Speaking Early - an analogy for how terrible I am at it
I'm in the low 300s and I have started taking italki lessons and doing some speaking. I intend to continue it for a few reasons.
Speaking is a skill separate from acquisition of a language and I want to start building it.
Like crosstalk, I'm able to get good input during these sessions.
Anecdotal evidence from some of my best ESL students shows that speaking has not really stunted their development or accent as long as it is paired with large amounts of input.
There are a lot of purists on this board, and I think having updates from a slightly different perspective is useful.
tl;dr would I recommend speaking this early? Not necessarily.
I was thinking about my attempts at speaking so far (1.5hrs on italki, nothing major. I have 30 min scheduled with a new tutor today.) I'm at like 325 hours or so.
The good: I have had some nice conversations with substance. It's definitely beyond what it would have been a level ago, or a Spanish 101 class. It's nice to get feedback on the way things are said. Sometimes I say something, and the tutor will correct and it it's definitely a lightbulb moment that I have seen transfer to understanding videos better even already.
The bad (the analogy): I'm not a good artists. I remember as I kid I always wanted to draw a dragon curled up by treasure. I could see this dragon clearly in my mind, but when I drew it came out like crap. Or if you've ever seen the things on the internet of the challenges of people to draw bikes, it's like that. You have a feel for what you want to achieve, and you may even know when you're not getting it, but that doesn't mean you actually can draw a good dragon/bike. We all basically know what a bike looks like, and if we saw one that was weird we would know, but not everyone can draw how all the bars actually connect and whatnot. That's what I feel like with speaking at this point--I can see where I want to be, but I'm not there. I'm like a toddler scribbling all over a page.
Again, I'm going to stick with it and see how things go, but it's certainly been interesting so far. My one tutor as said that I need to work on my preterit. So, it's clear that tenses are the things that are showing up as noticeable consistent errors, which is not a surprise.