Transcription
All right. So, for the past three months, I have been learning Spanish, going from practically zero to this. In this video, I want to explain how I did this, why I did this, and, you know, all the specifics about, you know, all this.
So, first of all, this was a three-month uh challenge for me. I set out, you know, from the start. I'm gonna uh I said, okay, I want to learn a language, you know, not up to a native level or anything, but, you know, have at least, you know, conversations in the language. Now, the reason why I chose Spanish, and I chose to, you know, after three months, the goal was, hey, I'm going to hop on a call with a native speaker, you know, a teacher from iTalki. That's what I chose to do. And I chose Spanish specifically because, like a lot of you guys, if you're from the US, I actually took Spanish in school. So, I studied, you know, Spanish for multiple years in school. Like a lot of you guys, I didn't have a lot of motivation for Spanish. And so I was one of the worst students in Spanish. Almost failed Spanish. And so at the end of high school, I could not have conversations in Spanish. Even the basics, I just didn't know. And now I, you know, I graduated high school. It's been what, 13 or 12 years. So I'm pretty much back to zero. I mean, not that I was really way above zero. Well, at least that was three months ago.
And then I decided, okay, I'm going to uh continue with Spanish because, you know, even though I learned multiple languages um successfully, I feel like my failure to learn Spanish, even though it was somewhat intentional because, you know, I was focusing on college admissions, there are classes that matter a lot more for college admissions, like, you know, math, the sciences, etc. I feel like it still left me with a bit of a bitter aftertaste, you know, Spanish. And so that's why I decided to to do it. And I set myself a challenge of doing it in three months. And, you know, at the end of the three months, there was going to be a video call with a native speaker.
Now, I want to talk exactly about the program that I uh did. But before this, I want to give you a disclaimer because I think a lot of you guys already know this, you know, based on my name, but I'm a native French speaker. So, Spanish is easier for me than it would be for, you know, a native speaker. With that being said, the FSI, which is the Foreign Service Institute in the United States, actually classifies Spanish as being one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. And so, it is going to be an easy task for most English speakers, given that you, you know, follow a program that makes sense. With that being said, what I achieved in three months, you're probably, you know, it's probably going to take you about six months to achieve this. This is taking into account the fact that I am a French speaker and also, you know, I've been learning languages for, you know, a few years now.
Now, I should add that, you know, I had a constraint. The main constraint for this challenge is sort of to replicate what a working person goes through, which is to say that I'm not going to spend hours a day studying Spanish in this challenge. I'm going to limit myself to 30 minutes to about 45 minutes a day maximum of active study. Now, if I'm going to watch something on Netflix in Spanish, for example, I'm not going to count this, but also I'm not going to do too much of it. If I watch stuff on Netflix in Spanish, that is going to be limited to one hour a day.
In terms of the program, there are, you know, five things, like a stack of five tools that I use. And the first one, which is not necessarily the most fundamental tool, but I feel like I need to talk about it first because this is not something that a lot of people do. The first tool, or it's more like the first technique. This is something that anyone can do and this has been hugely helpful. This is an activity that um Professor Paul Nation, that I interviewed on this channel, calls rehearsed speeches or maybe it's remembered speeches. I don't know. But the point is that you take speeches and you just, you know, memorize them. That's it. As simple as that. I just want to clarify here because I did uh memorize speeches, but I also did memorize sentences. So, I took individual sentences and I memorized them. So, I wrote speeches that I thought, okay, this is around a theme that I'm very likely to talk about in the final conversation after the three months. You know, same thing for the sentences. And so I just memorized them. If you think I'm crazy, this activity was actually in Professor Paul Nation's book, you know, How to Learn a Language. I don't remember exactly the title of the book, but this is an activity that is supported by scientific evidence. And more than this, after trying, after after doing it, I can tell you it works. It sounds really stupid, just memorizing sentences, memorizing speeches, but in my mind, it's like it just boosted my understanding of the language. It also allowed me to speak a lot better. I had a lot of sentences and structured readily available in my mind during the conversation.
Now, to be fair, you know, even though I remembered um I memorized entire speeches, not perfectly, but pretty well, I didn't use the entirety of these, you know, speeches during my convers my final conversation with the Colombian speaker. I think the way to to think about it and what happened really at the end was I remembered a lot of speeches and then during the conversation, I actually used a bunch of these, you know, speeches or at least, you know, parts of the speeches and sentence structures and a bunch of stuff. Really, really underrated activity. If you think that you're going to, you know, use whatever language it is that you're learning and, you know, what type of situation you're going to be in, then just prepare. You know, there's don't leave any space for for chance. So, this is the first activity.
