Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 150 of the Listening Time Podcast.
Thank you all for listening.
I'm happy that I made it another 50 episodes.
Thank you all for listening and for supporting me.
I'm happy to have reached episode 150 and, And for this episode I want to do something a little special.
I'm gonna talk about how I learned Spanish.
This episode will go into detail about my life, really.
You'll learn about me and my process of learning Spanish, and and how that is also related to my marriage.
So this one will be a little bit personal but very beneficial, because I think you can learn a lot from my experience learning Spanish.
And I also want to make an interesting announcement.
Most of you won't be interested in this, but I want to mention it because sometimes people ask me about similar podcasts podcasts like this one, but for other languages like French or Portuguese or Spanish.
And I want to tell you all that my wife has just started a podcast for Spanish.
It's very similar to this podcast, the Listening Time podcast, but of course, it's for people who want to learn Spanish and who want to learn naturally by listening to a native Spanish speaker talk about different topics, like I do in this podcast.
So it's very similar.
The episodes are shorter, but the idea is pretty much the same.
So I'm sure that if you're learning Spanish, that podcast will be very helpful for you, especially if you can't understand really well yet.
So that podcast is called Sweet and Simple Spanish.
I'm going to leave the link down below.
I'll probably leave the link to the Spotify page, but you can listen to it on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you want to listen to it.
And hopefully, if you're learning Spanish, that will help you out.
So this is a very Spanish-related episode today.
And, of course, as always, I want to mention that you can get my training if you want my help with your English listening skills or pronunciation skills.
You can sign up for my membership.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And you can also sign up for my other podcast if you want to practice with listening to two people talk instead of just one.
That's a great challenge for you if you want to reach an advanced level of listening.
So both of those links are down below in the description below this episode.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let me tell you about how I learned Spanish.
So, first of all, let me mention that the way that I learned Spanish is not the traditional way that someone would learn a language.
And it's not easily replicable.
Something that's replicable is something that you can replicate.
You can copy it and do it again.
So you probably won't be able to do this with another language.
It's not the traditional way that people learn languages and it's not how I'm ever going to learn another language again.
So this was a very unique situation, but there are some really important principles that we can all learn from my experience that will help all of us as language learners, I believe.
So, let me give you some background information.
I learned a very, very small amount of Spanish when I was five years old, when I was in kindergarten, and that's because I had a couple after-school Spanish classes, But I think I only learned how to count to 10, if I'm not mistaken.
And I think I learned a few words and a few phrases, but I stopped after a couple of classes and And I didn't see any Spanish.
I had no exposure to Spanish again until I was in high school.
So in high school, I took two years of Spanish, which is what most people do.
They take two years of a foreign language in high school in the US.
It might be different now.
I'm not sure.
But when I was in school, that was what almost everyone did.
Some people took more years if they wanted to.
And of course, people can choose other languages as well.
But most people in the US choose Spanish because it's the most relevant and useful for us in the US.
So I took two years of Spanish in high school when I was 14 and 15 years old.
And I learned just a little bit like most of us in public school language classes.
And I learned some grammar rules.
I learned a little bit of vocabulary.
And of course, I couldn't speak or understand after those classes.
And when they were done, I forgot almost everything.
It was almost a waste of time.
However, I think I mentioned this in a bonus episode, if I'm not mistaken, or an advanced episode.
I don't remember.
But there was one thing that I did take from those classes that was useful, and that is that I learned the concept of verb conjugation in those classes.
Verb conjugation just refers to changing the form of the verb based on the subject, right?
So, for example, I walk, he walks.
Like that.
So, in English, we have that, but it's simpler.
In Spanish, verb conjugation is more complex, and it's something that a lot of people have trouble with when they first start learning Spanish.
So that idea of verb conjugation and a couple other ideas, a couple other concepts stayed with me after I finished those classes.
But besides those few things that stayed with me, it was basically a waste of time.
I didn't learn the language, of course.
And I wasn't interested at all in language learning or in Spanish, to be honest.
And so I didn't do any type of language learning after that until I was about 18 years old, 18 or 19.
I think 19, actually.
And that's because I was in community college doing my first two years of university and I was going to transfer to another university to do my third and fourth years after that.
But one of the requirements in order to transfer was that I needed to have already taken an intermediate course in some language, some foreign language.
So, of course, I chose Spanish, and I needed to prepare myself to take the intermediate courses in Spanish.
So I went to Guadalajara Mexico, and I stayed with an elderly couple, a Mexican couple, who hosted me there.
And I went to school there at that language school and I learned for about five hours a day and it was a really fun experience.
