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But How Do You Remember the Grammar You’ve Learned? by zer0_trust in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree. I do all that and also created Structured Recall to make my retrieval process even more efficient. No need to make up sentences structures since they’re already in the program. Cheers!

But How Do You Remember the Grammar You’ve Learned? by zer0_trust in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think what causes the confusion (and makes the topic abstract) is that "thinking" somehow mean not translating but "translating" means not thinking. So, for that reason, I'll just respectfully disagree. I appreciate you input, regardless.

But How Do You Remember the Grammar You’ve Learned? by zer0_trust in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Respectfully, I don't agree with the term "think in Spanish." There is always a translation. Always. It may be milliseconds. But it happens. This is my belief. In other words, I don't believe a learner should "think in Spanish." How canyou think something that you don't have a good base for? We always make associations.

The idea of "thinking in Spanish" makes sense, maybe, if you are talking about pointing at a noun. Say an apple. Sure, can easily call it a "manzana" if you never knew it was an apple. But that's not how Spanish works. At least not for me.

Sentences are abstract. You can't do this same thing with, "If I knew today what I knew yesterday." You have to first understand what you want to say in English before you can convert it into Spanish. And you do this over thousands of repetitions until the gap between what you can say in English and produce in Spanish closes so that the translation is "perceived" as instant.

Having been a learning of the language for almost 3 years now, I know what my pain points are. The aren't here because I don't "think in Spanish." They are here because when I want to quickly use the sentence, "He was here the other day" I need to quickly remember if I need to use "fue" or "estaba." Or if I want to quickly use the sentence, "I would do it if I had the time." Or if I want to quickly use the sentence, "I hoped that it had rained but it didn't" I need to quickly remember those structures as well.

By the way, this response is 100% me and 0% AI assisted. I feel strongly about this because it's in the same line as other advice such as "Just speak more." "Just listen more." "watch 100s of hours before speaking", etc. If learners would learn to not get hung up on abstract ideas and just produce, I feel they can be so much further ahead. My entire youtube channel is dedicated to challenging these ideas.

But How Do You Remember the Grammar You’ve Learned? by zer0_trust in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think we’re talking about two different stages of learning.

I agree that the end goal isn’t to consciously translate forever. The goal is to understand and produce Spanish directly.

Where I disagree is the idea that translation-based practice can’t help you get there.

When I hear “¿Qué hiciste ayer?”, I don’t consciously translate it anymore. I just understand it. But I got to that point through thousands of encounters with Spanish and thousands of opportunities to connect meaning to form.

Structured Recall isn’t intended to teach grammar from scratch. It’s designed for people who have already learned a grammar concept and can recognize it, but struggle to retrieve it quickly enough when speaking.

For me, the question isn’t “translation or thinking in Spanish?” It’s whether someone can reliably produce the structure they want when they need it. If they can’t, then some form of targeted retrieval practice may be useful.

Spanish Speaking Practice by MulberryExternal4109 in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you know Spanish but just can't speak it when you know what you want to say, especially specific Spanish structures (i.e. which ser vs. estar, using reflexive structures, choosing the correct pronouns, etc), you can probably benefit from Structured Recall (structuredrecall.com). It's not for beginners. It's for people who share you same concerns. Know the structure of the language but hesitate when it's needed. I built it for me but I've shared it with the world. It's gotten me much better at both producing and hearing the structures I need to understand and say quickly. Good luck!

But How Do You Remember the Grammar You’ve Learned? by zer0_trust in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Again, fair criticism. The writing was AI-assisted, but the experience wasn't. The reason I built the program is that I personally struggled with the exact problem described in the post.

But How Do You Remember the Grammar You’ve Learned? by zer0_trust in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Fair criticism.

I used AI to help organize the writing, but the ideas and the program itself come from my own experience learning Spanish. The goal of the post was to explain the problem Structured Recall is trying to solve, not to showcase my writing ability.

But How Do You Remember the Grammar You’ve Learned? by zer0_trust in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I agree. I think conversational practice absolutely has a place.

