People are good at looking for excuses. If I add up all the time I’ve been looking for excuses to not do something I’d be a rich guy, and fluent in French already. But that’s not the case, and many people are in exactly the same situation. Luckily, it’s not too late to change.
Ask yourself; how much Spanish is there in my life? Am I really doing all I can to get exposed to Spanish, am I really putting effort into learning this cool language? Be honest, don’t try to trick yourself and don’t look for excuses. Yes, be hard for yourself, you’ll thank yourself later you did.
I’ve written about this topic several times, but now I want to focus on the question if you’re really doing everything you can to get Spanish into your life. What are you currently doing to get more Spanish in your life? I’ve been thinking about this subject quite a bit lately as a classmate of mine asked me how she can get better at Spanish. So I made a list with her to sum up all the things she currently does in Dutch and all the things she does in Spanish.
I saw her problem right away; she’s doing way too much in Dutch. Sure, she’s in a relationship with someone that doesn’t speak Spanish, but that’s no reason to do other things in Dutch. She’s also a fan of reading, but two years after starting majoring Spanish she’s still only reading books in Dutch. It’s no surprise that her Spanish isn’t good and that all she knows is grammar (because that’s simply all the studying she does).
Many think they won’t enjoy something in Spanish because they don’t understand most of the book or movie. But you’ll always be stuck at that level if you don’t just dive into native materials. Holding off the boat won’t help you; in the end you’ll be discouraged because you’re putting in time for formal study but don’t see results (which is logical, because you really need to immerse yourself to get good results fast).
So what did I tell her to do? Of course to do more in Spanish and keep Dutch stuff to a minimum. Sure, there’s always work, or college and/or a significant other. But don’t spend your me-time in Dutch/English whatever language. Do everything you can in Spanish. Heck, I even sing in Spanish while I shower. I only have Spanish music on my iPod, just so that I can’t lure myself into listening English stuff. I don’t have Dutch books anymore (apart from the ones I use/used for college that weren’t available in Spanish). And above all; I abandoned cable TV, which is not only a huge time-saver but will also force you to look for other things on the Internet, and thus you’re more likely to look for Spanish materials than English stuff.
These aren’t extreme measures to get more Spanish in your life, they’re rather small things. But small things add up fast. If you’d just fill you mp3 player with Spanish music, your listening time stacks up quickly. If you give away your books that aren’t writting in Spanish and start with books in Spanish at your level, you have to read Spanish. Even if you change your operating system to Spanish, you’re already getting more exposure.
So ask yourself: am I doing everything I can to get more Spanish into my life? Be honest, be hard for yourself. Without more exposure you’ll only feel frustrated because you’re still not at the level you want to be. Even worse; you’re not even moving in the right direction.
¡Cambia AHORA!
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Immersion is the way to go (and stop looking for excuses)
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This is a great article and I always advise all our spanishpod students to use their Spanish every way possible, even if people do not understand what you are saying. There is no use to study for hours, if you do not use it you will never learn it! In spanishpod we give our students a challenge at the end of the podcast. Something like go and tell a girl. ¿Hola guapa como va tu día? Even if she can no understand , the feeling will be great!
Great article the Fomny link you gave means I only watch the news in Spanish and Russian so its a start.
Years back, when I was first learning Spanish, one thing that I did a lot of was to watch movies in Spanish. I would watch them once through with subtitles so I knew what was going on. Then, I would watch them through a second time without subtitles just listening to what people were saying (and I would rewind if there was something I didn’t understand). It helped me understand conversational Spanish (as well as be able to pick up on diverse accents) in a way that was difficult at times in actual conversations.
I agree with you about music too. It has been one of the ways I’ve maintained my Portuguese since I left Brazil. Music has the added benefit of being something that you naturally want to memorize the lyrics to (it helps if you actually look the lyrics up), then you have a database inside your head of memorized phrases that you can relate back to if you want to get into learning the specifics of grammar usage.
The best thing I did though, and the real way I learned Spanish before I was living in Spanish speaking countries, was to find people in my community who spoke Spanish. I spent a year solid hanging out with a group of Mexican friends who spoke little to no English, starting out with a lot of hand gestures and periods where I didn’t really have a clue what was going on, but after a while I got so that I could speak more and more. Regardless of what country, if you live in a large city, you can probably find a community of Spanish speakers, it’s just a matter of prioritizing.
I’m a huge proponent of always carrying around a little notebook too. Whenever they would say something that I felt was useful, or when I needed a word that I didn’t know, I would ask them and then write it down in my notebook. If I were to point to one thing, I would say that this was probably the most important language learning tool I had.
Noah Goodman
The Global Language Project
http://www.facebook.com/globallanguageproject
One more thing that I forgot. I have a friend who taught himself to speak Spanish and Portuguese by finding people on MSN, Skype, and social networking sites like Orkut (where all the Brazilians are), Hi5 (where a lot of Mexicans and people from the Caribbean are), and Myspace (where a lot of Spanish speakers are now coming to). Facebook is still pretty anglocentric, but I’ve noticed that changing slowly. He would find people who wanted to practice their English and do exchanges.