Of course, everything else that I did outside of the language school was even more exciting, of course, but I also liked that language school and I liked the program that I did, the fact that I stayed with that Mexican couple And I learned a lot during those five weeks.
It was great to do those classes.
However, it was not nearly enough for me in terms of becoming good at Spanish.
So I learned a lot, but it only got me to a level in which I could have basic conversations and I could kind of understand other people if they spoke slowly to me and it was just one person talking, so obviously I didn't reach a high level after those classes, of course.
However, they were helpful, but the best thing about that school was that they had a conversation class after the normal classes.
And in that conversation class, the locals who are at that school learning English because there are many people learning English at that school, Mexicans who live there during that conversation class, those locals can go and then the foreigners who are learning spanish at that school can also go and we do an exchange between the locals and the foreigners, where 30 minutes we speak spanish and 30 minutes we speak english.
I'm speaking in the present tense.
I think they still do this.
Maybe they don't, but that's what we did in the past, at least at that school, and This is actually how I met my future wife.
So my wife was at that school learning English and I was there learning Spanish, and we met on the first day After this conversation class.
We met and then we spent pretty much every day together for the next five weeks, except for weekends.
And by the end of those five weeks, we decided to pursue a relationship again.
You can say pursue a relationship to mean that you are starting and committing yourselves to that relationship.
So we decided to pursue a relationship together and continue on in a long-distance relationship after that because, of course, I went back to the US and she lived in Mexico.
And when I met her, I couldn't speak well and I couldn't understand well in terms of Spanish, obviously.
And I made the decision that I wanted to learn Spanish because I was serious about my relationship with my future wife.
She was my girlfriend at that point.
And so I told her to only talk to me in Spanish 100% of the time.
And I was only going to talk in Spanish as well.
And so when I went back to the US, we talked pretty much every day on the phone or on Skype or something, for about an hour a day on average, I would say.
After I was done with school and she was done with school in the evening, we would talk, and we would talk in Spanish every day.
And we talked about the normal things that people talk about when they're in a relationship with someone else.
So we just kind of talked about life.
We got to know each other better.
And we just talked about everything, really.
And every time that I needed her to repeat something because I couldn't understand her, I interrupted her and said stop, I didn't understand that.
And she would repeat what she said or explain it to me or translate it sometimes, and And I did this every single time I didn't understand her.
I stopped her, interrupted her, and she explained it to me.
So she was really patient with me.
And we did this every day.
Basically, we talked.
I interrupted her.
She repeated or explained things to me.
So I got a lot of very interesting Spanish practice, because I was talking to my girlfriend at that time, who i eventually wanted to marry, and so i really wanted to know what she was saying and i really wanted to communicate well with her, and so i had a ton of motivation to learn the language, And so we did this every day.
I had a lot of motivation.
And so after about six months from the time that I started that language school, about six months after that, I was able to have very comfortable conversations with her fluent conversations really.
Obviously I made a lot of mistakes still, but I was able to talk very comfortably and have a relationship with this person in this foreign language.
And I would say that probably around nine months after I did that language course, I could speak really well with her and I sounded fluent to anyone else that just heard me talk on the phone.
I sounded like a completely fluent Spanish speaker.
So that was great.
And we were in a long distance relationship for three years before we finally got married.
And then I moved down to Mexico, to Guadalajara.
So I had three years of practice talking to her on the phone basically every day.
So by the time I moved to Mexico, I
I was good at speaking Spanish and I understood well.
But when I moved to Mexico and I started living there, I realized that my knowledge of Spanish was completely based upon whatever my wife said, because I didn't listen to anyone else speaking Spanish.
I didn't talk to anyone else.
I didn't watch TV in Spanish.
I didn't watch videos in Spanish.
I didn't listen to podcasts in Spanish.
I didn't read in Spanish.
I didn't do anything in Spanish besides talking to my wife.
So all of the Spanish that I knew was just based on the Spanish that my wife spoke.
So her words, her phrases, her style of speaking, her slang, that's what I knew, and so in Mexico, even though my listening skills were good, when I talked to people, people other than my wife, I realized that there was a lot that I couldn't understand because they had a different style of speaking than my wife, they used different words and phrases and slang, and So it took me a little while to be able to understand other people really well, because I had to learn a lot more vocabulary just living in Mexico and dealing with people other than my wife.
And I also noticed that I couldn't understand people very well when I was with groups of people and they were all native Spanish speakers and they talked and there was a lot that I couldn't understand.
And it took me probably almost two years before I got really good at just understanding the Spanish spoken in groups of people where more than one person is talking.
I didn't have a lot of practice because I didn't go out with groups of friends or things like that.
