5 Rockstar Tips to Learn Spanish Spanish at Home

Spanish is the mother tongue of more than 400 million people around the globe, which equates to approximately six per cent of the world’s population. A recent report published by the British Council ranked Spanish as the most important second language for British citizens to learn, placing it ahead of French, Arabic and Mandarin. It is estimated that the Latino population of the United States will reach close to 130 million by the year 2060 and that this will make the U.S. the largest Spanish speaking country in the world, overtaking Mexico in the process and further increasing the language’s global standing.

Remind yourself of your goals whenever you feel low or disinterested. It will boost your employment prospects. In today’s global marketplace, knowledge of a second language can be an extremely valuable asset to employers and employees alike. Modern businesses are always keen to have staff members who can help them with international trade and the Spanish language is especially valuable in the current climate. Spanish speakers are a huge demographic for companies to tap into and research shows that some Spanish speaking countries have excellent business prospects. For instance, the Latin American market now has the purchasing power of $1.5 trillion, according to Forbes, which makes Spanish speakers more valuable than ever to corporations.

Follow a strict regime with bits and pieces of entertainment. Start using flashcard apps like Memrise and Anki,  by creating your own decks or using the pre-existing decks to increase your vocabulary and learning. Writing a journal, or a diary, to capture most of the phrases and words that were used repeatedly in day to day Spanish speaking, with their respective articles, thus increasing its practical usage. A good idea could also be to collect conversation connectors and fillers that would later help you build your first conversation. Readout Spanish loudly in front of the mirror or to my pet or my plant to practise pronunciation and speaking. Using the shadowing technique after watching a movie or video can work wonders for you. Listen to Spanish music, audiobooks to aid you further.

Learning isn’t an overnight plan! Thus, get your facts checked, and expectations sorted out! Create a realistic (not over-ambitious) study plan and set short and long term measurable goals for effective learning. Divide learning into short chunks, prioritizing topics you wish to target first. Ensure consistent study methodology using the Pomodoro technique – studying in shorter intervals in a day rather than studying for longer hours on weekends. 

Eliminate distractions.

If your study is getting affected by calls from friends or visiting guests; started keeping your phone switched off, and room locked requesting not to be disturbed while studying.  

It will significantly improve the quality of your understanding and learning. 

Learn with immersion techniques 

Created a mini Spain in my home by putting up a lot of pictures from Spain and Mexico that you like! Label them with their respective names in Spanish. Ensure you sit there for a few hours, revising, trying to recollect Spanish names of the objects in your house rather than translating the names of the objects from English to Spanish in my head. 

Apart from these, seek a Spanish speaker to practise your language skills with. You can find many such sites offering conversational partners at Hello Talk, Tandem, Conversationpartners, Languagepartners, and many more! Spanish also opens up the very real possibility of either working in a Spanish-speaking country or studying in a Spanish-based academic institution. As compared to many other languages, Spanish is fairly straightforward for an English speaker to pick up, as long as you are willing to put the effort in. The language does not require students to learn any new alphabet and there is less emphasis on tone than many of the Asian languages. Believe it or not, studies have demonstrated that learning a second language can improve a student’s grasp of their mother tongue. When you think about this in more depth, it makes complete sense, as acquiring a second language requires a person to think carefully about linguistic theory, or ‘the rules’.

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