As described in Wikipedia, the spiral approach is "a technique often used in teaching or textbooks where first the basic facts of a subject are learned, without worrying about details. Then as learning progresses, more and more details are introduced, while at the same time they are related to the basics which are reemphasized many times to help enter them into long-term memory."
This approach is consistent with the graduated interval or spaced repetition that is used in the Pimsleur language program, which has been the basis for my Portuguese language instruction. The main elements which the two approaches have in common is that neither expects total mastery the first, second, or even third time that a word or concept is taught. Instead, both approaches incorporate adequate repetition of the material that has already been introduced, so that the student can be assured that he/she will encounter it again, and eventually the content will become so familiar that the student will master it, but without excessive rote memorization.
This helps to relieve the anxiety that many learners experience when they first encounter new material. This is particularly helpful in learning a new language, where the student needs to be focusing all of his or her mental energy on listening carefully to the sounds and rhythms of the language, and then reproducing these sounds. Since every language has distinctive sounds, and no two languages have an identical set of sounds, every student of a new language must work hard to produce new sounds. Add to this the challenge of acquiring a new vocabulary and a new grammar, as well as a new sound-symbol correlation, and the student is already going to have a great deal on his mind. Anxiety not only wastes the student's mental energy, it adds unnecessary stress to a process that can be inherently stressful, even to a highly motivated student.
One of the biggest payoffs of these approaches is the very positive impact that they can have on a student's confidence in his or her ability to learn a new language. With Pimsleur, by lesson 4 or 5, the student has heard and repeated some of the most basic phrases often enough that they come almost as naturally as his or her native language. There is no need to do even a fast mental translation. The first time I realized that I was saying something in Portuguese without having to think about what I was going to say, was truly gratifying. I have studied a variety of languages, several over the course of a few years in college, and I had never had this automaticity occur so quickly in other programs.
The biggest problem with Pimsleur is that it is outstanding as far as it goes, but then the student must supplement it in order to get a complete exposure to the language, including reading and writing. This requires finding materials which complement the program, and that can be a challenge. I am on level 3 of Pimsleur, and haven't yet begun a formal, chapter-by-chapter approach with a textbook. Instead, I have used a grammar book, a textbook, several dictionaries, and some "teach yourself" type books to find additional material or to answer questions which Pimsleur raises but does not explicitly answer.
I also started attempting to read Portuguese books and articles within a week or two of starting with Pimsleur. This was a sobering experience, because I lacked adequate vocabulary to read much of anything without great difficulty. So I scaled back and read simple dialogues and other written material in some of the books that I had found. I did continue to read newspaper articles, but instead of translating them, I used them for practice reading aloud. This helped me to develop a smoother spoken language, even if I wasn't always positive about the pronunciations and often had no idea what many of the words meant. I wanted to break past the word-by-word tendency that many new learners have, and this helped. I realized that my pronunciations were not always correct, but I didn't worry about it.
So without even thinking about it, I was already applying my own form of the spiral approach. I did this by not waiting until I had reached a certain level of mastery before I challenged myself with exposure to more difficult materials, but instead of trying to read or translate the harder texts perfectly, I used them for my own purposes, which was to gain greater fluency with the way the language looks and sounds…. and in terms of the sounds, settling for the best I was able to do. This also helped me to find which sound-symbol relationships were the most difficult for me. In the case of Portuguese, these were the nasals.
One thing that a learner must be aware of if he or she uses the spiral approach, is that it can cause you to experience unrealistic highs and lows as you learn the language. There were days when I thought I was really making significant progress, because for whatever reason, all of my exposure to Portuguese reinforced what I already knew and gave me the feeling that I knew more than I actually did. This felt pretty good! But then they would be followed by days where one or more elements of my program reminded me that I am still at a very, very elementary stage. This can be humbling, and if you don't watch it, it can be discouraging. In some cases, a certain Pimsleur lesson might introduce a lot of new structures or vocabulary or even combinations of sounds that were really hard to say. I would repeat the lesson, and though I'd do better the second or third time, in most cases, I just forged ahead, knowing that the challenging parts would recur in succeeding lessons. And of course they did, and each time I grappled with them, I got better.
I have found that listening to Brazilian music and watching Brazilian films has been a vital part of my language learning. In both cases, there is a pleasant combination of entertainment along with the ability to recognize certain very familiar words or phrases. On top of that, you get a lot of practice listening and developing an even better ear for the distinctive sounds and intonations of the language. Subtitles in English are essential for me when I first watch a Brazilian film, but then I try to watch sections of it without subtitles, after I have seen the film at least once. Sometimes, Portuguese subtitles are provided, and these can be even more helpful, but they often do not match perfectly what is actually being said.
I have a Portuguese novel which I download onto my Kindle app way back when I first started learning. At that time, I could barely read a sentence without stopping to look up words. I have gone back to it every week or two, and each time, I'm able to read ore. I just looked at it again today, and was surprised at how much I could read without having to consult anything. I'm still not ready to read the whole book yet, but it's a great way to measure my progress, even better than my growing ability to ready news articles, which change from day to day. Having the same book as a benchmark is sort of like having a pair of jeans that you want to wear after you have lost weight on a diet.
Of course, when you construct your own spiral approach to learning, you cannot be certain that you might not be leaving out something important, so it's crucial to eventually work through a textbook or written program of some sort. But at the beginning and intermediate phases, a judicious application of the spiral approach, along with a solid audio program, or an audio-visual program like Rosetta Stone, can be a way to maintain your motivation and interest without bogging you down with a textbook which you may or not be ready to tackle.
This is fantastic to hear, I have also been working on something for Portuguese that seems to be more the spiral approach (didn't realize it in the beginning). Trying to supplement now with books and movies
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