Hey gang, excited to get started. I watched Steve on YT for a while and really resonated with his teaching style so that’s why I’m here. I studied French in elementary school and retained nothing, and I studied Japanese in high school and retained nothing, so I really didn’t want to embark again and learn nothing.
How would you recommend a noobie start their language learning journey? I am studying spanish. Right now I’m just doing daily stories and clicking around LingQ, but I don’t have any ryhme or reason for what I’m doing.
There’s no pathways or tutorials, so while I’m enjoying myself I’m just curious if anyone has any suggestions on best practices or how I can most efficiently spend my time?
I’m probably High A1 or low A2 but I don’t really know.
I read in sentence mode and show the text sentence + audio + translation [ if needed]). Lookup keypads and macros here if that’s too many clicks.
I urge my daughter to read the getting started; mini sotires and introductory courses (Wh is she, eating out).
Mark words you know as known (choose how well you need to know it for this).
Then I read a target amount each day.
Read, listen, understand; repeat.
If you like books, news etc. and you can understand them, great.
The blue and yellow words may help you estimate what % of unknown words a piece of text has. They should tell you directly.
We all learn differently so don’t think Steve Kaufmann’s method is the best for you.
You’ve already got some knowledge of Spanish which helps. My suggestion is to find some YouTube videos at about your level i.e. A2, or even B1, import them (make sure you turn subtitles on), then study each one in turn, revising occasionally. Read the transcript, lookup the unknown words, figure out the grammar, listen to the audio with and without reading the transcript. Move to the next video. Gradually you’ll pick up words and phrases. At some stage you’ll be listening to podcasts for learners with more advanced material, the sooner you can do that, the sooner your learning will accelerate.
For German I use Learn German, Easy German and News in Slow German, there’s similar learner material for Spanish.
I use Anki to revise phrases. You perhaps might not like or enjoy Anki, but I do.
The above is my method, others will explain their methods which you might prefer, it might take you a while to find your chosen approach. I suggest at least 30 minutes a day, preferably one hour a day, every day.
Language learning is hard, but worth it. However Spanish is a relatively easy language.
Find the easiest courses like Getting started and Greetings and goodbyes and then move on to the 60 mini-stories. Just read and re-read them a lot until you feel you have some understanding. Listen to the recordings as well. Often when you read it helps to click on words here and there to hear them being spoken out loud. The keys for a total beginner are 1) Easy material 2) Repetition 3) Patience
Ah, then actually my advice may not apply to you since you are not a total “noobie” at all. Just find texts where you understand something like 70-90% of the words and just keep reading. It’s absolutely fine to just go through all sorts of random stuff or just whatever you think is going to be interesting of you. They key is massive input that isn’t too hard for you.