How to practice Spanish?

In the times of globalization, limiting yourself to one language (mother tongue) is not enough. As rightly said…

 “One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.”

By Frank Smith

This is the time to expand your horizon and dive into other foreign language learning and Spanish is no exception. 

Learning Spanish could be so much fun, and also it helps in enhancing your critical thinking and problem-solving skills while interpreting its vocabulary, sentences and grammar. Thus, Multibhashi provides you more fun ways to practice Spanish…

Read beyond regular textbooks. You can reach out to even lower-level Spanish books. As you start learning Spanish, it’s not possible to understand the literary work at first shot. So it’s recommended reading children’s books when starting out. If you face difficulty while understanding each word in the book, need not worry. Rather than picking every single word, look for the common words that keep coming while reading. 

If it still not motivates you to start reading Spanish books, then you may look for any book or a comic, which you enjoy reading in your language, translated in Spanish. This way you can even predict the meaning of the Spanish words since you already know the plotline of the story.

Start with spending 10-20 minutes a day in reading and gradually increasing the hours as you progress.

Reading books in Spanish is a great way to practice overall comprehension of the language.

It may sound funny, isn’t it?

Yeah! You must have seen such a scenario in movies a lot, but trust, it’s quite an effective way of practising the Spanish language.

Talk to yourself!

Talking to yourself can be a form of practice in the language.  It will help you in fixing your intonation and pronunciation, if not as suggested, of Spanish words. There are many sounds that do not exist in the language, such as the Spanish rolled ‘R’, etc, so the more you practice, the better you may become at imitating these sounds successfully. 

Try to observe and then imitate or mimic the exact mouth movements of people speaking in Spanish in various tutorials. Or you can keep a recording of Spanish pronunciation so you can cross-check what you are saying and how you are saying it to compare with how it should be said.

This is the most natural way to practice the Spanish language as watching TV is an integral part of our daily routine. You must have your favourite evening or nighttime programs to watch, but, hey! How about switching to a Spanish-speaking channel (which you must have subscribed to when enrolled for Spanish) and watch a few programs there. 

Or you can fix up a time to watch some Spanish programs with subtitles on. This way you can match their words with the actual pronunciation.

You can even watch kids programs as they have comparatively slower speaking which will help you to understand Spanish words. 

Challenge yourself to learn a few new words every time you watch the show. As you become familiar with the language vocabulary, you can increase the number of words. Set up a competition with yourself. Try to beat your own best record and enjoy the personal challenge.

Yes, while organizing stuff in the kitchen or in our cupboard, we label the items to ease our reach in case of urgency. But did you ever think, this practice could assist you in learning Spanish. When learning Spanish, you cannot expect yourself to become fluent by learning vocabulary occasionally. How would you use the endless vocabulary then?

Use the learnt vocabulary in labelling your house items. This will help you in retaining the vocabulary. When a person is involved in doing something, they tend to retain more of the information, consciously as well as subconsciously.

Try to find out good Spanish Blogs or Vlogs to follow. Follow them regularly. It helps in learning different rules of Spanish from the other person’s perspective. These Spanish blogs/vlogs are wonderful ways that relieve you from all your strain by providing precisely explained lessons, a person’s experiences and cultural glimpses. You can learn at your own pace and availability. 

This is a fun way to learn Spanish.

Enhance your learning Spanish by combining more than one method, discussed above, along with your consistent dedication. Try talking to any native speaker and also a person who has learnt Spanish as a second language, this will help you in bridging the gap and learn Spanish efficiently, adding more to your knowledge.

As rightly said, 

 “Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.”

By Roger Bacon

It gives a thrill by merely imagining landing in any Spanish-speaking country and taking in their native language. Who knows when it becomes true. So be ready!