Start Making Sense Of Spanish TV In 45 Days!

Learning Spanish can have a whole bunch of fun reasons one of which is being able to make sense of those oh-so-contrived telenovelas from Mexico and the rest of Latin America. Now imagine being able to do so in a space of one and a half month. Now, wouldn’t that be something! This might sound like black magic or science fiction depending on which way you sway but it’s actually neither. All it takes is a strategy, the tools, and the oil of your elbow. Oh, did I forget money? No, I didn’t. What we’re going to learn today is as expensive as the air you breathe. So, stop worrying about money and prepare yourself for the six-week challenge. Are you ready?

Set the expectations right

A still from Gata Salvaje, a popular telenovela from Venezuela
Photo credit: Daniel Oines licensed CC BY 2.0

It’s indeed a big deal to be able to understand and wrap your head around a Spanish language TV show within 45 days, especially when you don’t exactly have a background in the language. It almost sounds like there’s a catch somewhere. Turns out there is. The catch is that throughout this challenge, you’ll be focussing on one particular show and little else. What this means is that while you’ll become reasonably familiar with the TV show in question by the end of this exercise, you’ll still have a hard time with others. You’ll also continue to have a good amount of struggle holding a conversation with your Spanish speaking friends. So, why do it then? The good news is, despite all the struggles you’ll have with other shows and conversations, this exercise will still give you a good jump start and work wonders familiarizing your ears to the sounds of Spanish. That alone is a massive feat if you ask me.

This feat does come at a price though. All good things in life demand sacrifices and so does being able to understand even a lick of rapid-fire Spanish within a month. For the next 45 days, you’ll be watching this Spanish show (chosen by you, of course) and nothing else. No English. You will shelve everything that doesn’t help this exercise. Love Sunday night football games? Forget about it. Can’t do without Netflix^®? Too bad, you’re going to have to. During the course of this exercise, you’ll be hearing, dreaming, eating, and breathing Spanish. Think you’re ready to pay that kind of price? If not, now is the time to cop out.

Set up your workbench

This activity is very demanding, but only in terms of efforts. Luckily, everything (except for one thing) you need for this task is available for free. The only thing you might have to shell out some dough on is the show you’re planning to watch. That is only if you’ve chosen a paid show; there are some that are available online for free if you look around. So without much further ado, let’s check out all we need:

Leastwise one episode of your favorite telenovela (preferably a contemporary drama or sitcom; the language is more practically useful in them)

Spanish and English subtitles for the show you picked (check out Open Subtitles)

A spaced repetition program, in other words, a digital flashcard software (I prefer Anki^®; your preferences might vary)

A program that converts video snippets into flashcards (check out subs2srs)

A whole lot of willpower

That’s it! That’s really all you need. So start gathering up the resources and once ready, move on to the next section.

Prepare your deck

Anki^® has made flashcards fun and fashionable again!
Photo credit: drcw licensed CC BY 2.0

Since you’re new to subs2srs, the app can easily overwhelm you. Too many darn options and buttons! Don’t worry, just rely on the defaults for now. Here are the steps to follow:

Click the button that says Subs1 and select the Spanish subtitle file.

Click the button that says Output and select a folder for subs2srs to place the generated output file in.

Click the button that says Subs2 and select the English subtitle file.

Click the button that says Video and select the episode file.

Check the Generate Audio Clips and Generate Snapshots checkboxes (this will ensure your flashcards have the corresponding picture and sound from the episode).

For our purposes, uncheck the Generate Video Clips checkbox as having video clips in a flashcard is overkill if you ask me.

Enter a name for your deck in the Name of deck textbox and hit Go.

Now sit back and have a coffee while subs2srs crunches through the video and churns out the cards for you. Depending on the length of your episode, this might take a while. Once done, you’ll have a brand new .tsv file in the output folder you designated in one of the steps above. This is what goes into Anki^®. Let’s see how that happens:

Open Anki^® and select Import from the File menu.

Navigate to the Anki Deck Template folder located in the subs2srs folder.

Select the subs2srs_template_for_anki2.apkg file and click Open.

Rename the newly imported template deck to something more meaningful, preferably matching the name of the telenovela.

Select Import from the File menu and navigate to the designated output folder, this time to import the .tsv file.

Set Type to subs2srs and Deck to the one you just renamed.

Change field mapping as follows: Field 1 > Tags; Field 2 > SequenceMarker; Field 3 > Audio; Field 4 > Image; Field 5 > Expression; Field 6 > Meaning.

Click Import and let Anki^® take over.

After the import, Anki^® might complain about some cards being duplicates but that’s alright. Don’t let that worry you. Now, it’s time to feed all the media files (the snapshots and audio clips subs2srs generated for us) to Anki^®. Just follow these steps:

Navigate to the folder that contains your Anki^® user profile (it’s probably named something like User 1).

Navigate to the collection.media folder.

Copy all the files from the .media folder generated by subs2srs to the collection.media folder.

Let the show begin: Week 1

This is the warm-up phase. Do not go overboard; just two sessions of 15 minutes each should be enough. You will be absorbing both vocabulary as well as grammar during these days; but you must refrain from memorizing grammar rules at this stage. No conjugation tables and no gender rules. Just focus on internalizing the patterns. Watch out for words and expressions used more frequently than the others. These are the ones you should and will be absorbing first.

You will also come across several cards where the audio is too vague or garbled to be any useful. It could be the case where people are cutting each other off or speaking over each other. Feel free to discard those cards as they serve little purpose. Also discard those where where they use mere fillers like ahh, er, etc. Be brutal discarding anything that doesn’t contribute.

While carefully avoiding any deep-diving into grammar rules, try to understand whatever you can about some obvious trends, such as word order or verb endings. Catch as many patterns as you can. This is going to play a crucial role in making Spanish come “naturally” to you later.

Get deeper: Weeks 2-3

These two weeks are going to be more challenging because now you’re going to step up your game. This is the period when you actually start watching the show you picked for the exercise! Sounds fun, doesn’t it? During this phase, you’re going to spend an hour with your flashcards instead of 15 minutes.

Watch the show with English subtitles. I warn you it’s not going to be a smooth sailing. You can’t magically start making sense of everything you hear just because you spent a week repeating the expressions on your flashcards. It takes a lot of perseverance. But I can promise you bits and pieces of what you hear will start falling in place because you’re now familiar with at least some expressions if not all. You will also find yourself spending a lot of time reading the subtitles which is fine. Just try to focus more on the video than the subtitles. Rewind and re-watch if needed. This phase is all about consolidating all you picked up from your flashcards during the first week of this program.

In the groove: Weeks 4-6

Anki^® isn’t going anywhere – you’ll have to continue your one-hour routine with those flashcards. During this phase you’ll further challenge yourself by switching over to Spanish subtitles. You’ll notice you can make sense of a lot more of the show than you could a week ago. Pat yourself on the back, give yourself a cookie, and get back to watching the show. Intermittently, you can also try switching off the subtitles altogether to further challenge yourself. Adventure is the spice of learning. At the end of this period, some dialogs will still continue to elude you, either due to the accent or due to some non-standard dialectical construct. Don’t let that give you a panic attack. If you can comprehend more than 50% of all you hear, you’re a success story! It might be possible that at the end of the program, you’d have only progressed through the first episode but that’s still good enough. It’s surprising how much Spanish a single 30-minute episode can pump you with.

If you’ve made it through this challenge alive, you’re a hero and you should already be pepped up to go another round with the next episode. You could also start throwing some random Spanish language podcasts in the mix at this stage. The opportunities are virtually limitless!