getting over the intermediate Spanish plateau

[lull]

I'm somewhat conversational in Spanish, though I listen and read better than I respond. I struggle with vocabulary and formulating complex sentences using the notorious subjunctive mood when I'm trying to respond rapidly. I passed my university's intermediate Spanish course before studying abroad in Madrid for a semester, but I'm really just trying to get out of that B1/B2 range. Are advanced Spanish classes or medical Spanish classes really worth it?

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[LizzyM]

Have you already done your semester abroad or is that in the future. In my own experience, living in a Spanish speaking community with almost no opportunities to speak English took me from 0-60 in about a semester. Don't think about grammar, learn to speak as children speak... kids don't earn grammar before they learn to speak. As you are corrected you will learn the grammar naturally rather than by memorizing tables of words.

 

[lull]

Have you already done your semester abroad or is that in the future. In my own experience, living in a Spanish speaking community with almost no opportunities to speak English took me from 0-60 in about a semester. Don't think about grammar, learn to speak as children speak... kids don't earn grammar before they learn to speak. As you are corrected you will learn the grammar naturally rather than by memorizing tables of words.

I studied abroad last semester and stayed with a host family that did not speak English, which helped tremendously. The feedback I get now is that I say phrases that are very typical of Spain. I also struggle with commonly used, but more advanced vocab. I’m at a point where I can understand some accents really well, and others not so much (e.g. dominican, cuban, puerto rican).

 

[lull]

The other thing I've done for more advanced vocab is make an Anki deck. Whenever I come across a word I don't know, whether that's in conversation, reading an article, etc., I look it up and I add it to the deck. The deck is huge now but I usually just end up doing like 15-20 cards a day.

nice, I'll definitely try this

I know Netflix does have a lot of Spanish-language content but I haven't explored it too much yet.

Yes this, I've been watching Élite, la casa de papel, and las chicas del cable, which feeds into my Castillian Spanish problem, but I highly recommend these series

 

[ElloMellowYellow]

I dont have many people to speak to in spanish, so I started to read books and journal in spanish.

When reading, I write down words I dont know and after, put them into an anki deck.

I'm thinking of hiring a tutor once a week to get more physical speaking practice.

Theres a $30 medical spanish flipbook you can get at barnes and noble that has a lot of phrases you can easily memorize too.

 

[theKingLT]

Netflix is always great. Browse shows and movies with Spanish audio by going to netflix.com/browse/audio. In the U.S. there's tons of mexican, columbian, and Spanish stuff, but there's content from other countries sprinkled in. If you want a ton of Cuban and dominican material YouTube might be a better option though. Or just use a VPN to get another country's netflix access.

Also you can use the Language Learning with Netflix add-on for Google Chrome. It has a number of customizable features including slowing down speech segments, showing subtitles in 2 languages, auto-pausing the show after each new subtitle, and providing a translation by just clicking a word in the subtitles. There's a premium version as well which has a subscription fee but gives you access to closed caption subtitles for dubbed material and allows you to instantly build anki notes from new words that you click on.

For more conversation practice check out italki.com to find free language exchange partners from across the globe.

 

[paimei42]

As you are corrected you will learn the grammar naturally rather than by memorizing tables of words.

You will probably havve to emphasize to others that you want them to correct your grammar because at the intermediate level you probably can communicate fairly fluently with a decent amount of errors that people will either think it rude to correct you or are too lazy to correct you

That said, you probably will just have to force yourself into more situations of active use and theres not much to short cut it