First steps in Spanish

¡Hola!
I’ve been learning Spanish for ~2 weeks now and I feel like I’m making progress and not making it at the same time.
I’m using “Who is she” course to learn and when I listen to the lesson while reading the text I can understand close to everything (especially these first few lessons), but when I then go for a walk and listen to them I understand close to nothing (especially those new lessons). I kind of know what they’re saying because I know the plot and dialogues, but I can’t seem to recognize words nor phrases.
I believe I’ve listened to each lesson (lessons 1 to 10 at least) like 50 times already. I’m getting A LITTLE BIT bored and the problem with listening comprehension is getting annoying.

I simply need an advice. Should I, for example, read 1 lesson and then listen to it like x times (just this 1 lesson) and then go over all of them in this manner? I currently listen to the whole playlist and maybe that’s the problem?
Or maybe just screw it and finish the course this way and then just go for more and more fresh content while not worrying about my listening comprehension at all?

Any input will be highly appreciated!

¡Adiós!
Greg

Grigo, I think you need more time of listening and read. You need to understand the Spanish structure. But it is an unconscious process after listening and read a lot. Do not stop at every word you do not know, first only read and listen. I think is better to read lessons shorter that "Who is She? Also, “Who is She” is a bit boring.
Good luck.
Buena suerte.

I have listened almost all the lessons of level A1 from the LingQ library (there are more duplicates from IDEL, I just have no courage to listen to them again after dozens of listening times). It took me some months and I must say I feel the same about the language as you described above.
I had the same feeling while my Italian was at levels A1-A2. I still have the similar problems in my Swedish. But I know my brain needs some more time to get accustomed. Don’t be in a hurry, keep calm and carry on.

So your advice is to keep listening to “Who is she” until I can really understand most of it just from listening alone?

Thank you for your reply.
I have some short lessons as well, some have as much as 13 seconds of audio haha :slight_smile:

My advice is to forget about it! It’s normal and to be expected that the listening understanding will take some time.
Just be patient! What’s happening is that you’re leveraging your knowledge of English and Italian to understand a lot of the written vocabulary. The spoken part’s more different so your reading/listening comprehensions are at different levels. Keep reading. Just read something new everyday, as you’re doing and listen to what you read a couple of times. Expect not to understand much for now. Then go on to something new that you find interesting. Be patient. Progress will come.

So fresh daily content it is then!
Thanks. For some reason, every time I read your post, I get motivated to learn some Spanish :smiley:

I’m very glad about it. Good luck!

I agree with the other posters that patience seems to be the only way to go.

For some reason I also found “Who is she?” a little bit frustrating and difficult to understand. The other courses for beginners that I chose were easier. Don’t know why it is so.

I understand you because I had exactly the same problems at this stage so I’ll try to motivate you :slight_smile: - after a year and a half of studying Spanish I understand everything in courses like “Who is she?”. Pretty soon it should be way easier for you as you already know Italian. Keep it up!

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Wish I could say I know Italian haha :smiley:

I’ve been listening to japanese every day, for several months and I still don’t understand anything above beginner content but as long as it’s enjoyable and I don’t force myself into things I don’t want to do then I’m not that worried. Also, the language feels less foreign to me now.

Steve’s advice about mixing difficult content with easier content as well as new content with revising old content has been really helpful. Keep it fresh and fun I guess.

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If I were you, I would not spend much time on one lesson. Don’t worry about it. Just keep reading while you listen. Eventually you will recognize the sounds, then you can listen without reading.

Hi Grigo, I’m Octavio from Mexico. Spanish is my native language. I agree with most of the advices: listen and read a lot, try to find interesting material, have some fun while reading or listening! And also you need to be patient. If you really want to learn Spanish, you’ll do it. Fortunately there’s a lot of material about interesting things in Spanish because it is spoken in many countries like Mexico, Spain, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, etc etc
Maybe at first you’ll need to translate words back and forth from Spanish to Polish in order to undertand, I think that’s normal, but eventually, as you get more into the new language, and without even noticing, you will be thinking and understanding spanish without translating. That happened to me with English. So I wish you luck in this journey or as we say in Spanish: Buena suerte!!

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Thanks so much!
Gracias!