TTT 3: Psuedo Immersion
Welcome to the 3rd edition of the TTT Newsletter where I'll be sharing a thing I did, a tweet I loved, and a thought I had.
Big thank you to my cousin, Geetha, who came to visit from Houston over the weekend. She even planned a thoughtful birthday brunch for me at Sadelle's (amongst so many others treats). Feeling very fortunate to have strong connections with my family - it's a massive part of life.
இரவு வணக்கம் (iravu vaNakkam), Buenas Noches, and Good Evening - let's get into it!
Thing I did
This week, I had my first class with Idahosa Ness (creator of the Mimic Method!). It was a 30 minute class. He facilitated a conversation between me and a native speaker from Peru and listened in to assess my baseline of spoken Spanish.
I was surprised by how much I was able to understand and speak. He was happy with my accent, comprehension, and disposition.
Idahosa uses a mental model of sufficient, smooth, and same as a progression of language flow. He said my Spanish was sufficient in any situation, so next is to get smooth in those situations. Same is reserved for the same as a native speaker.
We'll be working on using less filler words (like replacing "umm..." with "ehh..." or full silence) to start.
More to come!
Tweet I loved
What I loved about this tweet was the distillation of what matters.
Anything you write only has value if people finish reading it. They can only read one sentence at a time. Every sentence is an opportunity to persuade the reader to continue down the page.
Thought I had
Building on top of my first lesson with Idahosa, I'm starting to recognize situations where I can or will be able to speak Spanish.
How many of these situations does one need to be comfortable in to go up a progress level (sufficient -> smooth -> same)?
If you can recognize situations where you would want to speak Spanish (or even Tamil) in, simply reply to this email and I'll add it to something I'm working on. It's tough learning the colloquial form of a language without being immersed - but with the right approach, it is achievable.
Thanks,
Janahan
P.S. If you enjoyed this newsletter, feel free to forward this email to your people or share this link. It'll encourage me to keep writing!