Refold Approach to Language Learning: Spanish ~700-Hour Update
My fifth update for my Spanish learning journey with the refold approach
This is my fifth update for my Spanish learning journey with the refold approach. For my first update see here. For my second update see here. For my third update see here. For my fourth update see here. For more information about the Refold approach see here. For a basic Spanish Anki vocabulary deck see here.
General Progress
Reached 700 total hours of immersion. Continued to immerse in chosen focus area (history and historical fantasy). Tried and failed to dive into literary fiction. Found listening to stories I didn’t know in audiobook form too difficult. Paused French immersion. Continued A/B/C testing the reverse of anki cards.
Reading
Since last time I’ve done a fair amount of reading. I finished El Retorno del Rey and its appendices (very good for getting me to read dates well), La Gran Aventura de Asturias by José Javier Esparza, the first novel in the young adult series El Sendero del Guardabosques, El Hijo del Traidor by Pedro Urvi, and also a translation from Japanese of the minimalist book Goodbye Things.
Return of the King was a refreshingly good translation (or maybe the story was so good I just didn’t notice), but as I detailed in my last post, I will be trying to focus on Native content moving forward. I do still have some fantasy translations that I bought of Way of Kings and the First Law that I will read at some point.
I do not plan to read more José Javier Esparza. I don’t mind his right-wing viewpoint, as it’s educational to see history written from a different angle than what I’m used to. However, his books are filled with far too many of his unsupported pet theories, and the structure of the way he narrates history seems to make people, places, and dates all blend together. If anyone has any recommendations on more digestible Spanish history books let me know.
Goodbye Things was a book I read on a whim based on an update video from another refold Spanish learner. It was okay and inspired me to start trying to sell a lot of my childhood toys on eBay. However, if you’re looking for a Spanish book about minimalism I would much more strongly recommend Ikagi.
El Hijo del Traidor was the perfect book for both my interests and ability level. The plot is a cross between Harry Potter and The Ranger’s Apprentice. While the characters are childish, and the endless harping on the character being “the son of a traitor” annoying, the books were entertaining. I found myself wanting to read them instead of content I had picked out in English, which is always awesome. The series is 12 books long, and seems like the perfect way to pump up my reading hours and ability so I can tackle the spanish language literary fiction that I want to.
I’ve started to try and read two literary books (as well as the abandoned now Alatriste): Memoria de Mis Putas Tristes and La Invencion de Morel. I can barely understand the plot of both of these, but my Spanish ability is not ready for their finer details. I’m considering reading them now and revisiting later, perhaps in around 300 hours, as a benchmark of my improved abilities.
Total Immersion time: 345 hours
Future Plans: Africanus, the rest of El Sendero del Guardabosques, potentially Gabriel García Márquez and other literary fiction.
Open Questions: How soon until I’m ready for “Literary” fiction? Recommendations for Spanish history about the Reconquista?
Sentence Mining
I’m up to 561 cards now with a 95.28% mature retention rate. Since the last update I added about ~43 cards from Goodbye, things: Cómo encontrar la felicidad con el arte de lo escencuial, ~19 so far from El Hijo del Traidor and ~40 so far from Asturias. I have not yet made the effort to finish the cards from those books but I should be able to do so in the next few days. Even more cards should come online once I finish Cruzada del Oceano, more of El Sendero de los Guardabosques and Africanus. I’ve also finished the French deck, so with that off my plate I can focus on Spanish sentence mining.
With some new Anki stats tricks I managed to learn that I’ve spent about 9 hours on the cards over the past year. I would estimate that I’ve also spent about 9 hours making cards (each card takes ~1 min to make, 561 cards is about 9 hours). I’ve counted this in reading time, as anki reps consist of me reading the sentences on the cards.
