best and fastest way to learn spanish “Finally! An Easy Way to Get By in Spanish – And You Only Need 138 Words“ Click Here 👈 Cho...
best and fastest way to learn spanish
“Finally! An Easy Way to Get By in Spanish – And You Only Need 138 Words“ Click Here 👈
so you want to learn Spanish and this is the year that you're going to make it happen but you don't want to waste your time working on the wrong things or using the wrong techniques hola so Andre hi I'm Andrew and I've been studying Spanish for over 20 years I've also been running a Spanish school for the last 10 years called real far Spanish which has helped over 3,000 students work towards their goals of conversational Spanish now in this video I'm going to show you exactly how I would learn Spanish today if I were starting from scratch including some of the k key lessons that I've learned over the last 20 years about what not to do now these lessons include four steps number one strategy number two not all sounds words and grammar rules are created equally number three subskill conversion and number four developing ties now these are the steps that will help you avoid mistakes and develop your Spanish quickly and effectively this year part one strategy one of the key mistakes that slowed my progress when I started learning Spanish was not having a plan I remember right at the very start I was excited to get going so I bought a bunch of books in one go I also downloaded and printed off some online resources and I just dived head first into everything kind of randomly all at once I would also try to fit in study time between work and running errands and at the time my brother was too young to drive and I remember my parents would get me to drive him around I also remember that I would take him to the gym and while he worked out I used to sit in the gym foyer and work on my Spanish with all of my books and resources that I would carry around in my backpack and the span Spanish skills I was working on in that gym were a bit random which wasn't ideal but the good thing was that the times i' carved out for my Spanish studies were somewhat regular but then I moved out of home and the routines I developed such as studying Spanish in the gym disappeared and so the times that I was actually sitting down to work on my Spanish became really irregular on top of that there is a new version of these kind of mistakes that are easier to make now than they were back then despite the fact that there are more language learning tools now than ever never has it been so easy to get distracted a look at that oh yeah look at that oh oh how about that one too now when I started learning Spanish social media didn't exist and social media can be a great tool for language learning for example you're watching this video on YouTube right now but as the YouTube statistics show typically only 20 to 30% of people make it to the end of a video so if you want to learn Spanish this year and you're serious about it start by watching this video to the very end because there are some important tips coming but also training yourself to avoid getting distracted will be critical for your success so if I was starting learning Spanish from scratch I would first figure out a way to block out a few hours from my calendar every week where I'm doing nothing but studying Spanish and ideally it is difficult to get out of this blocked time kind of like when I was taking my brother to the gym it is forced study time and so as you think about your language learning strategy this year consider how you're going to avoid distractions strategically this could come in the form of Life Changes like what happened to me when I moved out of home work changes vacations Etc and then there's avoiding small distractions on a daily basis like social media in addition when you've successfully carved out time for your Spanish and you sit down to do the work what words what grammar rules what books what YouTube videos are you going to watch and study when I first studied I was studying many random things from many different resources which wasn't ideal sometimes I was working on a advaned grammar before I'd mastered the basics and sometimes I was working on vocabulary that wasn't useful for holding a conversation ideally you want to be working on the words phrases and grammar rules that are appropriate for your level which I wasn't doing and if I was starting today I would find someone to help give me some guidance it could be a Spanish teacher or even another Spanish student who is ahead of where you are now to say hey these are the things that are important to work on now at your current stage of learning and this leads to the next step two not all sounds words and grammar rules are created equally what I'm about to explain to you I wish I knew when I first started and it wasn't until around 3 years in when I was trying to have a conversation with a Spanish native that I realized what I thought I was saying was clear but they couldn't understand me at all you know they look at me and be like now these days as a teacher when I start with any student regardless of their level the first thing I look for is how well the student is producing a few specific Spanish samp sounds now I could focus on any Spanish sound P's T's D's rolling R's G's and V's now these are different from English but the most important sounds to focus on are the Spanish vows now the reason for this is that if you make a mistake by pronouncing a Spanish d p or t like an English d p or t a Spanish native will still completely understand you but if you pronounce a different vow sound meaning you say a Spanish a like one of the five possible sounds associated with the letter a in most English accents you can completely change the Spanish word to a different word or cause a sound combination that doesn't make sense to the ear of a Spanish native and to give you an example of this consider this word now in Spanish we have the same