This Year's Spanish Goal

January 11, 2022

The new year has started and with it, I have a few goals in mind, one of which being my desire to progress to a more advanced level of Spanish.

Last year I spent most of my time in informal conversations. I just didn’t have the energy to study formally with my teacher, so we would spend our hour-long Zoom calls just chatting.

In addition, Lorena and I spent six weeks in Mexico, and I felt like that helped to improve my comfort in conversations. I had my good days and bad days. It can be incredibly frustrating trying to learn a language in a world where everyone wears a mask.

Now that we have returned from yet another extended stay in Mexico, I feel like I am trapped at my current language level. If I am honest with myself, I would say that my comprehension and speaking abilities are at a B2. Not an advanced B2 by any means. There are days when I would say that I am B1, especially if I am tired.

My goal is to be advanced B2 (or low C1) by the end of 2022.

My first year of learning Spanish was 2020. I didn’t know any, and by the end of the year I was at a pretty good A2 level. It wasn’t easy getting there, but my gains were very noticeable as I was starting from nothing.

During that time, I had three to four classes per week with my tutor. We went through the structured workbook during our time together, and outside my lessons I would read, study vocabulary, and try to watch shows in Spanish (with subtitles).

2021 was the year of conversations, as I mentioned.

Which brings me to this year. I have a strong desire to progress to that next level, and I know that I need to follow a similar strategy as 2020 to achieve it. This means I need my lessons with my tutor to be more structured again so that I can learn the more advanced grammatical structures and vocabulary.

I am up for the challenge. My primary motivation is to better communicate with Lorena and her family in their native language. I also want to better understand Mexican culture, and the best way to do that is through language.

No sense in waiting, either, as my lessons start up again this week.

#personal