I also continued by A/B, A/C testing from last time. Here are the numbers for mature cards:
Image: 456/476 correct
English: 361/375 correct
Spanish: 352/375 correct
I did a Chi-squared test and obtained a p-value of .24. Significance is obtained at p<.05. This is a reversion to insignificance after last time’s p-value of .07. I suspect that my retention rate is too high for there to be significant differences between the A, B and C groups. Commenters have previously noted this high-retention rate; I’m hoping to lower it by adding more cards. However, I suspect this may be a losing battle. All my cards contain full sentences with the word of interest highlighted. If the sentence contains any context clues as to what the word means, it is much easier for me to figure out that it should be. Hence the extremely high “Learning” correct rate as well. My mature rate on the French deck is much closer to ideal (around 87%), which is in agreement with my hypothesis about context clues. I will keep making cards of all three types to continue to gather data.
Writing
I’ve continued to write goodreads reviews for the books that I’ve listened to and read. Still limiting myself to what I can think of in Spanish. May be a good idea to get those reviews corrected by someone who knows Spanish. If any of my readers would like to volunteer, that would be great.
Listening
I finished Juego de Tronos early this month and started looking for another book similar to it to listen to. I settled on a book I had seen recommended in r/fantasy called Olvidado Rey Gudú which allegedly has similar themes. However that book was too difficult for me to listen to while walking ,or doing wet lab work. The same was true for other books I had not read before that I bought to listen to such as Linea de Fuego, and the stories of Borges. Both of these are something I want to tackle in the future, but for listening while doing another activity, stories I already know, or at least can easily understand, seem to be necessary. Thus I plan to relisten to El Hijo del Traidor in the coming year, as well as order a book copy of Olvidado Rey Gudú so I can read the book before listening to it.
Anime has become extremely easy (level 5–6 comprehension). Same with dubbed content that I’m already familiar with (like Harry Potter). I’ve also been watching Vivir sin Permiso, which is a Galician TV show about a drug lord slowly losing his memories while trying to pass the business on to his kids. I’m not great at watching TV, but this show hooked my attention completely. So much so that I will sometimes turn on subtitles in the middle of watching to make sure I’m understanding whats going on.
I’ve also started exploring Catholicism a little bit using Spanish. I am planning on converting to Catholicism this year and have been using a prayer/meditation app called “Hallow” that I found has Spanish content. The priests on the app speak very slowly and the content is extremely comprehensible. I believe the app is around $60 a year, but you can get a free trial for 2 weeks.
Total Immersion time: 350 hours
Future Plans: Linea de Fuego, Finish Vivir sin Permiso, continue watching period pieces. Continue exploring Catholicism in Spanish.
Open Questions: Is re-listening to something that I’ve already read a valuable way to increase my ability level? Recommendations for comprehensible listening material in podcast or audiobook form?
Speaking
None from last time. I plan to start iTalki lessons later this year.
Explicit Grammer
None. When to use ordinal numbers vs cardinal nubmers in Spanish is a little different than in English. One would say siglo diez rather tenth century in English. The distinction is becoming second nature to me. I’ve also started to be able to reflexively say numbers in Spanish when I see them written in Arabic numerals (thanks to La Gran Aventura de Asturias and El Retorno del Rey).
French
I’ve finished the Anki starter deck (300 words), but as you can see from the immersion data spreadsheet, I have not done much immersion. Trying to read literary fiction showed me that even my reading in Spanish, which I would consider to be my best area of the Spanish language, is not where I want it to be. This is something I will come back to in 2023.
Overall Impressions
Overall, this was a bit of a wake up call of a month for me. I need to put in a lot more work with reading to get to the level I would like to be at to enjoy things like Borges and GGM. I think the key for this is going to be really aggressive sentence mining and just putting in the immersion time. I’m totally not ready for another language that would eat into my Spanish time. However, I do plan to restart Lingua Latina per se Illustrata in the new year, which I hope will help me both to learn Latin and improve my Spanish.
Open Questions: What’s the crossover between Latin and Spanish vocabulary? How many novels did it take you to get to your current ability levels?
Full immersion link data link.
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