Life Lessons from 500 Days of Learning Spanish 🇪🇸

Chelsea Effendi
4 min readDec 26, 2020

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Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Last year, I made a huge commitment in the month of May. I pledged to learn Spanish every day in Duolingo for 3 months because I would go to Spain for a pilgrimage in August.

At that time, I was still working on my thesis data analysis. That’s why I couldn’t afford to learn it full time. The excitement of finally getting a chance to practice a language with a native speaker kept me going.

This language learning experience is not a totally new experience. I had learned Spanish back in 2013 but I gave up halfway. Of course, after 6 years of not practicing at all.. my skills dropped to zero. The only Spanish words that I still remembered at that time were “hola, adios, and gracias.” That’s it. It was kind of pathetic.

3 months turned to 16 months, and still counting. It became a daily routine for me. It became a habit for me to practice at least 1 lesson a day. I am planning to finish the whole Spanish module in Duolingo. Hopefully, I can finish next year. I am halfway through by the way.

I am not trying to be fluent. Reaching level B1 would be enough for me. I realized that I can’t solely depend on Duolingo. I tried to optimize my learning process through other sources as well. I listened to Spanish speaking podcast, watching Netflix movies, and read articles in Spanish.

This journey taught me so many things. Not only about acquiring a new language, but also an insightful experience. These life lessons can be applied in our daily life too. So, here are life lessons that I got after 500 days of learning Spanish for everyday..

Your mental shortcut (re: heuristics) sometimes hoodwinked you!

Spanish words sometimes sound like English words.

I used to make associations when it comes to memorizing the vocabulary.

I thought this trick was incredible. Ha! I was wrong. As my journey goes deeper, I learn that this trick is a big trap. It doesn’t always work.

You might think that “La carpeta” means carpet. Because of the similarity of the words, but no. La carpeta means the folder in Spanish.

“El nombre” sound like number? Nah. It means name instead of number.

“El direccion” sounds like direction? Nope, it means the address.

I realized that yes, heuristics sometimes lead you to the wrong way.

That’s why jumping to conclusion without a proper understanding and enough data processing is BAD.

Making a realistic goal is the key 🗝️

500 days is not a short period of time.

Making time every day to learn until it became a habit takes efforts and perseverance.

I wrote in my previous article about gamification and study goal.

After the first month of re-learning Spanish, I reflected on why I gave up in 2013. I made such an unrealistic goal at that time. Sparing 30 minutes a day was a huge deal.

This time, I set a goal for 10 minutes a day and it works. Setting a small but attainable goal is enough to keep you going.

Starting small is better than starting big but giving up halfway.

There is no shortcut when it comes to acquiring new skills

Sometimes I wonder when will my Spanish reach the fluency of my English skill. I realized that it took time for me to get here. I have been learning English for more than half of my life, so yeah.. It will absolutely take some time to become fluent in Spanish. It would take some time for me to be able to watch movies without subtitles or reading articles without constantly opening Google Translate for help.

There is no shortcut in language acquisition. Perseverance and persistence are the only keys.

Practicing is the only way of leveling up your skills.

There are no such things as a meaningless learning experience

Throughout my journey, I realized that I’ve got a lot of bonus by learning Spanish. I could understand some Italian and Portuguese words as well, although, I’m hopeless when it comes to speaking. Sometimes, when we learn something, we question ourselves “why do we do it? what are the benefits of learning this thing for me?”. We keep wondering until we lose trust and give up.

Trust me, there will be a day when all the knowledge you learn will be useful for you.

Nothing goes to waste when it comes to learning.

So, if any of you are on a journey of acquiring a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th language.. or even learning new skills. Please, don’t give up when you feel bored and tired. The only thing you need is adjusting your goal. Good luck!

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Chelsea Effendi
Chelsea Effendi

Written by Chelsea Effendi

A psychology alumna, polyglot wanna be, aspiring design researcher, live in sunny 🇮🇩

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