Way before thoughts of a winter hibernation in Malaga, we both decided to have a go at learning Spanish. It’s been a long time since my French lessons in Middle School (although some of that stuck), so was not sure how I would find learning how to read, write and speak in a brand new language.
The journey began with some disappointing Adult Learning classes at Reading College. Disappointing in that, although the Spanish lady teaching us was lovely, this was supposed to be a course for Beginners and it didn’t seem basic enough to me. Seemingly others as well – the fifteen strong class was down to five in the latter stages and even we missed the last one as we had a guesti staying the night with us.
And so to Duolingo. We are part of a supergroup – Paul, myself plus our friends David and Simon. We don’t study together but we can track each other’s progress. For me, this is best. The actual learning is quite a personal process and, whilst at some stage, the fruits of all this isolated practice will have to come out in the open, for now my Spanish utterances are behind closed doors into my iPhone!
I feel like I am making progress. I’m now on over 500 days continuous practice. Duo is an odd experience – in part it is a game and can get quite competitive. There are points, league tables and different levels. Much as you try to focus on the learning, you want to learn with maximum points and you don’t want to get knocked out of the top ten by someone thirstily snapping up points on your tail.
The next step is clearly to start using some of this knowledge. I feel I have learnt a lot of words. Can I understand someone speaking to me in Spanish? Could I put together a coherent reply? Three months in Spain – we’re about to find out!
Our Spanish Hibernation 3:0 
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