There is a great divide in the language learning community between those who believe you should jump in and start speaking a language from day one and those who believe you need to silently absorb a new language for a long period of time before speaking. John  @Language Mastery, Ramses @Spanish Only, and Benny @Fluent in 3 Months have all recently written on this topic. Now that I am digging my heels into learning Spanish, I find that I have developed my own ideas on the matter…

Don’t wait too long to speak…

If I’ve learned anything from my first few weeks with the Spanish Language, it’s that I’m glad I haven’t waited too long before speaking, but I am glad I waited just a little. While I haven’t attempted too many conversations with people, I have been speaking Spanish for my video blog, and repeating Spanish sentences out loud after I hear them while using the Spanish Sentence Builder app.

You can learn grammar by memorizing the rules, but you can also get a feel for grammar by understanding how words are supposed to flow out of your mouth. I can tell what words go where and what their roles are in the sentence by correctly speaking that sentence. Of course I can also get an idea for these things by hearing the same sentence, but creating the words myself, with my own mouth, using my own brain really makes a difference. (I am going to write a post soon on something similar: teaching)

I think it’s a great idea to record yourself and listen to native speakers say something correctly. Seriously, you do not need to spend $400 on Rosetta Stone for speech recognition: simply hearing myself speak Spanish helps me better understand grammar structure and pronunciation. We are perfectly capable of listening to our own voice and comparing it to a native. When I say something in Spanish, sometimes I know that I am saying it totally wrong (wrong pronunciation or wrong emphasis on one part of the sentence). Other times I think I am saying it correctly, and only after listening and comparing my speaking to that of a native speaker, do I recognize that I am wrong and what I need to correct.

But don’t start speaking if you don’t know a single thing…

So, yes, output is very important to me in my language learning; however, input is crucial and I don’t think I could learn Spanish if I weren’t getting lots of input. Earlier I said that I’m glad I didn’t wait too long to start speaking, which implies that I did wait. Yes, I had a silent period, which is what the “inputters” argue for. My silent period was not very long. It lasted for maybe a couple days after I started Spanish Sentence Builder. What I did and am doing is staying silent…for a while.

When I learn new words or grammar I am silent for a while. I focus on input, which, in Spanish Sentence Builder, is provided with both reading and audio input (there are audio files attached to each card!). It’s important to remember that audio-supplemented reading is one of the best ways to gradually become more exposed to the language.

My Spanish Sentence Builder strategy is pretty simple. I move from solely relying on input (when I’m at very low confidence), to using a combination of input and output (higher confidence): at first I will mark low confidence in Brainscape so I see the new concepts fairly often. When I am more confident (say level 3 or 4) I will start speaking them with out looking at the words on the card. I will then (in the case of a new sentence structure) substitute in new words to make a new sentence that makes sense. In this way, I am using output to create a section in my brain that can recognize and produce a sentence structure, rather than a string of words.

It’s the combination of both input and output that makes the sweet spot. I wouldn’t wait too long before producing any output since you might be wasting time only absorbing information. But output can be daunting at first, so if you’re kind of shy, I would suggest practicing by yourself to build your confidence and then move onto conversations. At least this is the path I’m taking!