Now, the second activity, something that is a lot more standard. Of course, I needed some sort of, you know, introduction to the the language because I forgot everything from school and, to be honest, I don't think I knew it in the first place. So, I needed to know basic vocabulary, basic grammar, you know, basic pronunciation information, just basic information about the language. Now, uh, I chose to go with Assimil Spanish. It's a book. I have the paper book, actually. This is a book, kind of a textbook, I guess, with 100 lessons. Every single lesson is based on a short conversation in Spanish. And they explain the grammar, you know, all the information is explained as you go. You know, no walls of text. It's very digestible. Sort of conversations. It's all presented in digestible chunks. So, this was my textbook. Now, the goal here was, I didn't want to have something that was really bulky because the truth is, you know, if I only have three months, I want to have something that gives me a good overview of the Spanish language in just three months. And it just so happens that, you know, with Assimil Spanish, you have 100 lessons. And so, you know, in three months, it's about one lesson a day, a little bit more than that, and then I can complete the entire book. So, it was a good fit. But to be honest, if I had to learn the language in the much longer term, and, you know, maybe I will, I would not hesitate to go with a more, you know, bulkier course, something a lot more, you know, grammar-heavy stuff like Rocket Spanish or, you know, some other stuff. So, you know, if you want to do this challenge on your own, it's really up to you. But I think that Assimil is a pretty safe bet. It is going to be a bit light on grammar, but overall, it's a pretty good choice.
All right. Now, the third tool that I'm going to talk about is something that most of you are expecting. I used vocabulary flashcards. I already had a Spanish deck, uh, you know, Anki Core Spanish that I had, but given that I only had three months and, you know, that deck contains 10,000 plus flashcards, I thought, okay, this is too much. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take a deck. I'm going to make a new deck with really the essential information. So, I actually created a new deck uh for myself with the 2,000 most common words in Spanish. This was the initial plan. I wanted to go through the, you know, these 2,000 flashcards. I added, you know, it. Every single flashcard has a word in Spanish plus a translation in English. There is a simple sentence in Spanish, its translation in English. There's audio for the sentence. And the entire deck, the 2,000 flashcards, I actually gave it for uh to a native Spanish proofreader to proofread the entire deck to make sure that it all made sense. I also had audio generated using AI.
Now, the reason why I used AI is number one, AI is actually really, really high quality these days. It's pretty much native-like. So, in my particular case, I also used AI because I wanted a specific accent. So, uh, I'm going to talk about this a little bit later, but essentially, um, you know, I consumed some content as well, you know, from for for input in Colombian Spanish. And so I wanted to, you know, keep this consistent, given the short, you know, time frame of the challenge. So, what I did is that all the audio for the, you know, the deck that I created, and by the way, I forgot to mention this, but, you know, the deck that I created with flashcards is a deck on Anki. That's digital flashcards using the Anki app. If you don't know, Anki is a free application that you can use on your computer, on your smartphone for creating flashcards. But yeah, so all the audio was generated using a Colombian accent, just for consistency. Uh, but, you know, I'm going to make my deck available on my website, link in the in the description. And I'm also going to generate, you know, more accents, like, you know, Spanish from Spain and Spanish from Mexico and that kind of stuff. And I'll put everything in the description if you guys are interested.
So, the initial plan, and that's kind of the thing, is I wanted to go through the, you know, all of the 2,000 words. Like, you know, given the time constraint of uh 30 minutes to 45 minutes a day, I didn't have much time. So, I ended up actually doing only about 1,000 flashcards, which is fine, but, you know, it's not ideal. So, yeah, you know, using the 30 minutes to, you know, 45 minutes, that's kind of hard because the flashcards were just part of the program. And I also had to go through my textbook and use the other tools that I'm going to talk about. So, yeah, the flashcards were really an important part to really build up that basic vocabulary.
And now, the fourth tool that I used is that's kind of weird because initially my plan was, okay, um, you know, after three months, the final test, you know, the final boss of this challenge is going to be a conversation with a native Spanish speaker. So, uh, you know, I need to get some practice, you know, speaking with a native Spanish speaker. And so, I was going to, you know, book some lessons on iTalki, but I realized that actually my Spanish was was such low level, especially at the beginning. I think at the end it was kind of fine. And I could have booked lessons, but I I thought that, you know, my Spanish is such low level. It's not even I'm not really going to benefit a lot from from these lessons and I'm going to spend a lot of money. And also, you know, there's always the scheduling issue. You have to be there at certain times and then, you know, being in Tahiti and French Polynesia, there are internet issues. So, the point is, I was looking for an alternative. And so instead of using an actual tutor on iTalki, what I did is that I coded an AI tutor. And so I'm going to put it in the description. It's called Island Koala. It's my own AI tutor that I use to, you know, train my uh speaking mostly and my also listening comprehension.
