T- 24 hours

So as I mentioned, I want to use a part of this blog to keep track of my approach and progress in learning Spanish. It might be interesting for those planning to learn a language abroad, but otherwise you might want to skip over this stuff – it’s mainly for my use later. With that said, I guess it would make sense to note my starting point before I arrive in Caracas. I took two years of Spanish in high school, although I haven’t used a word of what I learned aside from the four days I spent in Spain, during which I mostly relied on a phrase sheet or other people.


This picture, the crushing result of my attempt to order iced coffee at a café, serves as a testament to the uselessness of my prior studies. So aside from maybe a few vocab words, it’s safe to say I knew next to nothing prior to the past two weeks I spent studying on my own.

Since I plan to learn more languages in the future, I want to figure out the most effective method for me personally to acquire a new language. After studying Tim Ferris (his blog, which I’ve linked on the right, and his book are amazing resources for avid travelers), I’ve come to believe that typical language classes by themselves are an ineffective way to acquire a new language for a multiple of reasons: they tend to focus on impractical material – for example, written vocab/grammar assignments that make things easy for the teacher to grade students, but don’t help to actually hold a conversation; they don’t offer the practice and exposure to native speakers that are necessary to understand and use proper pronunciation, colloquial speech and idiomatic phrases; and they move at a pace that accommodates the slowest learners in class.

So one of the major reasons I decided on this trip was because I think living in a country where the language is spoken is the fastest and most effective way to learn. Pareto’s 80/20 Principle (20% of an input produces 80% of the output) also applies to language learning – a select group of words makes up the vast majority of everyday conversation. So, I think the best initial approach is to focus first on learning the most commonly used words in the spoken language, which are easy to find by searching for usage frequency lists online, and to learn just enough common phrases to get conversations started. Beyond that, the fastest way to learn is to get out, talk to people, make friends, and make as many mistakes as possible. Avoiding embarrassment and the desire to have engaging conversations with the people you meet will be much more motivating than scoring high on a test. I’ll also see if I can supplement my experience with a language class there to speed up the process. Hopefully, I’ll be able to reach a decent level of conversational fluency by May. Of course, this is my first time learning a language as an adult so I have no idea how far I’ll get.

I’ve also been listening to an audio course by Michel Thomas, which I really enjoy so far and hope will cover the basics. But despite my efforts, I completely expect to be clueless during the first few weeks. I’ll be arriving in exactly 24 hours from now as I sit here writing this in L.A. Wish me luck!