Time-Shaving Tricks To Learn Spanish Easier and Faster

Reference & EducationEducation

  • Author Antony Masson
  • Published August 11, 2011
  • Word count 862

Learning Spanish is something you can definitely do, even if it's the first time you've ever tried to learn a foreign language. It is widely believed that new languages must be hard to learn, but it's something anyone can pick up. After all, there are a lot of great reasons to learn a language other than the one you grew up speaking. For one thing, it makes traveling to other countries much easier. Yet it can be just as helpful in your own home town. Many people start their foray into language learning with learning Spanish. Let's look at some ways to make learning Spanish simpler. Many people have anxiety about learning a new language, but it does not have to be hard. It's really quite a bit of fun if you don't make it into a chore! Think of the doors a new language will open. When you travel, it can make you much more at ease. Even at home, there's a good chance it will enable you to speak to more people. In today's economy, knowing another language can make it easier to get a job. For people who live in the U.S., the language that is spreading most quickly is Spanish.

The first thing you should focus on is the way you pronounce words in Spanish. You can study grammar from books and memorize vocabulary, but how you actually speak is of primary importance. Look for anything written in Spanish and practice saying the words out loud; this is a good way to improve your speech in the new language. Read out loud from Spanish magazines and practice repeating phrases you hear in Spanish from fluent speakers. When you do this, you will start to understand the right way to use inflections and put words together into correct sentences. This is actually a very enjoyable thing to practice once you get into the spirit of it. It can feel like singing, which is a great way to let loose and express your creativity. The immersion way to learn a new language is one time-tested way to become fluent fast. So if you went to a Spanish-speaking country, you'd naturally be inclined to learn that language just to function in everyday life. There are, of course, certain places in the U.S. where you could use this immersion method right at home. Of course, when you visit another country you don't have the convenient option of using your native language if you feel like it. There are many people who claim that immersing themselves in the new language made them learn it faster than they could have any other way. Other people find it intimidating. It's not for everybody, and you have to ask yourself if you think it would be the best thing for you. You should hire a tutor. Learning from books and CDs is great, but a tutor will be able to help you out with things you might not be able to figure out on your own with a book or a CD. Naturally, a language tutor should be fluent in the language they're tutoring. They should be able to teach you about specific dialects within the language.

Try to make yourself think in Spanish as much as possible. You may find this hard at first, but you can gradually learn how to transform your thoughts into a new language. You will need to start slow with this. In your everyday life, consider how various phrases that occur to you would sound in Spanish. Like any skill, you can become better at it the more you try it. You'll find that the internal translation starts to get easier. Before long you might find that you are thinking in Spanish without even making an effort to do so. Then, to improve your conversational skills, you'll want to practice speaking your thoughts out loud.

A good technique is to actually have the Spanish names for everything in front of you; you can use tags or stickers with the words written on them. Make labels for everything in your home and, if you can, your work space. Using this method, you'll start learning vocabulary automatically. Don't risk confusing different words; this can be quite embarrassing! When you don't know what you're saying, you can end up confusing similar sounding words that mean very different things. By using this technique of labeling objects, you'll be absorbing all the right names for things, and you'll find yourself picking up the new language quite naturally.

Enroll in a course. There are a lot of people who are not comfortable taking a Spanish course with other students. In a class setting, people normally have to speak the language in front of others. This can be very intimidating!

Even if stumbling through the new language out loud makes you uncomfortable, it's still a good idea. That's the best way to learn because everyone else is learning, too! Everyone can participate in making silly mistakes! It will certainly be less intimidating than trying out your new language with a local who might not be so forgiving when you use a word or tense incorrectly.

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