Learning a language is something most of us want to do. Yet it’s something we never get around to. We buy the Rosetta stone, listen to a few lessons and then stop.
My theory is that we stop because:
Progress and feedback are crucial to learning, and without them it feels like you are stumbling around in the dark.
I spent years learning Spanish in school, the usual one hour a day in the classroom kind of thing. After say 8 years I thought I was actually a good Spanish speaker.
Fast forward to the study abroad program I signed up for in Oaxaca, Mexico. I landed in the airport feeling all cocky and ready to blow everyone away with my skills.
I could not understand a word anyone was saying.
Luckily there was another girl who spoke English living with my host family.
My failure was that I did not know enough “real” Spanish, and I had very few hours speaking to actual people.
That’s what we all want to do when we learn language right? To speak to actual people.
Unfortunately, in the classroom we spend most of the time being spoken at by the teacher, and then reading scripted conversations with other students.
In those next few months on study abroad I really struggled with my Spanish. Every day at the end of the day my brain felt like it was aching. But eventually at the end of the term, I could hold a conversation in almost anything with any person there.
It probably wasn’t a great conversation, but I was speaking to people, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.
This is a great way to learn because the language tends to be simple. David read Winnie the Pooh, it is in Spanish.
Most likely when you are learning a language you will need to introduce yourself a lot and answer questions about yourself. This is a great way to learn all of the vocabulary and sentence structure that goes along with that.
This is a great way to make it sound like you know more Spanish than you do. For example: “entonces” and “pues” are the most popular, but you can take a look at here.
This will feel overwhelming at first. Learning language is similar to being a kid, you won’t be able to express yourself very well and this will make you frustrated. Just keep going even if you feel like you are not learning. that when we feel like we are not making progress is when we are actually learning the most.
I would do this by type of word (ie noun, adjective). Here is a website with lists of the in Spanish in different categories. This will make it seem like you know so much more Spanish than you do.
If you are in the United States you will most likely want to learn Mexican slang. What you will notice is that native speakers, like in English, use a lot of slang. In school, you will probably learn that job=trabajo in Spanish, but often times when talking with a Mexican Spanish speaker job=chamba.
with Mexican slang words and phrases. When you are listening to a (casual) conversation between two friends in Mexico I swear 80% of the words are from this list.