### some background at the time of starting this document I've been casually learning Spanish for ~1.5 months now. casually = I've mainly been completing Memrise exercises. I started with Memrise and I think that was a good decision because at the time I started, my goal was to understand and know enough Spanish phrases to get around Spain for my trip with my family in December. Memrise is pretty good for that. It wouldn't be pretty, but I could probably introduce myself, order food, ask for directions, understand directions, and take public transit in Spain and it'd be workable. now, somewhere along this journey it morphed. my dad posed the idea of going to Peru next year, which has been a bucket list item of mine for a long time. my boyfriend and I have been discussing traveling to Spain together late in 2022. and another long time bucket list item of mine has been to see Mexico during Día de los Muertos. digging even deeper into things that I thought would be fleeting dreams, back when I first started working remotely I'd started casually exploring the idea of working remotely from somewhere in Latin America for a few months. at that time I'd thrown "learn Spanish" onto my "Someday" to-do list. I didn't think too much of it at the time, but I'm starting to feel like this is something I really want to do. so we're learning Spanish! up to recently, I'd mainly been using Memrise, then taking the words and phrases from Memrise and putting them into Anki for spaced repetition study. recently, I've tried a couple more things and I want to formalize my plan slightly. not really formalize, but give it more structure. enough structure to manage my emotions and expectations, but not so much structure to stifle the fun. a difficult balance. anyway, as I've been exploring the world of language learning I came across https://refold.la and I like the philosophy. I think it's balanced for my personality, interests, etc. the idea is that it focuses on comprehension and language acquisition (working with target language input) for a period of time before getting to output. ### the plan...for now Currently, I'm working through Refold Stage 1 and shaping up my routine. The immediate goal is as follows: > The goal of Stage 1 is to prepare you to learn directly from your immersion. > Before moving on to Stage 2A, you should feel comfortable enough with your TL's writing system that you can do lookups when reading subtitles. > You should be engaging with your TL every day and feel comfortable watching media that you don't understand. > You should also be regularly studying vocabulary, though you don't need to finish learning all 1,500 words before moving on to Stage 2A. Currently I'm focusing on studying most of the 1500 words and immersing in whatever Spanish content I find interesting. For TV series I watch either with no subtitles or with Spanish subtitles. Currently focusing on Dreaming Spanish and easier, young adult shows (mostly dubbed). Once I complete most of the 1500 words, will move on to native Spanish slice of life shows. (And will probably throw a few telenovelas in there for fun). Here's the components, taken from Refold: #### Active Immersion Shoot for 30 min a day. ##### Currently Watching - [Dreaming Spanish](https://www.dreamingspanish.com) - Currently working through all the superbeginner videos. Have been a big fan of these. for the most part, have been watching without any subtitles, although will occasionally turn on Spanish subtitles if tired. - [La leyenda de Aang](https://serieslan.com/avatar-la-leyenda-de-aang) - Avatar: The Last Airbender, dubbed in Mexican Spanish. No subtitles. - [Mundo Zamba](https://www.youtube.com/user/mundozamba/featured) - Tried one episode of this and it was pretty tough to follow along. Might put on pause until my comprehension catches up. ##### Watched - [Extra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfb9-ZTCA-E) - corny but fun. Watched mostly with Spanish subtitles. ##### To Watch - Silvana Sin Lana - Madre sólo hay dos - 100 Días para enamorarnos - Carmen Sandiego, dubbed in Spanish. Have watched the entire series in English. - Jane the Virgin, dubbed in Spanish. Have watched most of the series in English. - Destinos - La Casa de las Flores - Have watched the entire series with English subtitles (totally for fun, before I started working toward learning Spanish). - Cable Girls - Money Heist - Club de Cuervos - Elite #### Passive Listening No time target, just try to work into daily routine during mindless tasks, etc. Currently I haven't been doing much of this, but here's some podcasts I'd like to work in. ##### Currently Listening - [Caso 63 ](https://open.spotify.com/show/20ch3IIqtWSSM4nfy11ZzP?si=8e48e36617d14f0c) ##### To Listen - [Leyendas Legendarias](https://open.spotify.com/show/6wF969GfLUfypoKaicH5gr?si=c9edce94e15944fc) - [DianaUribe.fm](https://open.spotify.com/show/3xIalu2XhZ2EjSbOcTg0U8?si=87bdbc57ce65444e) #### Vocabulary and Anki Practice Currently doing all daily reviews and adding 20 new words a day from Refold's 1000 word deck. I was previously writing my own cards using words from a mix of the following sources: - Busuu - Memrise - A frequency dictionary of Spanish - Mark Davies I decided to stop doing this and transition to the Refold deck. Writing all my own cards quickly became tiring and somewhat of a distraction from more important practice like active immersion. #### Phonetics I'm ignoring this. Well, not ignoring it, but ignoring active study of it. Couple of reasons: - I'm not starting from zero. Studied Spanish for years in school. - Filipino (which I understand completely) has some strong phonetic similarities. - Refold says that the goal of studying phonetics at this stage is so that you're able to study vocabulary. I feel comfortable enough with phonetics to study vocabulary. #### Writing System Also ignoring active study of this. Spanish uses Latin characters and I am well-versed. ;) Well-versed enough to study vocabulary and grammar, which is the goal. #### Grammar I use SpanishDict to understand grammatical concepts that hinder my comprehension of Spanish content I'm actively immersing in. #### Daily Routine - Anki Review - Busuu/Memrise - 30+ min Active Immersion - Passive Listening throughout day --- Created: December 6, 2021 Last Modified: December 19, 2021