Language Laddering?

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1

Hello everyone,

This year, I’ve been focusing on my Spanish and will continue to do so until the beginning of next year.

Next year, I plan to start learning German; however, I don’t want to lose my Spanish. I aim to make Spanish my main language.

Here is my plan:

  • I will dedicate my usual 4 hours per day to learning German (1 hour Lingq, 2 hours listening, 30 minutes grammar, and 30 minutes writing).
  • During my 8-hour workday, I will be in English as I work in English.
  • Outside of work, everything will be in Spanish.

Specifically:

  • Everything I watch on YouTube will be in Spanish.
  • Everything I read will be in Spanish.
  • Everything I write will be in Spanish.
  • I will still allocate dedicated learning time for German.

Has anyone done something like this before?

This approach would allow me to continue improving my Spanish while also making progress in German.

I plan to repeat this method when I learn my next language.

Thanks,
Jack

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2

I just started this laddering up approach in order to maintain my German while learning English. However, I have recently started working at Walmart since I am based in Dallas, Texas to meet my immediate expenses while looking for a professional job. The thing with Walmart is they have bought one year language learning subscription with Mondly app for their Walmart employees. Cost us employees completely free. In Mondly app I chose German as my first language and English as my target language. In your case, Spanish_German. With their interface all the instructions and content of English lessons are written in German. I get to read German while learning English simultaneously. Mondly app is not a replacement for LINQG, however, I found it very intuitive and easy to use during my dead time at work(1 hour lunch break). They take 1 minute Youtube style video and provides different exercises. The app also uses AI bot for having a conversation and recording your voice. Just read review of the Mondly app on Youtube by different polyglots. See if it fits your bill.

Here is the link:

Mondly Language Learning App

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3

I’m doing something similar, hope it works :grinning: .

I can’t ONLY listen/watch in foreign languages because my boyfriend doesn’t speak any of them, so we have a designated TV relaxing time in the evenings (about an hour) which is invariably in English (my native language). But… here’s my plan for continuing with the other four languages I’m working on:

Portuguese: This is my first priority, and I’m now at an advanced enough level that I can listen to/watch/read most content without too much difficulty. I’ve focused on European Portuguese to date, but would like to start listening to some Brazilian so I can understand this dialect also.

Spanish: I USED to be at a fairly advanced level, and am now doing a lot of listening, and planning to incorporate speaking later this year. I assume this will botch my Portuguese speaking to some degree, but I plan to practice speaking both languages by saying the same things in one language and then translating to the other. I think my Spanish is coming back quickly enough that I can listen to native content in Spanish pretty soon. The advantage of Spanish is I live in Southern California where there are always ample opportunities to speak it with native speakers in real life situations.

Italian and Arabic: I’m a beginner in both of these languages but I do have a foundation; i.e. I know the Arabic alphabet, phonetics of both languages, and basic structures/grammar in both languages. So, I plan to 1) listen to the LingQ mini-stories a bunch of times in both languages (more in Arabic, with reading practice) and 2) after that, continue learning both by listening, reading, and brushing up on grammar. I won’t worry about speaking just now in either of these languages. And… my plan for brushing up on grammar is to only use Portuguese- and Spanish-language content… thus keeping with a “total immersion” approach in my more advanced languages to study the languages where I’m a beginner.

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