Those of you who read other language blogs probably know about Benny and his "Three Month Challenges." This is my first attempt at a three month challenge and it will be an intensive focus on Spanish. Spanish is my language for this year anyway, but I have a good motivation for the next three months (OK, really 11 weeks, but it's close enough). For the July 4th holiday, I will be spending time with my wife's best friend and family. Her husband is from El Salvador, and they live in a city where Spanish is nearly the primary language. I figure I will use this opportunity and present myself with a challenge to prepare me for the trip. My plan is to upgrade my Spanish from where it is now, about B1, to C1 level in the next 11 weeks. How will I do this?
It is going to require me to up my learning pace and take myself out of my comfort zone. I am going to need to use Spanish as much as possible in the next three months and make my environment a Spanish language zone. I have already begun to do this by switching my iPhone and computer over to Spanish. The second step for me is to change my audio input from English to Spanish. I can easily do this through my TuneIn radio app while I am at work, but I face some challenges in the car because there is no full-time Spanish radio station in my city. I also have Spotify, so if you have any good Spanish language music to recommend, please do! I am also going to raise my work output on LingQ to at least four pomodoros a day, which equates to about two hours of reading and listening daily. Realistically, I only study five days a week, but by increasing the aforementioned areas of my life, I should be able to expose my self to Spanish approximately nine hours a day. This is a good start, but I'm not done. I also need to add more speaking to my weekly routine, so I will attempt to speak with people who I know speak Spanish more regularly and force myself to stay in Spanish even when I am struggling. If I do all of these things, I believe I can reach my goal.
Musically, I have a busy month. I am currently in rehearsal for two different shows that I am in. After that I am hoping to attend a summer program which should put me on the right path to finding more work next audition season. I have had some exciting things happening in my voice and I feel myself growing in confidence every time I perform.