word spelled the same way and means the same thing but is pronounced differently now a common mistake that I used to make and I hear Spanish students making a lot is taking one of the vows from the English word and producing it in the Spanish word so in English we have idea you know it's a good idea and in Spanish we have e e now the two common mistakes and I've made both of them is taking the I sound from English so saying I there right and to a Spanish native this might sound like this so maybe they think there's a drug raid going on or something and then the other is to take the I the DIA sound if you do that you'll get e and this will sound like this to a Spanish native so if I was starting from scratch I would prioritize understanding the Spanish vows and how my vows from English can creep into my Spanish if I'm not paying attention or practicing them now this video here will provide more details on this if you want to learn more about how to master these sounds now similar to sounds not all vocabulary is created equally and a fun fact that I love to share is that there are 100,000 words in the Spanish language but only 1,000 words make up 87% of spoken communication so you only need 1% of all Spanish words in existence to understand 90% of what you're hearing now I remember when I started I was working through the notes of some really complicated Spanish texts you know trying to understand and learn difficult vocabulary but at that stage I couldn't hold a basic conversation now these days as a Spanish teacher I encourage students to work on learning these top 1,000 words as well as they can and then develop skills to be able to talk around the words and vocabulary that they don't have yet this will allow you to hold a conversation and enjoy some of the aspects of language learning earlier in the journey and work on some of the things I'm going to talk about in steps three and four in addition you can always go and build a massive vocabulary later if you want to now in my case the mistake I made was thinking that I needed to understand all of this complex vocabulary and master everything in every book that I had bought in order to hold a conversation if I was starting from scratch I would focus on these high frequency words and if you want to get this top 1,000 Spanish word list in the order that I recommend that that you learn them we have a free downloadable PDF called the conversation hacking guide the link will be in the description below now similarly with grammar I think of all of the possible grammar topics in Spanish in a basic 2x two grid where we have easy topics and hard topics and we have more important and less important topics now similar to vocabulary a student can get a lot of early wins and quick skill development by working through the grid like this where we start with the easy and more important topics and we finish with the hard and less important topics and some examples of easy important grammar topics would be compound phrases present tense verb conjugations and noun gender some examples of hard and important would be direct and indirect objects the Spanish past tenses verbs like gustar and reflexive verbs example easy and less important might be things like the progressive tenses and the future tense and then hard and less important would be things like the subjunctive now there would be people out there who would argue with this graph and this Grid in terms of what makes something more or less important and for me it comes down to where a student is at in their Journey if you have a strong control of the grammar in the first three boxes and you want to take your grammar to the next level then the subjunctive is going to become the most important thing for that goal but if you're struggling with present tense conjugations or compound phrases then these must be a high priority for you now now my own experience a mistake that I made was I spend a long time trying to master the subjunctive thinking that it was key to improving my speaking and listening skills but I realized later that I can completely Converse in Spanish without it I even did a 3-hour dinner with a close friend where we spoke in Spanish the entire time without using the subjunctive as an experiment so now if I was learning Spanish from scratch instead of spending time working on difficult things like the subjunctive before I was ready for it I would focus on the first two boxes as well as the next step so step three subskill conversion I want you to imagine that you're at your husband or Wife's work Christmas party you don't know anyone there and you want to make yourself seem less awkward and out of place you get introduced to a lot of people but quickly forget their names you're not sure who to speak to so you just go and sit by the bar and get a drink maybe you meet Joe who works in accounts and you have a good conversation with him at the bar you then leave and don't speak to Joe until next year's Christmas party where you have to start again you might have even forgotten Joe's name at this point now in contrast at your work Christmas party you know everyone there by name and you know something about them so you're able to move from group to group having great conversations socializing everywhere and having a great time now of course your work party is your first language and your partner's party represents Spanish now at your partner's party you may get introduced to a lot of people but you'll quickly forget their names you may think to yourself you know who are these people and what do they do and it doesn't matter how much time you spend at the party if you aren't getting to know the people better around the room you won't be able to get a lot out of the evening now what you need to do is use techniques and tactics and practice to learn everyone's name at the party and something about them so you can chat all night and enjoy your partner's Christmas party as much as your own now you