve had an on- and off-again relationship with the Spanish language. I took elective classes in High School, set it aside through my 20s, and then in more recent years spent two consecutive winters in Mexico. I leaned on the basic structural knowledge I had during those immersive stints, but my learning was passive. I can get by just fine in a restaurant, but I never seriously set about becoming fluent. I made some measure of progress in expressing myself, but I didn’t have the vocabulary base to reliably pick out words and phrases when spoken at the natural pace of a native speaker.
I’ve changed my approach to learning the language this year, and I think I’ve found two complementary tools that work for me. Neither of them are duolingo. Both are based on spaced repetition, which I now recognize is the way to memorize anything.
From Wikipedia :
Spaced repetition is an evidence-based learning technique that is usually performed with flashcards. Newly introduced and more difficult flashcards are shown more frequently, while older and less difficult flashcards are shown less frequently in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect. The use of spaced repetition has been proven to increase the rate of learning.
Anki
There are all sorts of ways to go about this, ranging from hand-written notes to enshittified SAAS offerings. For my money, there is nothing better than Anki . I will die for Anki.
Anki is a power tool that requires a little bit of elbow grease to become productive with. It offers a lot of settings which can be overwhelming, however it has sane defaults to get you started, and the documentation is excellent.
Here are the two community-made card decks that have become foundational for me:
-
Spanish 9000 Sentences
contains, well, 9000 spanish phrases along with native audio
samples for each. It’s a ‘cloze’ type card, which presents each
phrase in Spanish on the front of the card and makes you fill in
the missing word. The front might say something like
Eso [...] muy bueno. (That would be great.), and the back would sayEso sería muy bueno.along with a spoken audio track. There are 9000 of these ranked and sorted by difficulty. Seriously. - Ultimate Spanish Conjugation contains full conjugations for 72 of the most important verbs (approximately 59 cards per verb). This one comes with a comprehensive manual for how to use it optimally, which I highly recommend internalizing before getting started.
In addition to these, I also have built out a few decks of my own. Google Translate allows you to export your translation history into a CSV file, which can be imported into Anki. For short, collected phrases like these, I like to use a ‘Type in the answer’ card type to force me to learn the correct spelling, including accents and correct gendering which often can fall aside if you’re just doing pure mental checks in your head.
I’ve also had great success using an LLM to create supplemental cards for knowledge gaps. When you take beginner language classes, you learn all sorts of important vocabularly, like colours, body parts, rooms in the house, telling time, numbers, etc. that tends to get skipped over by the above methods and often as well in real-world immersion. I asked ChatGPT to prepare me several hundred cards containing words and phrases that would typically be covered in beginner or intermediate spanish classes, and it performed very well on that task. This is one of those few genuinely useful applications of that technology.
Pimsleur
Spaced repetition flash cards are great for memorizing, but the other side of the coin is applying that knowledge, by which I mean speaking and listening. I’ve tried in-person classes several times now, and they’ve never worked very well for me. Typically, you’re talking with other beginner speakers who aren’t able to correct you, and who themselves don’t speak the language well, so you aren’t able to train your ear either.
Language exchange meetups are fantastic, but they require a certain level of competency before they become an option.
So how do you practice speaking and listening, short of moving to a Latin American country? For me, nothing beats the old-school Pimsleur Audiobooks . These are also based on spaced repetition, and force you to quickly synthesize responses within hypothetical conversations, closely mimicking real-world experience. Each day you’ll do a 30-minute session where you’ll be speaking, out loud. It’s very effective.
Pimsleur has been around for a long time, and has grown from audiobooks into a more comprehensive app-based offering. I don’t see a lot of value in the other app features, especially as I’m supplementing this with intensive flash card learning. It’s hard to find on their website, but they offer an audio-only subscription (linked above) that is marginally cheaper than the full app experience, and it cuts out a lot of the cruft. There are also other ways to acquire audiobooks, if you know what I mean.
All told, I spend ~30 minutes per day on a Pimsleur audio-lesson, and another 15-20 minutes reviewing flash cards. Combining these methods is a pragmatic, practice-based approach to learning, and is in stark contrast to the academic approach of reading textbooks and completing exercises. Once you embrace it, you may never look back.
Bonus: Cheatsheets
SpanishDictionary.com has an absurdly overpriced subscription tier which gives you access to a collection of excellent PDF-based cheatsheets and reference material. I’ve found the verb conjugation reference valuable as a supplement to the flash cards described above. You can sign up for a free trial, download all the PDF cheat sheets, then cancel.
