Deciding to move to a country where you don't speak the language takes a lot of preparation. We started learning Spanish on Duolingo in July 2019. We both did at least 5 minutes of Spanish most days until the end of 2021, for a total of nearly 30 months of daily Spanish practice.
By the end of 2021 we didn't feel apps were getting us where we wanted to be, so we decided to take the next step. We wanted real Spanish tutors.
After some research we found iTalki.com was the best rated app connecting language teachers and students.
After so much Spanish practice we were fairly good at reading basic Spanish and understanding the computer generated pronunciations. But trying to listen to Spanish television or music wasn't so easy.
Knowing how much regional accents impact being understood personally, we wanted to find Valencia local teachers. Luckily we found two excellent teachers. Profesora Patricia and Profesor Eric. We have a class a week with each of them and we are learning very quickly.
Each teacher has a different style and a different approach to the language. The variety is helping us learn very quickly.
Profesora Patricia concentrates on culture and life in Spain with her lessons. We've learned about the city, Las Falles, food and restaurants in Spain, and how to refer to and describe ourselves and others.
Profesor Eric concentrates on the fundamentals of the language. We've learned about ser vs estar. Conjugating verbs in the present tense (regular and common irregular), reflection verbs, suffixes, and more.
Each teacher also has homework, so we spend around 4-5 hours weekly working on Spanish. We've also been trying to add in Spanish television. We watch very little so this is a challenge. We have added Spanish music to our playlist, as Daniel mentions in the February 2022 playlist, and are enjoying that. I found a Spanish Wordle, and am getting my ass kicked regularly - while being introduced to vocabulary I might not otherwise see. Daniel and I have also started attempting to have a few conversations a day in Spanish. We are very good at talking about the pups at least. I'm starting to hear the difference between accents in Spanish, I can at least spot European vs South American so that's nice. We are translating this website, all new post will be translated on posting, and we're working on translating older content. I try to translate a page a day. I'm using Deepl.com to help translate, and am learning a lot by reading/editing the translations. This week we're adding labels on everything in the house, maybe I'll finally remember door is la puerta.
For a long time this was the scariest part of the idea of moving to Spain. With our excellent teachers we're not too worried about getting along in Spanish, at least not for long after arriving.
If you're interested in learning a new language, I could not recommend iTalki more. They have teachers all over the world.
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