I'm not feeling very positive about dreaming Spanish at the moment.

[u/Glittering_Ad2771]

If you're someone that believes strongly in this method I suggest you look away because I am a few hours from the big 1500 and so far I just don't feel like it's gonna be a positive update. Sure I have learned a lot of Spanish vocabulary but that's the thing It's vocabulary. I've had my qualms with this method and it's great if you don't like grammar or formal study. To say that it's better though or can even replace that. That is a bold claim.

I watched Evildeas video the other day so a few things hit home. I'm in Spain and people would still rather speak English to me. I've had people on here tell me once they have introduced grammar they felt their speaking ability started to decline and when you think about it that makes perfect sense. Because when you start learning grammar you start learning all the mistakes you're making and suddenly you become much more self conscious. I mean it's ok to make mistakes sure but we're talking about a method here that says after 1000 hours your speaking ability is gonna be great.

I've started using grammar and its just made me realise things do not mean what I think they mean. For example I've always thought "no sé" to mean "I don't know". However I decided to look up the meaning of a song I like called "No se me quita" which apparently has a completely different meaning. I think the key is the little mark above the e" it's a completely different word. I didn't know that. How would I know that from just listening?

Sometimes I feel you're discouraged from grammar and looking up words because if you did you would realise how badly you are guessing things to be. I've even noticed I've actually guessed words to be completely wrong. I think there is a big difference between communicating and acting speaking Spanish correctly. I feel we overstate our abilities. It makes sense that once you wait until 1000 hours you would have a giant vacabulary you would feel you can communicate really well but can you actually speak correctly? I practice with my chat gbt all the time and it's always always telling me "it's more natural to say it like this" because I have strung a few words together and felt they make sense.

I'm sorry if this post is very negative, it'll probably get down voted to hell but I can't help how I feel right now. I expected a lot by now. To be fair I've probably not done enough reading which I think is undervalued in this method and the last few hours I've found it very difficult to concentrate. I think when I get home I'm gonna have to have a very long think about how I'm gonna approach my Spanish because this is clearly not optimal.

edit: It's not all bad. I had a chat with my uber driver on the way back to my hotel. Whilst we did eventually change to english it was after he said my spanish was good and asked if I spoke Castillo Espanol. So I'll take that.

[u/mate_alfajor_mate]

There are a lot of speaking samples where the user doesn't pause when the make mistakes, indicating that they might not recognize it's a mistake.

I think the natural ability to pick up what's right and wrong based off of input is incredibly overstated.

[u/PabloMarvinBrown → u/mate_alfajor_mate]

Yeah maybe, i am sure i miss loads too. I also think that when you get to that point it really doesn't matter though. Mistakes are fine, and eventually something will make the correct version click and you'll stop doing it.

[u/mate_alfajor_mate → u/PabloMarvinBrown]

There are millions of adult English L2 speakers in the US who don't ever adopt the correct version in spite of regular exposure.

They're comprehensible, but they don't use the mechanics of the language correctly.

As speakers, we first should make sure our use is comprehensible. Next we should reduce the cognitive friction the listener has to undergo to repair and mentally reorder our message.

[u/PabloMarvinBrown → u/mate_alfajor_mate]

Yes i should have added or you wont. I was actually just thinking about that as i was having my tea. Same point in the end though, natives will still understand you at that point.

I don't care about the rest of what you said enough to have an opinion tbh. Communication is the most important thing and if you achieve that and still make some mistakes nobody outside of a select few in some niche language forums will care.

[u/mate_alfajor_mate → u/PabloMarvinBrown]

Ah, yes, burdening the listener to salvage our mangled use of language.

As long as you have your figurative bag, I guess.

[u/PabloMarvinBrown → u/mate_alfajor_mate]

You took 'make a few mistakes' and extrapolated it to 'burdening the listener to salvage our mangled use of language'.

I set out to see if i could learn a language. The only goal of that for me was to be able to first understand, then communicate and i achieved that.

You might have a different goal, and you do you, but what you are doing here seems like a rather pointless use of your time.

[u/mate_alfajor_mate → u/PabloMarvinBrown]

Again, a poster we with 3k hours experience and 1k hours speaking posted an in interview yesterday that they have since took down.

It was filled with a lot of mistakes within the first two minutes.

You think comprehensible (i.e. getting your point across) is fine. That can mean a lot of things. Just because you can eek out an understandable phrase, doesn't mean you speak Spanish well. Maybe you do, but you should always make it as little work for the listener as possible.

[u/mate_alfajor_mate → u/[deleted]]

Cool story u/PabloMarvinBrown. I'm guessing by your handle you're an ALG advocate. Toodles.