My Spanish is off the charts these days, I'd say I'm approaching being native level since I'm listening/speaking Spanish daily, living in mexico, and have a Mexican girlfriend(major key) , I also arrived to the country solidly in B1-B2 territory about a year ago, but woah the C level is truly shades of grey, progress is SLOW. The breadth of words one must know its MASSIVE and honestly its awesome. This is where reading comes into play. Did you know 54% of US adults have a reading level below that of a 6th grader.... fun fact from listening to DR. Phill on joe rogan lol , take it for what you will. But its undeniable reading is the key to taking a language to the highest level. When I think about my ability to produce eloquent english and run meetings in corporate settings, craft clever references, it ALL ties back to my love of reading in english. My habit of reading the NY times, wall street journal, etc.. I've learned an incredible amount of vocab accidentally , that I'm able to call upon and wield to craft my ideas at a accuracy that would be impossible to do had I never read.
With my Spanish I haven't taken this route, I've watched a boat load of movies, listened to hours of podcasts , spent hours speaking. And while all of this has given me a native level ear and a accent to which natives aren't sure where i'm from, the buck will stop until I prioritize reading. For instance words that I can easily speak , I have ZERO idea how to write them lol. Its fascinating to me how each of these skills (reading,writing,listening,speaking) are largely independent of each other.
Back to my rant about why reading is key. CONTEXT. Duolingo is reading devoid of context, and thats a major problem. The words learned have no emotion or deeper context surrounding them, thus will not stick in the brain the same way if that word is learned in the context of a story. Here's an example,
the Spanish word "husmear" which is "to sniff around" . I learned this word in the context of a comic book where the son was begging his dad to get marriage counseling and the father replied that he didn't want anyone sniffing around in his marriage. Because of the way the word was presented to me in the wider context of a story filled with emotions, it stuck in my brain instantly. I'll never forget it. It's weird how the brain works that way. Versus duolingo which is extremely dry and the sentences make zero sense. So yea reading is KEY. Especially stories.
anyways, idk why I wrote this rant but yea.
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