You Have To Know When To Quit.
I have been studying for about 2 years, 5 or more hours a week on the internet. My teacher gave me 10 sentences to do last night and I get 10 wrong. The imperfect subjunctive - may as well be nucular physics to me. He just gave me the answers and I am struggling to see the tense or why he used it or where it came from.
I tried. I reached a certain level and now I am done. The question is what to do with an extra 5 hours a week ?
The law of deminishing marginal returns has set in, and that is a true law and when you see it - move on to the next project no matter what the subject is.
20 Answers
Don't like it? Don't do it! Simple. Why bother?
I mean - really. You don't seem to have a pressing need to learn Spanish, and I don't get the impression that you find it enjoyable, nor motivating enough to dedicate more than 5 hours a week to it. Since you seem not to have a lot of time to spare, I indeed agree that you may be better off applying those 5 hours toward something you really enjoy.
I guess that I'm in the minority here, but I think that at the moment you are just demoralized. You thought you were "getting somewhere" but this last test made you feel like you were wasting your time.
Here's what I say.....just keep practicing. You will be able to be understood speaking Spanish even if you NEVER "get" the imperfect subjunctive. Native speakers use it wrong all the time. It's not that big of a deal.
As you get more experience speaking and hearing Spanish, certain ways of saying things will begin to sound "right" to you, and you'll incorporate them into your own speaking. It's a process. It happens slowly. You won't even be able to gague your own progress because it is incrimental.
Five hours a week is either alot of time, or not alot of time, depending on what your life is like. If you are a college student studying Spanish, it's not alot of time. If you have a job and a family and a full life, it IS alot of time to carve out of your day.
If you are being forced to learn Spanish, that's one thing, but if it is your own choice and goal, forget about this test and just keep on truckin'.
I know what I'm talking about. I took a test here and did very poorly on it, and I felt very, very demoralized. So I took a bit of a break in order to lick my wounds, investigate my priorities, and refuel the fire in my belly to learn Spanish. Perhaps that's all you need.
I wish you the very best in whatever you decide, but please don't let one (ultimately insignifcant) setback change the course of your desires.
Perhaps you should study nuclear physics.
It's all a matter of what you are passionate about. To me five hours a week is a very short amount of time to study a language, and I don't think it would be possible to retain much at this rate. I would recommend finding a hobby that is easier or that you were motivated enough to dedicate more time to.
I will plagiarize a phrase,I think its from Pesta actually. learning a new language is a journey ,not a destination, and I wholly agree with it. Now then , not to offend anyone. I will add a touch of my (very distant) U.S.M.C philosophy, never give up, never give in, never retreat.
Hey Roger, don't give up. The imperfect subjunctive is hard for me too. My last chapter was on that. Just to give you an idea, I had scored between 90% and 100% on every chapter test up until Chapter 7, which was on the imperfect subjunctive. I got a 61% on that chapter!!
But what I've learned is that the growth comes in waves. In between the waves we can feel stalled. You have come a really long way. Why not revisit your reasons why you are learning Spanish? Also, maybe you are burned out with your particular program. I like a lot of variety. Different programs explain things differently, and hearing all the various approaches helps things gel for me. Maybe you need a break from hard core academic language studies with such an emphasis on grammar. Maybe you should just mess around on this site for a while and have fun!
You are right about dimishing returns in general, but I feel that in learning a foreign language there is always something to learn to progress toward the goal of being "fluent," so it doesn't make sense to me to ever stop learning.
Edited to add: Do you have any real-life situations in which to use the Spanish you've learned so far? I volunteer once a week for a Latina support group where primarily Spanish is spoken. That really keeps me motivated to keep studying!
Try golf. New set of clubs, shoes, knickers, green fees, driving range, putting greens, parking, lessons, and replacing all the balls you'll lose. Hang on to your bolsillo, amigo and resist throwing the whole thing into one of the hazards. Or model radio controlled model airplanes, (if you think failing a Spanish exam is disappointing, try cracking up a masterpiece that you spent 75 hours and $300.00 to build) or do the real thing, learn to fly and buy yourself a l puddle jumper airplane. Everything it needs has to be certified as airworthy and therefore costs about 20 times as much as an equivalent part for your car. Or buy a horse. Great to ride if you get past saddle sores and have anywhere to go and have a place to keep it and the tack. You'll soon be a regular at the feed store and know the phone # of the vet and the farrier find the feed store, the vet and the farrier. Hoy en diá, ocio es cada vez más caro.
Nutshell, I don't know of a hobby as inexpensive as hanging in here with Spanish Dict and the other free helps you can access on the net, but of course that won't include a a year of immersion in Spain or Mexico.
