chumbers.

Qué tal? The idea of language learning has always enraptured me. Too bad, enrapturement doesn’t do grammar and vocab practice for me. There are many reasons to learn Spanish in my life - close friends, a past lover and not to mention that my Spotify Wrapped is more at home in Santo Domingo than Sydney ¹ . However, without suitable impetus, this project has stalled. Whilst I don’t care for the accreditation itself, having a looming deadline - and, given the fact that part of the exam is an oral component, a source of potentially tremendous personal embarrassment - as motivation should change that.

I’ll be documenting here my progress, learning strategies, and general musings on languages. Follow along.

Details

What: I will take the General B2 Proficiency Exam offered by the Instituto Cervantes on May 23rd, 2026. The goal of this project is to pass that exam and receive the corresponding accreditation.

How: I am going to self-teach myself most of the way, making use of the extensive online/digital resources that are at my disposal. For speaking and listening practice, I will turn to the number of Spanish-speaking friends I have in Sydney and abroad for frequent general conversation.

Why: I have a lifetime goal of speaing 6 languages. Why 6? I don’t know. It’s a nice number. I learnt German to fluency in high school and for many a year now have intended to pick up a third - Spanish. My progress here has been measured, but agonisingly slow and misguided. In the process, though, I have helplessly fallen for the culture, people and general life philosophy of the Latin world and view language acquisition here as my key to unlocking a universal treasure.