How to learn Spanish effectively
My name is Fabio Zamarreño and I have been teaching Spanish since 2013, all as a Professor, tutor, and on-line / in-person teacher. I have also learned several languages which I manage at different levels: English (fluent), Portuguese (fluent), Catalan (fluent), Italian (intermediate), French (intermediate), and Galician (basic) —I have also tried with Arabic, Mandarin, and German but I could not say I have gotten a significant knowledge in these three languages.
Hence, I would like to give you some guidance about how to start your journey in this world of language learning.
How to learn Spanish effectively?
To start off, I do not recommend attending big group classes. I find that it is reasonable to have lessons with 3 or 4 other classmates, but it is difficult to learn if you’re in a classroom with more than 15 students (I tried that myself many times!). I cannot say you won’t acquire some useful grammar points, but it is not worth it considering the time/benefit balance.
What can we do then in order to learn Spanish effectively?
From my experience, both as a learner and as a tutor, I highly recommend a private tutor who can adapt to your specific needs. Although particular language sessions might seem expensive initially, they are extremely beneficial —and economical— in the long run. On a personal level, I always remember how I spent €700 in a well renowned English course in which I didn’t learn as much as I expected. If I had spent that amount on one-to-one lessons, I would have arrived to the United States knowing a lot more than I did; I was unable to ask for a hamburger at the airport!
My last advice is to not try to overachieve rational goals. It is attractive to think that we are going to study three hours every day, but very seldom does that ever happen. I generally advise my students to dedicate between 15 and 30 minutes developing their Spanish skills. This means we need to practice listening, reading, writing, and speaking at least once a week. As you see, most of this work is personal, and the key will be to find articles, podcasts, videos and conversations which suit you, while keeping active the motivation to study a little every day. I also encourage my students to focus on a specific skill every day: on Mondays you can read a pair of articles in your favorite newspaper, and the next day you could listen (twice) to a 7-minute podcast, making sure you understand it completely before going to the next level.
One of the biggest mistakes when learning a new language is trying to complete advanced activities when we have not reached that level yet (such as watching tv series without subtitles or listening to famous songs), but this is another point that I will cover in following posts.
Let’s summarize it again:
- Avoid learning in big groups
- Find a good private tutor
- Do not try to overachieve rational goals
- Practice listening, reading, writing, and speaking at least once a week
- Do activities according to your level
I hope this post helps and follow the blog if you want to receive further information about how to learn Spanish!