Hi, Roger,
I don't know what your circumstances are: for instance, I don't know if you were just taking a language for college credits -- if you had been fine all along but just got stumped at this point -- or many other reasons you have become discouraged.
I have a feeling you are not happy about the situation, though -- otherwise you would't have announced it publicly on this site.
The one thing I believe for sure is that your teacher should not have just given you the answers without explaining how the imperfect subjunctive works. It is very logical and specific, so if you didn't understand the principle, it would be easy to get all of them wrong.
You really do have to memorize at least 25 of the most commonly used verbs including the irregular ones. (It is difficult -- in spite of the line Rosetta Stone tries to feed you).
Maybe you just really need to take a short break. Come back to it at a later time, and I bet you will be surprised as to how much you really retained.
Best of luck in whatever you decide. You know you can always come back here to everyone's welcome.
We all set our priorities.
I agree with pescador that 5 hrs/week isn't enough. It's not that I'm in a hurry, but learning language is more than memorizing a long list. It's about learning to think in a different way. It takes a sense of "living the language" which is best done by immersion, but can be accomplished by something less. But not as little as a few hours a week, in my opinion.
I certainly respect your decision.
I am amazed that people don't think that 5 hours a week is a lot.
Unless someone has been cloning high-school kids (causing me to think that it's the same bunch day in and day out), I have the distinct impression that there are lots of kids who spend three or more hours per day pretty much every day of the week practicing basket ball.
Five hours may be a lot for some things (if you spent them taking showers, that would probably amount to three or four per day). For learning a language it's not a lot. It's more nearly the bare minimum if you want to make progress. There may be courses/books that suggest that a language can be learned in twenty days or in fifteen minutes per day but that's just hype.
I am amazed that people don't think that 5 hours a week is a lot.
I don't drink beer 5 hours a week, I don't play football or tennis 5 hours a week, I don't watch television 5 hours a week, I don't read for 5 hours a week.
Do I have a shorter week than everybody else ?
I have heard the contention that to master, or at least gain a reasonable level of proficiency in an endeavor requires about 10,000 hours of directed practice. I don't know whether I buy into this completely (although it does seem somewhat reasonable for some objectives), but assuming that this is indeed a reasonable figure, it seems that 5 hours a week for two years is not a tremendous amount of time to have spent on the subject. In fact, if you add it up, it only comes up to around 500 hours of total study. Looking at it another way, this amount of time corresponds to about 5% of the time that you would need to invest in order to become highly skilled at Spanish.
Taking Samdie's basketball analogy into account (and I do have some experience in this regard), 500 hours is not even enough time to develop a decent jump shot, let alone a proficient all around game.
I can say that I have probably spent somewhere between 3,000 and 4,500 hours on Spanish, and in my own estimation, my ability seems to coincide fairly well with the 10,000 hour contention. I think I am probably a little bit less than half-way to my goal of reasonable proficiency, or looking at it another way, I think that I probably come off as a little bit less than a half-wit to proficient Spanish speakers. 
In any case, it would certainly be best to focus your time on an endeavor that you not only find worthwhile but also derive at least some sort of satisfaction or enjoyment in pursuing. Whatever you decide, best of luck in your endeavors.
To answer Roger's question about 5 hours a week:
When I took Spanish in college (1 yr) I was in class 5 hours a week plus did at least 5 more hours a week in homework, plus extra studying for tests. I felt it was very inefficient due to driving to/from class and the time wasted in class.
So this year I simply purchased the 2nd year Spanish curriculum at the bookstore, including the online workbook, and I've been studying at home. I am really enjoying self-study because it is extremely efficient. I'm doing it to learn, not get grades or credits, so I spend as much or little time as I need on each area. I probably only average 5 hours a week, and I'm progressing rapidly. I am on schedule to complete 2nd year Spanish this school year.
In addition, I did a two week spanish immersion class in Mexico, which was the best thing I ever did because that made me use what I had learned. I highly recommend it.
And now I am immersed a few hours once a week volunteering with a latina support group. I do social worker type activities, helping people find resources and even taking them to appointments and translating (!). I am very motivated to improve rapidly so I can help them better.
My question to Roger is - Why are you learning Spanish?
For some reason this reminds me of an old Kenny Roger's song called "The Gambler":
You've got to know when to hold 'em...Know when to fold 'em...Know when to walk away...Know when to run...
What I find frustrating is how hard it is to achieve listening comprehension.
One Language school here promotes itself like this:
"Learn English in 4 months - dominate it in 8 months"
At 5 hours a week that would be about 80 hours to 160 hours - NO WAY1
Another school has 3-hour classes 5 days a week - for full time university students and people in full time employment. They have a short exam every week and a longer one every month and homework on top of that. I am in awe of them.
