By Nick Nathan in
LanguageI went from being a complete novice to becoming functionally conversational in Spanish in roughly 4 months. Here's what I learned along the way.
My whole life I've always wanted to become fluent in another language. Unfortunately I have also spent most of my life suffering miserably through language classes. In high school I studied Japanese and in college I studied German but in both cases I never reached a level of competency where I felt confident communicating with a native speaker.
In college I spent untold hours creating vocabulary flashcards out of paper index cards, writing essays for homework, and trying to memorize verb conjugation grids. Most of my time was spent in silence studying the language i.e. reading and writing about "cultural" topics like art, science and politics. The only time I would get to practice speaking was with other students, some of whom were far more lost than me, and usually only for a few minutes at a time. Most of the time was spent listening to my professor talk to us in slow careful German as she explained new grammatical constructs.
I remember distinctly my professor telling me that she didn't understand why I did so well on the reading and writing assignments but completely bombed my oral assessments. It was strange to feel like I both knew a lot and also like I knew nothing. In 30 minutes I could write you a short essay about traditional German art but I couldn't have a simple ten minute conversation about my day without feeling like I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. This went on for two years before I basically decided I was going to spend my time elsewhere and took up coding (but that's another story).
Fast forward a couple years and I decided I was going to give it another try. This time I decided I was going to learn Spanish. The difference now was that it didn't matter what my grade was and I could focus on the only thing that really mattered to me:
Talking to other people ... in Spanish.
So I did a bunch of research on the best way to study a foreign language and learned a couple interesting things about how to learn. After 4 months of applying these new techniques I finally became what I would call "functionally conversational".
When starting on this journey I was frustrated with how little information was out there around how to measure progress. It was surprising how poorly developed our language (no pun intended) is for describing the stages of language acquisition.
These tests can be useful for determining your proficiency however they're generally used to certify preparation for academics or a job meaning that they'll focus equally on reading and writing. If your goal is just to be able to talk to another person then you're going to be far more focused on listening comprehension and speaking.
For most people when they think about learning a language they tend to think in terms of:
I think everyone has a fairly good idea of what a beginner is but what does "conversational" or "fluent" even mean?
All these websites and apps and language programs claim to help you become some degree of "conversational" or "fluent" in some small number of months. But is that really possible? What do we even mean by a "conversation"? A short one? A long one? How long? Do some subjects count but others don't? How much of what the other person is saying do I have to understand before we agree that it's a conversation and not just the other person talking at me?
This is important to talk about because I think so many people are likely to get really discouraged thinking that they're going to be able to communicate with far more fluency than is reasonable. So what do I mean when I say I was able to become functionally conversational?
Depending on the speed, subject matter, and my level of focus I can usually translate about 10%-25% of what they're saying, understand about 25%-50% and grasp the general gist. On the CEFR scale this equates to about a B1. Sounds pretty good right? Here's a couple things that no one tells you:
It's very important to differentiate between being able to translate exactly what someone just said to you and being able to understand what they mean. A lot of time you'll be relying on only a few words to make sense of what someone is saying. You will also have to rely on contextual clues, body language, pointing and gesturing, tone of voice etc. to understand and that's OK. It's not cheating because you aren't taking a test.
Here's the flip side, you'll be speaking probably very badly back to whoever you're talking to meaning they are doing the exact same thing. Therefore your job is to give them better and better clues as to your meaning so that they can understand you even if your grammar and vocabulary and pronunciation are all wrong.
You would be amazed at how much meaning you can convey armed with only a few basic words, phrases and the ability to point to things. In every interaction you are communicating so much more than you think and so much less than you would like.
Translating what someone is saying in your head is too slow for you to have a conversation. For you to know what someone is talking about you will not have time to conjugate verbs in your head, rearrange words, or try to remember vocabulary. Realistically this means that there has to be a directly line from the foreign words to the abstract meaning.
This is what translating from Spanish looks like:
"pajaro" = "bird" =
This is what direct understanding looks like:
"pajaro" =
The implications of this are somewhat unfortunate. It means that while you may THINK you know a lot of words. If it takes you even one second to "remember" what the word means you have already lost the flow of the sentence. This means that in reality you actually know far fewer words than you think you do. Or put another way, there are levels to "knowing" a word.
Mastering vocabulary occurs in phases and on multiple cognitive levels. In my experience there are a couple of phases of learning any particular word:
Here's the kicker, this also has to happen in reverse. Just because your brain has learned to convert the word into meaning doesn't mean that you can automatically convert the meaning into the action of speaking the word. You ever meet someone who can understand a language but can't speak it? How does this even make sense? I've noticed that this is common among the children of immigrants who grew up hearing the language but always spoke English in response to their parents.