However, I probably had a few hours a week of practice with more than one Spanish speaker with me.
So it wasn't a lot of practice every week.
And so it took me probably around two years before I reached the level at which I could understand basically anyone in any situation, in groups of people, whatever.
So now I can do that and I'm fluent, obviously, and I'm very comfortable in Spanish.
I still make a lot of mistakes, of course, because I'm not a native speaker and I don't actively try to improve my Spanish.
So I can speak very comfortably.
I can understand in pretty much any situation.
But that took a while.
So that's pretty much my story with Spanish.
And of course, it's a very unique learning experience.
However, there are a few lessons that I think we can all take away from my experience learning Spanish.
So I noted down three important lessons.
The first one is the fact that I never listened to or read anything in Spanish when I was learning.
And if I had done that then the process would have been so much faster, because I was really motivated and I learned a lot from my wife.
And imagine if I had just done an extra hour a day of listening or reading.
I would have learned so much, and I would have learned so much faster, and everything would have gone more quickly and faster.
I would have gotten used to other people's style of speaking, not just my wife's, because if I had listened to podcasts or whatever, then I would have heard other people speaking Spanish and heard other slang, other phrases, things like that.
And so, because I didn't do this, I had to do it later, living in Mexico talking to other people, years after I started learning Spanish.
So I should have done this at the beginning, and I should have continued listening and reading the whole time I was learning with my wife.
So for you, if you're listening to this podcast right now, you're already doing the right thing, so great job.
I didn't do this when i was learning spanish, and that caused it to go slower than it should have gone.
So that's the first lesson that you can take away from this.
The second lesson is that it's really important to challenge yourself with something harder in order to progress.
Because, for example, after that language school that I did, I challenged myself by forcing my future wife to talk to me in Spanish 100 of the time, and I talked to her in Spanish.
That was a huge, huge challenge and it was much harder than my level at that time, but that challenge made me progress and reach the next level.
And it worked the same way when I moved to Mexico and I started getting some practice being with groups of Mexicans.
Because before that, I hadn't had that experience before.
So it was hard to be with groups of people and try to understand them properly.
While they were talking.
Like I said, it took me a couple of years before I could eventually understand basically everything in those situations.
So that challenge was hard for me.
It was something above my level, but it made me reach that level eventually.
So for you, it's important to do the same thing.
You're listening to me right now, but I'm speaking slowly and clearly.
So it's important for you to also challenge yourself.
For example, use my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak at normal speed.
That's what you need in order to advance.
You need to listen to things that are harder than your current level.
And you can also use my U.S.
Conversations podcast.
Of course, that's even harder than the advanced episodes because two people are talking.
And that's very similar to my experience of how I talk progressed with my listening.
I had to hear more people speaking at the same time to eventually be able to understand everything in those group settings.
So you don't need to use my content for that.
I'm just uh, recommending it because it's made for that specific purpose.
But you can just listen to normal videos of people speaking fast and videos and podcasts of two people or three people talking.
You can listen to whatever you want, but challenge yourself in order to progress.
And, And lastly, the third lesson you can take away from this is that motivation is everything.
I was extremely motivated to learn Spanish.
So even though I had a bad method, I wasn't listening or reading.
I was still able to learn Spanish relatively quickly because I was so motivated to talk to my wife and understand what she was saying.
And that is the biggest, the biggest key when it comes to language learning is your motivation.
Right now, I'm almost done with my challenge to study Italian for a short period of time.
And I was motivated at the beginning and it was fun.
But, to be completely honest, right now I've lost all motivation to learn Italian.
But I'm still gonna complete the challenge.
But I can see how big of a difference it makes when you're not motivated to learn.
I'm not motivated to learn Italian and so I'm not learning much.
Even though I'm doing it for two hours every day, I'm not seeing that much progress.
I'm not seeing as much progress as I would see if I were motivated.
So motivation is everything.
Find your motivation for learning English or learning Spanish.
If you decide to check out my wife's podcast, for example, find your motivation and keep your motivation level up.
This makes all the difference.
Alright, that's it for today.
I hope you enjoyed hearing about my experience with Spanish and I hope you learned something from my experience.
And if you want to learn Spanish, remember to check out my wife's podcast, Sweet and Simple Spanish.
I'll leave the link down below so you can check that out.
And of course, you can access my advanced podcast episodes.
You can sign up.
I'll leave the link down below in the episode description.
And you can use my US Conversations podcast to challenge yourself even more if you'd like.
The link will also be down below as well.
Thank you all for listening.
Thank you for helping me reach 150 episodes.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