So, what it is is essentially, it's just an app. You can use it on your computer, on your smartphone, where you chat with the AI. It can be voice chat. It can be, you know, text chat. But and there are many aspects of the AI tutor that I think are better than a normal tutor. And obviously, there are points where it's not as good. But the advantage of an AI tutor is that number one, every single one of your mistakes, it's going to point out. So, you send a message, you know, be, you know, it could be via, you know, voice chat or text chat, and it's going to tell you, no, look, this is wrong, and this is why it's wrong, and this is the correct version. Every single one of your mistakes, whereas an actual tutor, you know, a human tutor is going to let some stuff, you know, slide just to have, you know, sort of a good pace in the conversation. The other thing as well with the AI tutor is that it's always available, you know, 24/7. If I wake up and I want to do a little session, and I can just go on the AI tutor. The other thing as well is that it's much less expensive than booking, you know, lessons on iTalki. Now, Spanish lessons on iTalki are not really expensive. You can get tutors for, you know, $7 an hour, but nevertheless, you know, it's just for an hour. The AI tutor that I coded, Island Koala, I also have it, you know, I'll have it in the description, but it's a one-time, you know, price and you just own it forever. And obviously, in my case, it just makes sense to use my AI tutor because I don't have to pay for it. But anyway, yeah, I used uh Island Koala up to the end and it was hugely helpful to help me, you know, improve my speaking, my listening comprehension, even my reading and my writing.
And finally, the fifth tool that I used, uh, it's not really a tool, I guess, but it's pretty standard. Is I needed to get a lot of listening uh practice because, you know, the final test was essentially, you know, chatting with a Spanish speaker. And, you know, the AI tutor that I coded, Koala, uh, gave me some listening comprehension, as well as my flashcards, but I needed something that sounded more like a native speaker. And so, what I did is that I watched uh TV shows on Netflix in Spanish, or I should say one TV show, really, because, you know, it was only three months, so I only had so much time. So, I think on average, I probably averaged around an hour or so a day, you know, watching Netflix in in Spanish. I used one show which is called Narcos, and it was very, very interesting. I'm sure that a lot of you guys have watched it. Uh, Narcos is about the life, well, the first two seasons at least are about the life of Pablo Escobar and, you know, the entire sort of cocaine issue in Colombia in the '80s, in the '90s, and there's a little bit of English, but most of it is in Spanish.
Now, I will say that there was sort of an issue where it was just way above my head, especially at the beginning. I didn't understand most of it, but it was so interesting that I thought, okay, it's still, you know, it's still something that I'm I'm looking forward to doing. So, this is what I'm going to do. You know, ideally, if you're, especially if you're starting out with a language, you want to use a source of input that is somewhat, you know, comprehensible. I mean, it's, you know, you need to get comprehensible input, meaning that it can be above your level, but not so much that you're completely lost. And I think in the case of Narcos, it was just way above my level. Nevertheless, I chose to, you know, go with that because it was really interesting. And so I watched a lot of it, and certainly it became a lot more comprehensible as, you know, I started to understand more and more of the Spanish language, you know, using all the other tools.
Now, I would say at around the halfway point, about day, you know, 45, let's say, I don't know exactly, but I started to be a little bit worried about the final challenge. Up until day 45, I didn't take any iTalki lessons. And by the way, I didn't take any iTalki lessons throughout this whole challenge. I just used my AI tutor. However, around day 45, I thought, you know, am I really going to be able to have a conversation in Spanish for half an hour with a Spanish speaker? You know, there's no way that I can know. My own experience up until this point was talking with the AI tutor where I thought, okay, I'm I'm doing better and better. But I really wanted to make sure that I was uh making progress and that I was on the right track. So, what I did is that I did book a one-hour lesson with a Colombian teacher on iTalki, and this is the only lesson that I booked apart from, you know, the final challenge that I also booked on iTalki. So, I booked a lesson, a one-hour lesson, and after the lesson, where, you know, by the way, the teacher only spoke Spanish. He didn't speak, like, I don't think he said a word of English during the entire lesson. It was just a conversation lesson. I thought, okay, well, I made some progress. You know, I could kind of speak, but I realized something, which was that, you know, my listening comprehension was not good enough, or I should say that my listening comprehension was good. I understood what I was supposed to understand. But there were parts where I did not understand because I did not know the words. And so I realized at this point, and I was a bit disappointed in myself, I guess, that I had fallen for something that, man, I I just made so many videos about this, and yet I fell into this trap, which is that I I thought, you know, Spanish is pretty similar to French, it's pretty similar to English, languages that I know, and so, you know, I thought that just watching Narcos and, you know, reading my textbook, that was going to be good enough for learning a a lot of vocabulary, but I was wrong. You know, my vocabulary was just not up to the task. And so, there were a lot of words, a lot of words that I just did not understand. And so, I realized that, okay, I need to go faster. And so, I started to really double down on, you know, the flashcards, the vocabulary flashcards that, uh, I had, you know, made in Anki.
