I decided to finally grab myself by the scruff of the neck and start learning Spanish, and I made a loose curriculum to get myself started. Figured I'd jot it down here along with how/why I'm doing these things. It might help keep me motivated, and maybe it can give someone else inspiration in terms of concrete stuff to try.
I really want to stress that I'm not trying to present some Method here, this is just a collection of things that have worked for me personally in the past.
Goal: Get to about B1.
I'm mainly doing this for fun and the aim is to (mostly) do things I'm willing to keep up for a long time, without turning it into a chore. B1 definitely isn't an end goal, but I'll have a much better idea of what I want to achieve and how once I get there. No point planning further now.
1. Bought two textbooks.
They cover A1 and A2-ish (they're school textbooks, so are graded for years rather than with CEFR ratings).
This is the most "boring" thing I'm doing, and the only thing I'm spending money on (for now at least). It's good to have something structured and authoritative that introduces new things at a steady pace, with at least cursory explanations. I aim to go through a few chapters per week (at least three), do the exercises, make my own notes and revise stuff as I go.
2. Made a new Anki deck for Spanish.
If you're not familiar, Anki is just a flashcard app with a built-in SRS (Spaced Repetition System). I'm making my own deck and adding words, expressions and turns of phrase I come across, but only ones I don't think I'll get a lot of repetition of elsewhere. Adding common vocab is pointless since I'll get more than enough repetition of it elsewhere.
It's basically just note-taking with an algorithm that automates revision. I won't be downloading any ready-made decks.
3. I'm going to the library for reading material (next week).
Reading has always been my main source of vocab (except for Danish but that barely counts as a separate language), so I want to get started as soon as possible. Of course it's going to have to be very simple at first - A1 graded readers or equivalent.
With a big language like Spanish there's a wealth of free stuff online, but if I can get a librarian to do the legwork for me it's a no-brainer.
4. Passive listening.
In my case this just means putting the radio on during "dead" time when I do other things (on the tram, while cooking, doing laundry, etc.) It's something I wish I'd done sooner with French. Of course I'll understand *very* little at first, but that's not the purpose when starting out. It's just to get used to the sounds and cadence of the language, and the beginner stuff you do know comes up a lot since it's all core vocab. Radio is really nice for this since you get to hear lots of different voices and accents.
5. Active listening.
This will have to wait a little since you need some grounding for it to be meaningful. I'm not going to sit around listening to people slowly say stuff like "Necesito comida, así que vamos a la tienda".
I don't know exactly what I'll end up doing for this yet, but there are always language podcasts for beginners. I'm not going to do Duolingo, but the French podcast they make is actually pretty good so I'll give the Spanish one a try. Graded readers often come with audio recordings so that's a possibility (though I may have to dig out an old CD-player). And there's always YouTube. I'll find stuff.
6. "Immersion".
Immersion is a very nebulous term, but for the purposes of this I'll define it as "Doing stuff I'd like to do anyway, but in Spanish". Basically any interaction with the language, input and output, where the purpose isn't just to learn. This is hard to do when you're a beginner, since things for native adults and children over five are way too difficult and things made for students and toddlers tend to be too boring to qualify.
Music is an easy one to start with right away. Comic books/graphic novels and animated shows and movies were good starters for French. It's going to take a while, but it's a good step to work towards.
I have an acquaintance from Argentina and a colleague from the Dominican Republic, so I'll try to get some occasional chatting done without being annoying.
That's about it. Things I won't worry about:
Pronunciation/accent. Spanish is very straightforward; only five vowel phonemes (English has 20 and my dialect of Swedish has 21) and AFAIK only three consonant sounds we don't have. I'll obviously try to pronounce things well, but I don't care about perfection or impressing anyone.
Grammar. Most of it is fairly similar to French and from what I've seen the differences aren't difficult to wrap your head around. I'll look things up when needed, but I'm not setting aside any time just to study it.
