Been learning Spanish for 13 months now using mostly Lingq. Started speaking weekly with a tutor 5 weeks ago. This is my update. First, some current stats.
Known Words: 20,902
Words Read: 1,678,949
Hours of Listening: 223.62
I have had 5 speaking sessions with my Spanish tutor. The first month was honestly a bit rough but I am getting better. I could have a very basic conversation with lots of pauses and mistakes from the first session. But became very discouraged on the third when my tutor pushed me to describe things in the past. I realized I had no idea how to conjugate anything in any past tense. Even though I can almost always recognize when something is speaking about the past when seen in context while reading or listening.
So I have spent more time this month working on mostly the Preterite tense. Trying to memorize some conjugations using note cards and working through the “No Nonsense Spanish Workbook”. I have found this workbook to be very helpful. Not overly scholastic or traditional grammar-translation approach. But challenging me with different types of exercises and giving me an opportunity to actually write out real Spanish. This has been a good foundation for helping me prepare for my classes.
I have not done much practice with the imperfect tense but they seem to be pretty straightforward. I feel my weaknesses with the past tenses right now are two: 1) Automatizing my usage of the Preterite tense with more practice. And 2) Gaining confidence in knowing in what situations to use either preterite or imperfect.
I can recognize the various usages of the perfect tense when reading and listening. But to produce it I know I will have to memorize the conjugations for Haber. I can recognize when something is in the future as well. But again, can only guess at how to produce it myself. Probably with laughable mistakes. I am limited to using “Voy a” or “Quiero a” to talk about the future right now. I believe I can recognize when something is in the Subjunctive about half of the time. But almost never able to produce it myself yet.
I know everyone is different. For me, I am learning that the pure comprehensible input approach is wonderfully effective for comprehension. But in order to be able to produce the language either in writing or speaking I simply have to learn some basic conjugations. I need to practice my output on my own before my tutoring sessions. Because for me I get so anxious sometimes that I forget most of what I thought I knew when I am in the middle of a conversation with a native speaker.
At this point I am happy with my progress. I know I am getting better but also have a ways to go before I am confident in my speaking abilities. As far as my reading and listening skills, I am Intermediate 2 on Lingq which as best as I can tell is a solid B1 on CEFR scale. But for my writing and speaking abilities, I would have to say I am still just A1 at this point. This is given the fact that I still struggle so much with past tenses. And after a quick google search. You have these down pretty well by the time you are A2…That being said. I have a lot of niche words that come out of my mouth at times relating to my interests. Which I have in my passive vocabulary from taking in so much of things I care about. So that is cool.
One final exciting note. I just received my first 2 physical books in Spanish not designed for learners. Given that they are topics I enjoy and have been focusing on. I am confident I can understand about 98% of them.
I plan to keep learning. Keep reading and listening. And continue my once per week tutoring sessions. They are helping. I would do more but can’t justify the financial cost right now.