Spanish – Learning a New Language

Posted by Hugo Rodallega on Sep 2nd, 2010 | no comments home title

Congrats on your decision to learn Spanish! Luckily – it’s not difficult to learn Spanish. Even if you are someone who has trouble learning languages; Spanish is such a dominant language today, and there are plenty of methods to use that will make your learning process easier. Next we’ll go into some strategies you can employ to make learning Spanish a whole lot easier and more fun.

If you can, find and hire a tutor. No question, CDs and books can be very good. But a tutor can answer questions that often times a CD/book cannot.There’s nothing wrong with a CD, or book. However a tutor can provide the kind of help you may not receive from a book/CD. Language tutors need to be fluent in their language. A good tutor can teach you various dialects in the language of instruction.

If you’ll be visiting a country where Spanish is spoken, it’s a good idea to learn the local dialect to you’ll be able to communicate better. What’s important is that a tutor will help you to understand the casual use of certain words. Language CD’s and books are usually more formal in what they teach. But a tutor can teach you the slang words. Teach yourself to think in Spanish. You have to use an internal translation process, where you take your thoughts from one language and put them into the new one. Take your time and learn how to do this at your own pace. Everyone has a certain amount of “mental chatter” in their heads; when you notice this, think how the words would translate into Spanish. if you do this often, you’ll find that you get much more skilled at it. You will be surprised at how fast you will be able to do this translation process once you practice it for a while. At some point, you will become so accustomed to this that you won’t even have to make an effort; you’ll just find yourself thinking in Spanish. Of course, you also want to say some of these thoughts out loud, so your ability to speak improves as well.

Practice makes perfect! Be sure to always talk in your language as often as you can, and don’t be concerned about how it looks, or sounds. Even if you aren’t great at putting together whole sentences, using the words you know in place of your native language regularly will help commit those words to memory. For Spanish, replace “one” with “uno” and “dinner” with “cena.” In time, the words will become natural for you. This way you’ll be able to understand the words when you hear others speak them. You’ll find that to be very helpful when you converse with people in the language you’re learning.

You don’t have to struggle to learn a new language. If you don’t yet have a second language, Spanish is a good one to start with, because it’s relatively easy. There are lots of ways to go about learning a new language. Not everyone has to take the same approach; ask yourself what seems like the best choice. Once you find the right method for you, you will know it. Remember that whatever method you use, you have to give yourself time to make progress.

We hope you enjoyed these tips on learning Spanish, remember if you’re in another country you can practice your language skills online by using a Spanish, French or German proxy. You can even watch TV from which ever country you need – here’s how you can watch BBC Iplayer for instance.

Bookmark with:

Spanish – Learning a New Language

Word of the Day