As far as your brain is concerned:
"pajaro" via ear/eye to bird concept
is a different pathway from:
bird concept to mouth to "pajaro"
On top of this there are actually three dimensions to every word.
Meaning that to truly master a word your brain needs to be able to map the vocal, auditory and visual inputs of a word to the same meaning, instantly. And it gets worse ... because of this biological reality, every conjugation of every verb is actually a different word, as far as your brain is concerned. That means that just because you know the infinitive form of a verb does not mean you know all its conjugated forms, even if you've memorized the rules of conjugation.
As a beginner people generally memorize vocabulary and grammar rules visually. This is easiest because the flow of information from the written page through your eyes to your brain is constant. You're getting a longer, uninterrupted flow of data into your brain meaning that you don't have store as much information in your memory. When you're listening to a word, unless you've got it mapped directly into meaning, you have to preserve that sound long enough in your memory to be able to translate it. This makes listening comprehension a lot harder than reading.
For the same reason, hearing the conjugated form of a verb, for example, is harder to comprehend than reading the conjugated form. Your brain literally has a fraction of the information needed to process it.
In the same way that seeing a word is easier than hearing a word, speaking a word requires your brain to coordinate all the muscles in your mouth and throat to make the shape of the word. For all of this to become automatic your brain has to map even more information.
Hopefully by now you've realized how even learning a single word is not an easy thing to do let alone all the modifications and conjugations for gender, tense and plurality etc. of that same word. While this can be discouraging it also means you now have some more tools to help master your vocabulary. It also means that you should feel way better about mastering any given word, it's no small thing.
At this point I have to make a confession. Saying that I learned to become functionally conversational in 4 month is completely and utterly meaningless. You do not make progress in a language over the span of months you make progress based on the number of hours (or minutes) you spent engaged in focused practice.
This is one of the reasons why I spent 2 years in college studying German and got about half as proficient as I did in 4 months of dedicated study to Spanish. If I were being honest and someone asked me how long it took for you to become functionally conversational I would probably have to say something more like:
With the exception of the structured conversational practice these are very very rough estimates. However, it does give you a completely different perspective on the effort involved. More meaningful than to say four months might be to look at the amount of time spent per day. If we assume 4 months is about 120 days then my average day is:
This means that I spent almost 2 hours EVERY DAY for 4 months practicing Spanish.
I would make the case that if I doubled that time per day I would probably have learned a lot faster although there is definitely a limit to the speed at which my brain can process information. So I'm pretty sure it's not a direct linear relationship. The bottom line here though is that if you're serious about this you should be measuring in hours not months.
Months are meaningless.
When I started out I had this idea that if I could only immerse myself in the language I would learn so much faster. There is, without a doubt, a huge benefit to language immersion and if possible it will absolutely accelerate your learning. However I want to point out one big caveat.
Immersion alone is not enough.
You ever met anyone who has lived in your country for years and still can't speak the language? How is this possible? Surely they would just "pick it up" as if by magic. This is nonsense. The trick to learning a language, and any skill for that matter, is working at the edge of your abilities. If you put a first grader in a linear algebra class he or she would likely learn absolutely nothing. Why? Because the first grader doesn't have the context and all the foundational knowledge required to improve. Learning languages is the same way.
You can be in a foreign country with people talking all day long all around you, speaking super quickly, using vocabulary and grammar you don't understand, for months ... and still make very little progress. The reason is because you are not a baby or a young child and so the way your brain needs to learn is very different.
Immersion is helpful because it dramatically increases your opportunities to practice the language, it helps you to become acclimated to the sound of the language which makes comprehension easier, and it exposes you to more vocabulary. All of these things are very powerful accelerators however it is important to realize that without dedicated study / practice most things will remain incomprehensible.
Ok so what was my approach then? After doing a ton of research I found a handful of principles which seem fairly obvious in retrospect but which were glaringly absent from my language education at an elite US university.
On a more tactical level, in order to make progress towards my goal of being able to talk to other people, there are really four domains of language that need dedicated time. In each of these domains I tried my best to apply the above principles.
Growing my vocabulary happens in several different ways because, as mentioned earlier, there are several steps to truly knowing a word. Using a word a lot when speaking and hearing a word a lot are both critical steps in cementing a word in memory so that no translation is necessary. Before a word can be heard and understood, or used in conversation, you need to have established basic recall.
The best tool I found for this is flash card app called Anki. It's different from other flashcard apps in that it tracks important metrics like how often you get a given word correct and how long it's been since you were last tested on that word. By tracking these metrics it can retest you on a word only when you're just about to forget it. This method is far more efficient because you don't waste a ton of time getting tested on cards you already know.
