I did Spanish in school a long time ago until I was 15 years old. I have made a few attempts to learn it properly since then, but have not managed to succeed yet. I have quite a bit of vocabulary and can get by in some situations in Spain, but I want to do better than this. Generally Spanish people are happy when I make an effort, but I think I have to do better than this. Given the very long period since I studied Spanish I am surprised at how much I have remembered. At the very least this is a useful leg up.

A few years ago I got to the end of the Duolingo Spanish course but found that I did not have conversational ability. I would not say it was a useless exercise, but was just not sufficient. In January of this year I decided that I would give Spanish another go. I asked Chat GPT for a plan.

In summary it gave me a 4 phase plan with each phase lasting about a month. It got the wrong impression about my preexisting level of Spanish, so the timeline was a bit too ambitious. I was aiming at a family holiday to Tenerife where I would be able to speak some Spanish in everyday contexts. We are just back from the holiday and I think I did ok. More to do - and another holiday to Spain in 2 months to aim for.

The main tool I have been using is Busuu on Android. Busuu is a language learning app which seems to me to be a lot better than Duolingo. I did an initial assesssment with it and was recommended to start at level A2. A1 is for beginners. I worked through A2, but felt I needed to brush up on the more basic content too. So once I had passed the short A2 test I went back to do the A1 part of the app.

When I am confused by something I just screenshot the app and use Chat GPT to figure out the problem. This is an excellent extension of the app learning method and I have noticed very few mistakes from the AI.

Currently the app reckons my level of fluency is 38%. I am not sure about that, or even if that is a useful amount, but I definitely have a ways to go before I can be confident in everyday conversational situations.

In addition to Busuu I have also downloaded a set of Anki cards for Spanish vocabulary. There are 5000 words in there. I am less sure that this is useful. Many Spanish words are very similar to English words so they are easy. For the more difficult ones learning them in a context (the way Busuu teaches them) seems like a better way to learn.