Now, the problem is that even at the end of the challenge, I only had done about 1,000 flashcards, whereas the, you know, the my initial goal was doing 2,000. But given the time constraints, this is all I was able to do. So, you know, I did about 1,000 flashcards, which means that on average, you know, I did about 10 new flashcards per day. So, I learned 10 new words a day. Uh, there's something else as well that I did is that I added a new feature to the AI tutor, which is something that I called the vocabulary vault. So, when you have a conversation with the AI tutor in Island Koala, what you can do is if there are words that you don't know, you can just click on them and it's going to save them to your vocabulary vault. And so these words are going to be saved, and there is a functionality in Island Koala that allows you to export these words to Anki. So, this is what I did, and it was extremely helpful.
But yeah, the point is, look, I mean, you can definitely learn vocabulary using, you know, listening and, you know, watching stuff, but it's so slow. It It's just so slow. I mean, actively learning vocabulary is really, I don't want to even want to say the secret, because it's not a secret, but it's something that people seem to have forgotten. Just doing your flashcards, just, you know, the remembered speeches and and uh, you know, memorized sentences that I talked about. This is really, really useful, and yet people are not doing it. And I can tell you from my experience over, you know, the past few years and this challenge, actively learning vocabulary is really the key to having a better vocabulary. And vocabulary is the most important and the most problematic point, the most problematic aspect of learning languages. I've talked about this at length, you know, with dozens of scientists that I've interviewed on this channel. But so, yeah, from the halfway point, I really focused a lot more on vocabulary.
And then, you know, days passed and I reached the end of the challenge. So, toward the end, what I did is, you know, I knew very well that I had to do the the conversation. And so, what I did towards the end, probably the last week or the last few days, is that I went over, you know, all the sentences and the speeches that I memorized. I reviewed all of them to make sure that I had all my basics, you know, covered. And these included stuff like introducing myself, talking about where I'm from, you know, which is Tahitian, French Polynesia, talking about my work, talking about my YouTube channel, talking about how I learned Spanish through this challenge, and that kind of stuff, you know, the type of stuff where I was almost sure that we were going to talk about it in the final conversation.
And finally, the day of the conversation actually arrived. I had booked a lesson with a Colombian teacher on iTalki. And this is the result.
No. Okay. Oh, okay. Well, foreign. Netflix. Um, Mr. Memorial specific interest.
So, what do you think about this? Now, I know it's very easy on YouTube to, you know, sort of cherry-pick the moments where you sound good and put them on YouTube and, you know, cut out all the rest. So, what I'm going to do is that I actually recorded the entire, you know, unedited 30-minute conversation. I'm going to put it in a separate video. I'm going to put the link in the description so that you can make sure that I didn't just, you know, cherry-pick the good moments in the video. But overall, I would say that I'm pretty satisfied with the results that I was able to get using my program in just uh three months. I would say that the main thing that's holding me back right now, I would say my biggest issue is listening comprehension and vocabulary. So, these are two things that I need to work on in the future.
If I had to guesstimate sort of the level that I'm at right now, I would say, you know, about B1 using, you know, using the European framework. So, it's, you know, having conversations about general topics. I think if we go into more, you know, niche topics and we start to talk about specific things, or we start to have a conversation in a group, you know, with background noise and people are talking with at a fast pace with accent accents that I'm not used to, that's going to be a lot more complicated. So, these are things that I need to work on in the future.
Now, I don't know what I'm going to do next. Should I continue learning Spanish? Should I do the same challenge with another language? I'll let you decide. Just write it down in the comments in the comment section down below. Do you want me to continue with Spanish? I'd be really curious to see what I can achieve in six months, in a year, you know, uh continuously just improving my program, or should I do it with another language? And if so, with what language? So, I'll [snorts] let you decide on the comments.
Also, in terms of the resources that I have used, you know, this video is not sponsored by any of these uh resources at all. So, I'm going to put links to all of the resources that I have used below. The Spanish decks that I have created and um Island Koala, you know, the AI tutor, these are going to be for sale. You know, they're not free. And this is going to help me finance, you know, the development of these tools. Of course, uh, the making of this video, you know, it takes a long time to, you know, plan this type of challenge, to make the video, and, you know, talk about it takes a lot of time. So, I would really appreciate it if you uh purchase, you know, these resources. These are resources that I actually used and that actually work. So, it helps me, you know, finance the work on this channel and it helps me make uh more videos like this. So, anyway, let me know what you want in the comments and I'll see you in the next.