Right before I left for the island of Ometepe, I was at a point of complete frustration with my language learning. While I was able to communicate well with people I knew, I was still a train wreck when it came to talking to people not used to my accent or way of speaking. Although I’d been studying irregular verbs for well over a month, I could never remember the correct conjugation while speaking with somebody. I didn’t feel like I was learning new words or making any progress. I had plateaued and plateaued hard.
Then, my dear friend returned to the country with my new kindle. I downloaded a few primers to get used to reading in spanish. Free downloads are available on kindle that tell fairytales using simple vocabulary. My intent was to read these to further immerse myself in the language. (Yeah, because being in a Spanish speaking country surrounded by Spanish speakers 90% of the time isn’t immersion enough!) Anyway – my good intentions went to the wind when I realized the vocabulary wasn’t quite simple enough for me and I found myself bouncing back and forth to the Spanish dictionary so often that it took me a good half-an-hour to read four sentences. Perhaps with more learning, that will become realistic.