If you are reading this article, it is likely that you find yourself in a situation where it seems your progress with the language has somehow stopped.
In this post I want to share with you some methods to accelerate the learning process while enjoying the Spanish journey.
1. Incorporate Spanish in daily life.
Simple things such as changing language settings on your phone, listening to similar styles of your favourite music in Spanish so you might actually find a new band you love; this should make you want to put more attention on understanding the lyrics. For beginners a great way to start would be to label items around the house. With this method your brain will automatically retain the information and probably later you’ll realize you know the words without even remembering when you learned those…sounds good right?
2. Language exchange.
I think this point could even have its own post as I find it very useful.. In case you don’t have the chance to travel abroad to Spain or South America, in order to immerse yourself in the Spanish language, you can get in contact with native Spanish speakers where you live, to quickly improve your speaking skills. On top of that, you could make a new friend as these types of exchanges usually are informal ones and give you the opportunity to practice conversations that you would normally have with family or friends. For example, you meet someone for a year once per week, then after some meetings I’m sure you would love to share more about your personal life. That is a perfect time to learn popular sentences that we use everyday in simple conversations, and that most of the time are not taught at a language school.
3. Learning vocabulary within a context.
There is the usual way to learn vocabulary which would be by studying specific topics such as house, work, clothing… However, these words could be associated with a certain context or field that you may know very well. In this case, you might find it easier to memorize words that mean something to you; one example would be someone who loves reading about travelling. Why not spend some more time learning a language while doing something you actually like? I always thought that we take too much seriously learning the language perfectly and don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes…this many times can end up making us feel very frustrated and not wanting to learn more. So for an informal scenario (not like preparing to pass an official test or some serious project like that..), I would try to not hold myself back but focus on the progress rather than the small things (you may very well remember those mistakes you do in a conversation but other people will not even think about them).
4. Watch that show you don’t care much about in Spanish.
I know it sounds contradictory to what I wrote in the previous point, but the way I see it, this works particularly well during our leisure time. In our free time, that one we save to just chill and watch some tv, maybe we want to enjoy the movie with great reviews in our own language. But what about these movies or shows that don’t interest us much? I find this the perfect moment for choosing one of them and setting the language to Spanish (subtitles in Spanish would be great too). Ideally you want to find something that is originally created in Spanish so it sounds more natural. One example would be some famous reality with its version in this language (MasterChef, First Dates…) but it can also be a documentary or interview program. Thanks to Netflix and other streaming services, now you can easily find multiple options.
5. Write a diary in Spanish.
For this one you would need to get in the habit of writing often about your daily tasks or events. It should get quite automatic after a few times of including this activity in your daily plan. After a while, you may find yourself thinking about some routine tasks to be done, in Spanish! This is possible thanks to the amazing cognitive skills in our brain that adapt to retain the new information.
Visit the blog section for more tips to improve your Spanish.