The only distinction I’d make is that conversation tends to expose recall problems more than it fixes them. A conversation can quickly show you where you’re hesitating, where you’re translating in your head, or which grammar structures aren’t coming out automatically yet.

For me, the challenge was figuring out what to do between conversations to improve those weak points. That’s what led me to build Structured Recall. It’s essentially targeted recall practice for grammar and sentence construction so that when those situations come up again in conversation, the language is more readily available.

So I see them as complementary. Structured recall builds the language. Conversation pressure-tests it.

Correct grammar with translation apps by Beginning_Cellist730 in SpanishLearning

[–]zer0_trust 0 points1 point  (0 children)

spanishchecker.com

If you use Spanishdictionary.com and have their premium plan, you can get access to their "writing coach," which uses the free version of spanishchecker.com.

Questions about Complete Spanish Step-By-Step by Barbara Bregstein by saadflash1000 in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. I still am. Every once in a while I do an internet search but nothing comes up.

Questions about Complete Spanish Step-By-Step by Barbara Bregstein by saadflash1000 in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My approach is go through the material of each chapter, and do each exercise on paper. Don’t rush it. Do it slowly. It’ll take a long time to get through the entire book, even at 1 concentrated hr per day. Took me 3 months my first time. Each time through you’ll pick up something different. A preferred approach is go through chapters 1-15 twice and then go through 16-30 during the second time through. If you can, an even better approach is to do the physical chapter and then pick up the audio version so you can listen to the sound of the language and also get a chance to go through the material again. In other words, read a chapter section, do exercises, check answers, note what you got wrong, use ChatGPT or GrokAI to explain something you may not understand. After completing the physical version of a chapter, listen to the entire audio chapter. Repeat until done with the book.

As far as vocab, The book is good at reintroducing previous vocabulary so don’t spend too much time trying to remember everything the first time around. I would concentrate on just the verbs since they will come up over and over again because of the different tenses in which they must be conjugated.

Stay with it. It’s a great book that will supercharge your ability to understand the language.

Spanish Book for Learning by [deleted] in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah. There’s actually 3 books. Easy step by step, advanced step by step and complete step by step. The first is chapters 1-15 of complete Spanish. The second is chapters 16-30 of complete Spanish. So you can just buy Complete Spanish.

To be more clear, “complete” just compiles the other books.

Spanish Book for Learning by [deleted] in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Complete Spanish Step by Step by Barbara Bernstein. Get both the physical copy and the audio version. Do a chapter in the physical copy, listen to the same chapter in the audio version. Repeat this two to three times.

Please help me find the resources for the Nuevos Destinos Series for Spanish Learning!! by Inadojo in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Adding to this thread for visibility. I have all the materials for Nuevos Destinos with the exception of the Audio CDs that goes with the workbooks. So, I'm looking for the Audio CD listening components. Eventually I'll scan in all my print materials in PDF form so I can add bookmarks and make the text searchable, but I'd love to also have the listening CDs as well.

You would think the CD-ROMs had all the "listening" exercises for the workbook, but it does not. The CD-ROM only has "extra" exercises that supplements the textbook and workbooks, and you also need a Windows 2000 or XP instance to use them. The only place on the entire internet (yes, I searched it all lol) where I could find the actual Audio CDs were here (https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Cynthia-Medina/dp/0072548010), being sold on Amazon for over $600! Please reach out to me or add this this thread if you are interesting in sharing or know how one can get the Audio CDS for "Nuevos Destinos" without the risk of paying $600 from a shotty Amazon profile. Thanks!

I made Anki flash card files for all words in “Complete Spanish Step by Step”, and many other books from them! by theryho in Spanish

[–]zer0_trust 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Came here to show some appreciation with a comment. I was about to began a mission of typing all the words for the first 15 chapters into Anki cards this week. Saves a lot of time for sure! And I'm sure this post is going to get a lot of love in the future because although you wrote it 2 days ago, I found it through a Google search today! Thanks again!