Hot Summers Provide a Great Time to Finally Learn Spanish
The one sentence you’ll hear repeated over and over by people who move or want to spend significant time in Mexico is that they wished they’d started learning Spanish sooner.
People assume that they’ll “pick it up” once in Mexico, or spend a few months with Duolingo, only to find themselves utterly tongue-tied once put to the test.
During a summer of record-breaking temperatures, don’t miss the opportunity to use these dog days to finally learn to speak Spanish.
Summer is the perfect time to shut yourself in an air conditioned room with a ice cold frappe and take your Spanish to conversational level.
In addition to the practical aspects of being able to navigate stress-free in a foreign culture, there’s fascinating evidence that a person’s personality actually shifts when they’re speaking a different language. The words you choose identify your character. When you have the opportunity to choose your vocabulary conscientiously as a language student, you get a second chance in how you want to be perceived.
So If, like me, you’ve ever wanted to be a different person, this is your chance. The array of free tools online is dizzying, so much so that I wrote a book about them in 2015. You can waste a lot of time separating the free courses from the disguised-as-free. I researched hundreds of sites when I wrote that book in the desire to help people find free tools that provided real value.
In revisiting them for this blog, I was sorry to see many great tools have disappeared from search results, yielding to many that are poor tools but have big corporate advertising budgets. These corporate sites get alot of traffic by telling you that you can learn by watching videos and other fun, but tristemente ineffective methods. Buried are the truly useful tools by passionate private teachers without the big budgets.
The saddest part is how much of students’ time the easy-to-find sites waste. In surveys of intermediate and advanced students by Rocket Spanish, the tools that rank highest by student focused on tutoring-related activities, the lowest in effectiveness were the methods that demanded the least from you, such as watching videos and playing language games on Duolingo.
Consistency is key
According to language learning experts (my favorite is Karol Martinez of Español Automatico, who spends her life studying the most effective and proven learning methods), repetition and consistency are key to learning a language, just like they are to learning guitar or playing tennis. Begin by carving out at least 30 minutes for study, and go for two 25 minute sessions a day if possible.
How to best learn vocabulary
If you’re brand new to language learning, focus on studying vocabulary for at least 10-15 minutes with a flash card system like Quizlet. In developing your vocabulary lists, try taking vocabulary words from the simple articles in English that get your attention.
If an article interests you, it’s likely the vocabulary you’ll want to learn, as it reflects what you’ll want to talk about later. Medium has stories that take only a few minutes to read and is a good source for short stories to draw vocabulary from about every topic.
If you’re only interested in survival Spanish, set up vocabulary cards based on getting around day to day in Mexico. Focus your lists on shopping, banking, public transportation, getting help, making reservations, etc. FluentU has this list of podcasts for beginners that’s a great source for survival Spanish vocabulary.
Learn some grammar
People frequently give the excuse that children don’t need grammar to learn to speak, so they shouldn’t either. But children are fully immersed when they first learn to speak. They have to learn in order to communicate their needs to their parents and survive. They are surrounded 24/7 by the language for years before they speak coherently.
Knowing grammar compensates for the lack of extended immersion. Knowledge of grammar rules will prevent your skills from plateauing later. With grammar, you’ll be able to apply rules and reason a sentence out whether or not you’ve ever used the sentence before.
Great free resources for grammar lessons are the University of Texas written resources, Professor Jason on YouTube and Study Spanish, which has good exercises. Try to find tools with testing features. You learn 3x more being tested than you do by just studying
Once you have enough grammar to form simple sentences, try to put vocabulary words on the cards in a sentence rather than adding just lists of words to review. The context will serve you much better in remembering the words.
Practice listening with podcasts
Work on your listening as much as your speaking. Being able to understand is as or more important than speaking. Spanish language learning sites often host both podcasts and blogs that will help your reading, grammar lessons and listening.
My favorite Spotify podcasts as an early intermediate were How to Spanish (Mexican Spanish), and Hoy Hablamos (Castilian Spanish). Choose podcasters who sound like you want to sound. Practice pronunciation by pausing and repeating what you hear.
Some podcasts, like No Hay Tos and many of the Mexican YouTube teaching videos may be fine for getting used to how some Mexicans speak on the street, but their rambling podcasts don’t provide the great diction to emulate like David and Anna’s How to Spanish podcast.
To test whether the podcast is the right level for you, according to Martinez, you want to be able to understand 70% of what is being said. If you can’t “fill in the blanks” easily through their context, the podcast isn’t near as effective.
Find opportunities to speak!
Many cities have MeetUps for language exchange. At the MeetUp you have coffee and practice with non-native speakers. This is a crucial step as a beginner, as it’s less intimidating than speaking with native speakers and builds your confidence. Fear of making mistakes (looking stupid) is the biggest obstacle to learning to speak a second language.
Using Skype is probably the easiest method of working speaking practice into your schedule. Until you master sufficient vocabulary and grammar to carry a free Skype language exchange conversation (typically you converse 30 minutes in Spanish and 30 minutes in English), pay an online tutor for 30 minutes to practice with you at least twice a week for a few months.
Sites such as italki have community tutors for as little as $8 dollars an hour. Once you are speaking as much as listening to your tutor, start recruiting free language exchange partners from the language exchange site you like. No time to recruit or want to make it all about you? Duolingo makes conversation partners available for as little as $9 dollars and hour.
Speaking several times a week will help keep you motivated to study between practice sessions. (My enthusiasm to study always drops off in late August when my practice partners in Spain are on vacation). Monthly memberships run about $6 and you can cancel as soon as you’ve recruited a stable of language-exchange friends.
Several sleeker language-exchange sites cater to younger people looking for language partners, the best being Conversation Exchange. My favorite language-exchange site, My Language Exchange, never makes any of the “Best” lists as it’s technically clunky and outdated (like me), but it has the deepest bench of older students (also like me). I have seven language partners and all but one were sourced through My Language Exchange.
I’m not exaggerating when I say these Skype language exchanges have changed my life. Five of them have been with me on my language journey for years, including throughout the pandemic. We share photos, videos, ideas and humdrum daily frustrations. When locked up in the summer by Mexico’s heat, I know I’ll have at least one social interaction every week day. We are all over 50.
I’ve learned far more Spanish from Skype language exchange than by social interaction in Mexico. Unlike my exchange partners, my Mexican friends aren’t there to teach me Spanish. Language partners share your goal. I cover more topics with them than I do with my Mexican friends.
The more disciplined approach we take as exchange partners makes formal language exchange more effective than typical conversations. Practice partners understand how challenging it is to achieve fluency and know to give you equal time to speak.
Most things worth having, like language skills in a host country, have to be earned. The pay off from developing Spanish speaking skills for living in Mexico, I assure you, is off the charts. It totally transforms the experience and your social life. So get started!
About the author:
Kerry Baker is the author of several books, including If I Only Had a Place, a guide to renting in Mexico, The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity and quality of life by living in Mexico Part-Time is an entertaining guidebook on how to set up a “mini-life” in Mexico. Her most recent book, The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico is a cookbook for travelers, expats and snowbirds. You can’t maintain a healthy diet in Mexico without cooking. The Lazy Expat shows you how.