can think of people at the Spanish party like words phrases and grammar rules if you learn a Spanish word which in this metaphor is someone's name but you don't use that word you don't think about it or practice it you'll forget it but if you practice ahead of time maybe you're practicing with your partner in the car on the way to the party or even the week before hey who's the head of marketing again and who sits opposite you and what was the name of the person that I sat next to last year and what was their hobby again can you remind me of that and the better you have the information in your head the more easily you'll be able to use it at the party now the same thing applies to any Spanish word or phrase if you learn it once but you don't review it or practice it you'll forget it and a mistake that I made when I first started learning Spanish was not understanding that there are tips and tactics that you can use to convert a new Spanish word into usable and quickly accessible memory think about some of the ways that you could memorize everyone's name at the party what would you do one of the key principles of memory is something known as spaced repetition it involves learning something waiting a while and then at the point that you're about to forget that thing or even just after forgetting it you learn it again now for me this is what I mean by subskill conversion and there are three primary skills in language learning which are sounds vocabulary and grammar and the subskills are Reading Writing listening and speaking now the better you know the primary skills the easier you'll be able to use them when it comes time to producing a sub skill like speaking or listening now going back to the party analogy if you know someone's name extremely well and what they do you'll be able to pull out that information the moment you see them but if you've been introduced and you can't remember their name the conversation could be awkward and while you're speaking to them you aren't listening because all you're trying to do is remember their name now this can be just like listening comprehension in Spanish you may hear a word but you have to think about it and what it means is while you're thinking about that word you lose track of the conversation now there are many tools out there that can help with subskill conversion ank is an example of an app that I like to assist in this process but there are other software tools out there to help with memory like memorize or Quizlet now you don't have to use these though even a pen and a piece of paper are great for converting names or vocabulary to quick and accessible memories now I didn't understand this when I started but if I was starting from scratch I would include regular use of review and memorization techniques to ensure that the words and phrases I was learning are being converted into quickly accessible memories for me then step four is developing ties probably the biggest mistake that I made was spending too long learning Spanish by myself just using books and online resources it wasn't until I took my first ever Spanish class that I saw an acceleration in my skills part of it was everything I've talked about so far in a Spanish classroom there are no distractions it's a time and a commitment that was carved out for my Spanish every week there was a curriculum for me to follow that was designed for students at my level there was homework and an opportunity to practice and convert what I was learning but importantly I got along well with my teacher and the other students outside of class I was meeting Spanish Natives and practicing what I was learning in class in other words I was developing a connection to the Spanish language through people it made the language More Than Just Words or phrases on a piece of paper it was a joke that my Spanish teacher said it was a story that a Spanish friend told me it was a deep and meaningful conversation about how to live a good life it was this that made language come alive in my head and it gave Spanish an emotional connection that went beyond an academic exercise now some people may come to this video looking for the latest apps technology Ai and tools like this to learn a language faster but for me a huge part of my own growth came after I started to develop ties with real people it helped me get motivated and more focused it helped me with my memory and it helped make the process easier and more enjoyable and if I was starting from scratch I would include meeting other people as part of the language learning process as early as possible whether it's teachers or friends or work colleagues or people in my local community the reason I wanted to learn Spanish was to connect with people and it's crazy that it took me so long to start doing it when I first started learning now at the time I thought that I had to be very Advanced before connecting with others but this doesn't matter at all you can form lifelong friendships with Spanish natives even if you just have a couple of words and it's then these friendships that will help make the process more real and create a positive feedback loop that will help you develop your SK skills faster and more effectively now if you want to connect with people in your Spanish Journey you can join the school at real fast Spanish we have a great community of Spanish Learners and teachers but you don't have to join our school any opportunity to connect with someone a neighbor or a local Meetup Group anything that helps you develop ties the way humans naturally do in communities can help be a big driving force for your Spanish now I will link all of the resources that I discussed in this video below and if you're early in your Spanish Journey check out this video on compound phrases here or pronunciation here as these are the most important things to focus on at the start so on that note we'll speak in the next video ...
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