It can therefore categorize words into different buckets such as "New", "Learning" etc. and test you accordingly. You have to buy the app for about 25 USD but it's worth every penny. Plus you get cool analytics and reporting.
I started out by adding the 500 most common words in the Spanish language. Next I write down words I didn't know during my in-person lessons (more on this next) or during a listening comprehension session. Therefore I'm typically only adding words that I've used or heard. As you can see I have about 1350 words in my database but I don't know all those words. Many of these words I'm still cementing through listening and speaking practice.
A lot of these words are actually phrases too. I found it very helpful to wrap words in the context in which they occurred. Finally, there are two tips to dramatically increase the speed of learning new words:
I feel particularly strong about this one. Why? Because "grammar lessons" are by far the biggest waste of time and you should avoid them at all costs. There is literally nothing worse than having to sit there while someone explains grammar to you. There are two reasons why this bothers me so much:
Too many students waste too much time trying to learn complex grammatical constructs before they know how to apply even basic grammar. Why does this happen? Because grammar is really really easy to write tests for. Your teacher's job is so easy if all they have to do is explain grammar to you and then create a written test. It's also a massive waste of time. They might as well read word lists to you and pretend it's helpful.
Now, some grammar is tricky. I admit that. However, you are far better off studying grammar on your own and then asking your teacher specific questions about things you don't understand. Your teacher is a far better resource for helping you know which grammatical constructs you should focus on and in what order.
For me listening comprehension is the most fun thing to study. BUT it is also very difficult and arduous if you're doing it correctly. A lot of people recommend watching TV and movies in the language you are trying to learn. This can be good advice depending on your level but it can also be very inefficient. For people who are just starting out or who are more on the beginner end of the spectrum I recommend you hold off on this strategy for awhile.
Instead you should find recordings made specifically for language students that are slower, use simpler words and vocabulary, and come with a transcript. Not as fun as watching TV, I know, but way more effective if you want to develop your language skills faster. I found the best approach was to listen through a passage and try to understand it as best as I could. Then if there was anything I missed, I went back and listened again.
I would do this up to three times to make sure I was hearing all the words and sounds. If I still didn't get everything I would slow the audio down to 80% speed and listen again. Then finally, I would read the written text and look up any words I didn't know. Once I had fully translated the passage I then listened to the audio a final time to make sure I heard everything.
I know what you're thinking ... that sounds so boring and tedious. Well so are doing flashcards, but they really work. This is the same. The key here is that you need to know the meaning of whatever you're listening to and be able to pick out the sounds. If you do want to watch TV then use subtitles in your native language. If you like listening to music make sure you download the lyrics and translate them so that you understand the song.
Personally, my favorite listening comprehension exercises are the Duolingo podcasts. They're really interesting stories and all the transcripts are published online. I also like LingoPie which is basically Spanish Netflix but every episode is fully annotated, translated and you can slow down the audio as much as you need.
Last but not least is speaking practice. I cannot overstate how important this is. For most people this is the hardest part of learning a language and this is why you have to practice. It is awkward, hard, and you feel stupid. Some people say stuff like, "Oh your boyfriend/girlfriend speaks language X, why don't you practice with them?" This is nonsense. Do your relationship a favor and do not subject your partner to this. The same logic applies if you have friends who speak the language you're trying to learn.
What you really need is a teacher who knows what level you're at and can speak with you at that level. This is incredibly valuable and without this you will not make much progress. You must find someone with whom you can practice speaking badly, feel comfortable making mistakes, and who will be able to provide the right level of feedback and correction without getting impatient or annoyed.
The other thing that a teacher will be able to do is help you understand cultural differences and language constructs that have no literal or direct translation. This is very important and something that is very hard to get from self study. They can teach you slang as well and help you know which words to use when. Most languages have multiple words which mean something very similar or even the same thing. It's way easier to have someone explain this differences to you than trying to figure it out reading example sentences in a dictionary.
I used a company called BaseLang and went through their Grammarless course. It was 2 hours a day for 8 weeks. It was really hard and totally worth it. I have no affiliation with BaseLang and I am not being paid to promote them but I tell everyone I know about it because it's such a great service. Regardless of what program you use you must hire a teacher to work with you.
I still have a ton to learn but I wanted to share my experiences in case they might help anyone else who badly wants to learn a new language but is discouraged or doesn't really know why they're getting stuck. The truth is that learning a new language is hard and takes time. There's no way around that. But if you're smart about the way to study you can dramatically speed up your learning time so you can finally speak with those friends or family members you love, or experience a new culture in a much deeper way.
I'm going to keep learning and hopefully I'll be able to write another post about becoming fluent one day. Good luck and feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
Hasta luego!
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