Aiming for Fluency in Spanish


Normally I don't like setting goals for learning languages because for me the process of learning the language is much more important than fluency or any other goal. Also, I dip my toe in way too many languages recently, but I have started learning Spanish around five months ago and I enjoy the language so much, that I decided to pursue it to fluency.

At first I just started by writing little texts and uploading them on italki for correction. Sometimes I would also do a little translation of a Spanish text into German. Then I bought a textbook, which I found too boring and wasted two months by mainly working with Duolingo. I don't understand why it's so popular. It's boring, you don't learn much useful content and you actually only reach like A2 at best, if you finish all exercises. I finished them and learned such useful phrases as:

  •  ¿Tocaste un elefante? (Did you touch an elefant?)
  • ¿Has tocado un elefante? (Have you touched an elefant?)
  • La tortuga perdió las llaves. (The turtle lost the keys.)
  • El pato ha visto lo que hace la tortuga. (The duck has seen, what the turtle did.)
  • Ellos hicieron que comerian gatos pequeños. (They made them eat small cats.)
  • Es un buen león, pero no me puedo quedar con él. (It is a good lion, but I can't keep it.)
Those are original sentences from Duolingo. Come on! When does a turtle ever loose its keys? "Tortuga" is the one word that I learned from Duolingo. If you recently touched an elefant, have to give up your pet lion or want to eat small cats, let's chat about it. I'm prepared.

Last month I completely changed my approach and started taking classes once per week with a professional Spanish teacher on italki. In between I'm doing exercises, writing texts, recording myself reading texts and my teacher corrects everything. The classes have boosted my confidence in speaking Spanish. Now I try to use every opportunity to communicate and immerse myself in Spanish (when I'm not distracted by another language...). While commuting to work, I listen to Spanish music. I read news and discussions in Spanish and sing along. And before going to bed, I listen to Spanish podcasts. Next month, I will travel to Madrid and I'll hope that I'll be able to talk about more topics than the zoo...

The resources

My teacher José has a great website, Facebook page and two YouTube channels, with lots of great materials for learning Spanish. You should definitely check them out if you are learning Spanish:

Two of my reading resources are:
Deutsche Welle in Spanish: http://www.dw.com/es/actualidad/s-30684
Quora in Spanish: https://es.quora.com/

My favourites podcasts in Spanish: 
SBS is an Australian boradcast service and they also have hreat podcasts for other languages.


The music

My favourite Spanish artists are:

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