Introduction

Spanish is a Romance language that originated in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a global language with nearly 500 million native speakers, mainly in Spain and the Americas. It is the world’s second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese, and the world’s fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages of the Indo-European language family, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Modern Spanish was then taken to the viceroyalties of the Spanish Empire beginning in 1492, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa and the Philippines.  Stops and starts. You’ve probably experienced these a couple of times in your life. Whether it happens with your gym routine, music skills, math knowledge or Parcheesi, you learn a skill well for a certain period of time—then you stop practicing that skill for a couple of weeks. Suppose you’ve been studying Spanish for several weeks. You completely stop for 3 months and then you try to speak Spanish again. The results are usually quite disastrous. When it comes to languages, unless you’ve already reached an advanced to a near-fluent level, it usually feels pretty hard to maintain your ability to express yourself in that language when you stop practicing it.

But don’t worry, you can make more progress in Spanish by following below mentioned tips:

1. Tap into your memory and find your Spanish skills.

Now, in case you’re wondering, you should be aware that once you start learning a language there’s only a very low chance that your skills will disappear para siempre (forever) if you stop practicing. Some of the things that might happen when you stop using Spanish after a sustained period of learning? Your mind may become a bit idle and it’ll start losing its familiarity with using the idioma (language). It’s like you know how to say something but the words just won’t come out of your mouth. Sometimes your tongue even loses its ability to reproduce Spanish sounds, like the very special rolled RR or the typical Argentinean ch sound. If those things happened to you, rest easy, you’re not alone!

2. Create a realistic daily routine for Spanish practice.

• Now, you need to know that maintaining your Spanish level boils down to one thing: creating a daily routine using the language so your mind doesn’t forget it again. Before speaking about the different types of routines you can create, let’s explore some good tips about how to create that daily routine.
• Have a checklist of all your routine tasks. We’re going to give you a bunch of techniques you can use to maintain your Spanish level. The best thing you can do is to pick the ones you like the most and commit to using them every day. In order to have a clear idea of what you need to do, write down your daily Spanish practice routine in the form of a checklist. This way you won’t have to think when the time comes to get some work done. It’ll quickly become automatic.
• Keep the checklist visible. Make sure to write it down on a piece of paper, not on your computer. If it ends up on your computer or smartphone, be sure to have an application send you daily notifications and reminders about it. Otherwise, stick that list on the wall or keep it somewhere it’ll be easy for you to see daily. There’s nothing more frustrating than being motivated to get something done and not being able to find the related material you need to achieve it. Make the checklist as straightforward as possible. Say you want to practice your Spanish every day via reading. 

3. Give your writing skills a boost.

Writing is a highly engaging exercise. When I was learning Spanish, I believe writing 1 or 2 pages per day about my workday seriously skyrocketed my skills in that Idioma (language). Here’s what I’d advise you to do. Set out 5-10 minutes per day to write in Spanish on a piece of paper (not on your computer). What do you write about? Write about something outstanding that happened to you that day, for example, or about what you’re planning to do the following day or week. It doesn’t need to be something really complicated as long as you’re writing about something that’s interesting to you.

4. Use engaging resources to read in Spanish every day.

Incorporating some reading practice into your daily routine is really important in order to maintain your comprehension skills. This is the siglo 21 (21st century) so you have a great number of resources available at your fingertips. For example, did you know that Amazon offers a fair selection of free Spanish e-books? Yep! Amazon’s website has many free or really cheap Spanish e-books that you can read on your Kindle, your computer or pretty much anything that has a screen.

5. Actively listen to Spanish audio content every day.

The next area we’re going to cover is listening. It’s pretty straightforward to practice this one. You have to find some good Spanish audio content to listen to regularly. As usual, listen to it for small periods of time to start off. 5 to 10 minutes per day is perfectly fine. You might even want to listen for more time if what you’re listening to is really interesting! As with the reading part, there are plenty of good Spanish audio content sources available out there. First, you may want to invest in some good audiobooks.

6. Speak Spanish to anyone who will listen.

Last but not least, you’ll have to complete your daily Spanish routine by speaking Spanish for several minutes per day. You essentially have two main ways to go about doing this. Firstly, you can (and you should) talk with yourself. You might want to isolate yourself to do this if you don’t want people to think you’re crazy. And una vez más (once again) it’ll only be for 5-10 minutes per day. Just have a chat with yourself. It’ll be like the person writing exercise described earlier in this post, but this time you’re doing it out loud. You can talk about what you did that day, your plans for the following day or even imagine catching up with a friend you haven’t seen in a long time. Make sure to write down every word or expression you don’t know how to say. That way you can look for them later, add them to a Spanish vocabulary notebook and study them every night. If you have the opportunity, you might want to speak with a real person on a regular basis instead.

7. If you want to be perfect or fluent in Spanish then, find an online tutor to speak on a daily basis.

If you are just to do one thing in your quest for Spanish fluency, my recommendation would be to focus on this method. The fact of the matter is, having an online tutor will double your results compared to time spent in an actual classroom. Why you might ask? A classroom environment is focused on teaching several students. However, an online tutoring session is 100% focused on you, the student. You are the reason for the class and since you are the focus you will do the speaking and hearing. Having a good Spanish tutor will benefit you like you will be able to improve your learning skills soon.