Otra vez: How and Why I’m Picking Spanish Back Up in 2025

With current events being what they are, both Austin and I have been searching for tangible ways to actually get on the ground and help people. Over the last year, we’ve gotten increasingly involved with multiple local organizations in and around our community of Portland, Oregon – and at many of them, there is a great need for Spanish language speakers.

Austin’s Spanish is quite good (though he’d tell you it’s rusty.) He spent a semester in central Mexico during college, during which he stayed with a host family, navigated travel, and took advanced university classes, entirely in Spanish. Though some of it’s faded with lack of practice, he’s still highly conversational and isn’t fazed when he encounters a situation where he needs to switch languages.

Myself, on the other hand – where I was once vaguely conversational, now I freeze up even on the best of days. Because I want to step up and help, I aim to change that.

I’ve always enjoyed language learning content, and progress-documenting is something I really like reading from others – so I’m hoping to document my own progress here, both for myself and for anyone on a similar journey. If that sounds like your cup of tea, welcome! Feel free to grab your favorite beverage and settle in for this first-post summary of where I’ve been with Spanish, where I want to go, and how I’m planning to get there.

Experiencia previa
previous experience

I always knew I would come back to Spanish.

One of the greatest decisions my parents ever made for me in my childhood was sending me to a dual-language elementary school. From Kindergarten through 5th grade, half my day was in Spanish. I wasn’t ever at a native speaking level for my grade – as in, I didn’t leave the program speaking like a native-speaking 5th grader would – but I definitely understood the age-appropriate content being taught to me in Spanish with no issue. Unfortunately, that’s about where my abilities atrophied.

After 5th grade, my family moved across the world to Malaysia – where absolutely nobody spoke Spanish. I started over with Spanish I and II in high school, which served essentially as formal grammar primers and vocabulary refreshers, but they didn’t improve my Spanish as much as they simply resurrected part of what had already been there.

It’s embarrassing to admit, but I basically didn’t touch the language after finishing Spanish II in 2015 – not even when I moved back stateside for university. I repeated the same line for years: “My Spanish is rusty, but I know it would come back really fast if I studied it again.” A vague promise to myself that I could pick it back up any time.

It took a decade for me to decide that time was now.

Where I’m starting, & where I’d like to be
dónde estoy empezando, y dónde me gustaría estar

Most language-learning resources break skills into three categories: listening, speaking, and reading/writing.

• Listening: Thanks to my immersion background, this one is strong. Even if I’m not able to find the words to express something myself, I’m usually able to understand someone else, especially if they slow things down or simplify them for me (though it all depends on how nervous I am – I’ve definitely fumbled very basic phrases before when someone catches me off-guard!) Videos like this one aren’t effortless, but they’re right about at the sweet spot of 80-90% comprehension; this podcast has more technical/specific language and is just a little bit too hard for me.
  
• Speaking: This needs work. I definitely lack even very common vocabulary that I need to express myself, particularly when speaking about the past, and even when I do have the words (like ordering from a menu at a restaurant, for example), I’m so out of practice that I end up overthinking and fumbling my words anyways.
  • Ironically, a major strength of mine is related to speaking: my accent. Thanks to my background, I have a somewhat decent (what I believe to be) Northern Mexican accent, which is where most of my Spanish-speaking elementary classmates were from. This is a great skill to have, but it also lends itself to people assuming my Spanish is a lot better than it is and trying to engage with me at a higher level, which can be a little embarrassing when I have to reveal my true (low) power level.
    
• Reading: Reading is at a very beginner level. Complex grammar trips me up very quickly and a lot of depth is lost on me; I’m still very dictionary-dependent for even basic words if I don’t have context for them. I would estimate that my skill level there is very early graded readers, like this one.

If you’re familiar with the CEFR rankings of language ability, I’d estimate that I’m around a B1, probably towards the stronger end, but not B2 yet. I’m not starting from zero – but I’ve certainly got a ways to go.

my method of choice
mi método preferido

As for where I’d like to get to: for the time being, my major goal is improving my listening.

Based on my experience with immersion already, I know it works – and the language I’ve acquired through repeated input has stuck far better than the things I’ve learned through intentional study. My output (speaking) isn’t at the same level as my input (comprehension), but that’s a very typical learner experience, and I know my speaking ability will still increase at a steady rate even if most of my practice is done through listening.

This type of learning method is called comprehensible input^*, and you can learn more about it from this article here. This post comes from the program I’m using to track my progress – it’s called Dreaming Spanish, and they have a library of videos of all levels you can progress through while tracking your input time (with thousands of hours available completely free!)

Using their learning roadmap, I’ve tentatively placed myself at the 400 hour mark – I can understand patient native speakers, and I can follow some public speaking that’s well-enunciated, but people definitely still need to adapt their speech for me. I’ve certainly received more than 400 hours of Spanish input over the course of my life, but I think the number accurately reflects where my level is today.

Most people who progress through the program from zero seem to find that they hit a level of “everyday purposes” fluency at about 1500-2000 hours of input, and that’s definitely what I’d like to aim for.

my goals
mis metas

My goal, in short, is to be at a level where native speakers feel comfortable talking to me & don’t have to censor themselves or slow down their words to communicate with me. Especially for the purposes of volunteer work, it’s really important to me that my understanding isn’t a block for someone communicating a need or a question. Secondarily, I want my speaking to be at a level where, even if I can’t respond in kind, I can always manage to get my point across & make it clear that I am fully following the conversation.

Reading and writing are very secondary for me, but reading is a very powerful way to develop new vocabulary and solidify grammar structures, so I don’t plan to neglect them altogether – I just don’t have any specific goals for them (yet, anyways.)

Progress report roadmap
plan de informe de progreso

Well, you’ve read this far – so what’s my plan?

My plan is in two parts: first, the daily work I’d like to put in, and second, a monthly progress report for tracking my abilities in more than just hours-of-input.

My daily goal to start with is at least an hour of input a day. This puts me on track (according to the roadmap) for hitting 1500 hours in about three years – ideally, I’d like to step up this goal eventually to hit 1500 sooner, but starting with an hour is what I’ll stick to for getting started.

Additionally, a college friend of mine has invited me to a local weekly Spanish conversation meetup. I’m a little nervous about this one, and I don’t think I’ll commit to going every week, but it’s something I’d like to push myself to do to get over the hurdle of being afraid to speak.

Eventually, I plan to add regular reading to this rotation, as well as potentially some formal language exchange or classes (using services like iTalki or WorldsAcross), but for now, I’m keeping things simple. No need to overcommit and burn out!

I had planned to put an outline of what I want my monthly progress reports to look like at the end here, but this post has already gotten quite long, so instead I’ll link my first progress report for the month of August here once I’ve written it up! If you’ve stuck around to the end, thank you for reading this far. I hope I’ve laid a clear foundation for where I’m currently at and a brief roadmap for where I’d like to be – and for anyone who’s still interested in them, I hope my future progress reports are interesting, too!

Best of luck to any of my fellow language-learners reading this – ¡buena suerte, y ciao!

---

^* This method (particularly how DS lays it out) does have its idiosyncrasies, and I may write a post in the future about my thoughts & the parts I’m taking and leaving from it. While it certainly has “purists” who follow the roadmap DS lays out exactly, my pre-existing experience has allowed me to deviate from it in significant ways – for instance, I’m already practicing both speaking & reading at ~400 hours, because I’m not in danger of developing a poor accent from starting too early.