Hi Journaly community. I´m Lake, and I joined the Jounaly community primarily to work on and develop my abilities to communicate in the Spanish language. However, I have always felt that I sadly have a low ability to communicate well in general, even in my native tongue (English). I´ve been working hard to develop my skills a lot over the years, both through speaking and through writing. But I am at a point of feeling like I´ve reached a plateau. Recently I´ve been thinking that next year I may repeat the challenge of reading a book a month, which was a challenge that worked pretty well for me in the past. I don´t really enjoy reading very much as I have always found it to be difficult and therefore not at all enjoyable. As a result, I read minimal books - the least I could get away with. But in the recent years, I decided to take a new angle of approach. I thought, ´what if the reason I do not enjoy reading and find it difficult, is simply because I haven´t yet reached the right skill level for that to occur?´. What if, with a little more practice, I could develop my reading skills and finally reach the point of actually being able to read at a high level and with pleasure? I hold the belief that the more one reads, the better their ability to communicate well, due to having more exposure to ever better ways to express things. Of course, I do not believe reading alone to be the key. I have listened to plenty of audiobooks in the past and read a fair amount online, so consumption alone certainly isn´t the key. But I do feel like reading more should be the next step for me, and I´ve realised that if I don´t set a challenge, such as reading a book a month, I don´t push myself to read anywhere near as much.

This year I have been working hard on ´speaking´ more. That is to say, verbally expressing myself both in English and in Spanish. As an introvert who didn´t speak very much for years, I found myself to be stunted in my communication skills. Over the years I found writing to be a fantastic step along the path towards developing my abilities to express and communicate. But it was only in the last 2 years or so, that I truly recognised the benefits of being vocal. I had always heard that speaking is a key part of the journey to mastering a language, and I witnessed on plenty of occasions that people who were enthusiastic about speaking seemed to acquire a natural relationship with their new language much faster. But for a bunch of reasons that just wasn´t the strategy for me, though I did try. However, this year I finally found an approach that does work well for me that doesn´t rely on the need for a conversation partner, and I feel like it has made a world of difference already (based on the feedback I´ve received thus far). I just have to keep going with it!

If there´s anything I´ve expressed here that you feel would read better expressed differently, do feel free to let me know. Additionally, if you might have a suggestion for another interesting way to say something that I´ve written, or a nice synonym I could consider using in the future, I´m all ears(eyes). Lastly, punctuation is certainly an area where my confidence is incredibly low, so if you do happen to feel that what I write would read better if punctuated differently, I would very much appreciate hearing what you have to share.