When you’re starting to learn a language, it’s way too easy to waste your time believing all the half-truths that people say and blindly wandering forward. The alternative is to take some time up-front to do the research and find more effective ways to learn a language that can make the process easier. This is where I went wrong! Luckily, after taking the scenic route myself, I can offer some insights that will help you learn Spanish in a way that won’t waste your time and will speed up the process.
When my friend asked me what region of Spanish I wanted to learn, I said, “All of them.” I had no idea why he gave me the blankest look I’ve ever seen after that.
It turns out that Spanish is really different from country to country and even between regions in the same country. They have different accents, use different words, and even conjugate verbs differently.
If you’re trying to learn Spanish to go to a certain country or understand the speakers from there, I’d recommend you try to focus a lot of your efforts on resources from that country.
Don’t worry if you mix your resources up a bit though, especially with the basics. I had a ton of resources from Spain even though there’s close to no opportunity to speak with Spaniards here in the northern United States.
Speaking Spanish with other people can be a really intimidating experience. Especially in the beginning, before you’ve reached a good level, it feels like you’re intentionally putting yourself out there to sound like an idiot.
When you can barely string a sentence together or express what it is you want to say, it’s tempting to push it off for awhile and listen to podcasts all day.
It’s easier to say, “I just need to learn a little bit more, and then I’ll be ready,” instead of throwing yourself into a really uncomfortable situation.
The fact of the matter though is that if your goal is to speak Spanish well, you’re going to have to start by speaking Spanish badly. You’ll get there eventually, but you have to crawl through the mud a little before you do.
Before we get any deeper here, I need to put some strong emphasis on the word “some.” We need to strike a balance between not spending a dime and spending a fortune and a half.
If you’re in a bad financial situation, I’m not going to say you need to spend a boatload of cash. You can use Duolingo, find a free language exchange partner on italki, and use a mish-mash of other free resources, and it’s entirely possible to learn Spanish without spending a dime.
On the other hand, you absolutely don’t need to spend $300 to $500 on a course to learn Spanish. Price does not equal value when it comes to language courses.
A lot of the best courses can be bought for less than $100, and this will give you months of solid practice to boost your level in Spanish.
One of the biggest mistakes you can possibly make when you’re learning Spanish is trying to binge-learn.
If you’ve ever started exercising after going a long time without it, you know that you can’t just do it once a week or once every other week and expect to make progress.
The same thing applies to learning Spanish. If you learn something once and don’t touch it again for another week, there’s a really good chance you’ll forget it.
This actually works best if you learn a little bit every day, so instead of spending 3 1/2 hours learning Spanish once a week, split that up to do that 30 minutes a day every day.
I made this mistake when I was first starting out, letting my initial excitement get the best of me. After I spent a few hours in my marathon studies though, I noticed that I had zero interest in Spanish the next day. I got it out of my system and I was done with it.
It’s worked best for me to learn just enough that I hit my 30 minutes or an hour, but stop while I’m still really interested and really want to do more. It feels kind of cruel, like I’m teasing myself sometimes, but this has helped me to keep that desire going for the next day.
When you ask people what their goal is for learning Spanish, they almost always say, “I want to be fluent in Spanish.” I know that was definitely my goal when I started.
To really define what fluency is, I decided to do a thorough experiment that was based entirely in science… Ok, not really. I asked Twitter.
And here’s where the problem lies. If you ask 10 different people what it means to be fluent in Spanish, you’re going to get 11 different answers.
To take the steps forward to reach your goals, you actually need to know what that goal looks like. Whatever end result is important to you, think about what it will take to lead you there.
The response most people give when you say you want to learn Spanish is “Just watch movies in Spanish.”
The title line here is meant to be more than a little facetious because, unfortunately, it’s just not that simple. You don’t just watch a movie and become amazing by some weird form of Spanish osmosis. That’s the case for a number of reasons.
First, a lot of people have pointed out that it’s not the most effective study method and isn’t a terribly good use of your time.
Especially if you’re just starting out, movies are going to be so high above your level that it’s not worth the hours that you’ll put in to pick out tiny bits of Spanish.
With that in mind, watching movies isn’t the worst thing to do, but it’s best to use this as a supplement to your normal daily learning instead of using this as your main learning method.
Second, you don’t improve your speaking by just listening. You can improve your vocabulary by picking up common words or phrases throughout the movie, but then you need to put those into practice and use those in real life.
Finally, this takes repetition, so find a movie you really enjoy. If you’re going to use this as a serious study method, then watch it over and over and over.
When you’re speaking with other people (or even talking to yourself) in Spanish, you might get to a point where you feel comfortable with your level of speaking and get lazy.
To improve consistently though, you can’t let yourself get comfortable. If you’re comfortable when you’re speaking, there’s a good chance you’re not making as much progress as you could.
You have to constantly try to express things that are just above your level. By doing this and getting feedback to correct your mistakes, you’ll keep moving in the right direction, and then it’s just a matter of continuing to push.
Never get comfortable, and just keep pushing.
Now it’s your turn… What do you wish you knew when you first started learning Spanish? Leave a comment below!
Jason Eckerman writes all about Spanish and the best ways to learn it . You can also follow him for more tips, resources, and motivation on Twitter @spanishvault
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