My Tryst With Spanish: What Worked And What Didn’t

Do you know how many languages are spoken in India? Well over a hundred! Needless to say, most Indians are bilingual, or even trilingual. And yet when it comes to foreign languages, we mostly wind up with the short end of the stick. So how did I manage to not only choose Spanish but also follow through on that choice? This is my story of how I began my journey with Spanish? There are countless stories of how people around the world have achieved their big and small language learning dreams; this one is mine. I wouldn’t stake a claim to fame for this feat but it certainly does feel good to be able to speak a foreign language finally!

5 Steps To Turning Facebook Into A Spanish Learning Machine

Facebook – don’t we just love to claim how much we hate it and how it’s ruining our daily routine? Feel free to rant but we both know who’s having the last laugh. With close to a billion users and counting, this phenomena is not going anywhere anytime soon. So you have two options: Either use it to share breakfast and cat pictures and make zero positive impact to your life; or turn the tables and make every minute you spend on it count. What do they say about life, lemons, and lemonade? Yes, it’s more than possible to turn Facebook into a solid Spanish-learning machine and make your social media hours productive! Here, we’ll learn how.

6 Ways To Turn Your Vacation Into A Spanish Learning Venture

Traveling to a Spanish speaking country has always been the single biggest motivator to Spanish students; in fact, it’s perhaps the only reason most of us decided to even start learning the language. After all, what good is a language skill if you never wish to be where it’s spoken! What good is any skill if it’s never put to use? It’s a shame how so many of us consider it a divine right, as English speakers, to be understood everywhere we go, be it Mexico, Mongolia or even Mars. Now, traveling abroad is a costly affair and not all are lucky enough to make it. But what if you are? Well, then you really are lucky since one such trip can accelerate your Spanish learning like nothing else can.

Stay Silent And Get Fluent...Quickly!

Immersion seems so natural and yet there hardly seems to be any Spanish-learning methodology more controversial than this! Why exactly? Well, apparently there doesn’t exist a definitive answer yet but it can be vehemently affirmed that there exist more plausible evidences proving its benefits than the contrary. Actually, even the academic purists vouch for total immersion. Where, then, do we disagree? That bone of contention is called “grammar”. While academics consider it the be-all of any Spanish language acquisition program, successful polyglots unanimously counter it with what they call “silent, no-frills input”.

The Laziest Way To Conquer Spanish

What’s going to be under discussion today is set to radically and fundamentally change the way you approach the Spanish language as a learner. To most purists, this article should read as nothing short of an academic blasphemy but if you manage to believe what we believe and what’s backed by solid, empirical study, acquiring Spanish or any other language of the world is not for the serious learners. The lazier you are, the easier it gets for you; best if you dig all things that come to you on a platter without any effort whatsoever on your part. Stumped? Bear with us and you’ll soon see the inherent sense in this nonsense.

2 Ways To Weave More Spanish Around You

So long as you desire to build more Spanish around you, there is no dearth of means of doing so. We have discussed several excellent methods of creating a highly immersive environment right where you live without spending a fortune. Today, we will discuss two more ways that can, well, intensify our Spanish immersion endeavors and take us to a whole new level of absorption. In line with our principles of austerity and engagement, these can be implemented for free and can potentially engage you for hours at a stretch, thus injecting more Spanish into you. As said before, Spanish must invade every aspect of your lifestyle.

Whackiest Ways Of Building Spanish Around You

An insane amount of Spanish language input is warranted for any sustainable level of fluency and an insane amount of input calls for insane methods. If your imagination is wild enough, you will see there are more ways of building Spanish around you in your home country than an ignorant expat living in Spain or Mexico could enjoy. This article is all about exploring some of the whackier and unconventional immersion methods. These practices will change your lifestyle in some of the most radical ways but they come with a promise of native-like fluency in the most organic way. The good news is, they are all easy to implement!

Use Twitter, Learn Better

An insane amount of input in Spanish is your ticket to fluency and one of the simplest ways of going into an immersion overdrive is right under your nose: The social network! You heard that right. Total immersion means just that. Total. Absolute. What a waste, in that case, to still be using services like Twitter® and Facebook® in English when they are all available in Spanish without any compromise whatsoever in functionality! If your goal is to eventually speak the Spanish language like you were born with it, spare nothing. Not even your social life. Spanish must invade every aspect of your lifestyle no matter what.

Spanish Everyday, Spanish Everywhere

Welcome to yet another post on Spanish language immersion. Your visit here indicate that you are a lazy yet serious learner of this beautiful language and I am hoping you are making reasonable progress in your endeavor. Uncanny as it sounds, being able to communicate in Spanish as comfortably as native speakers doesn’t have to be as frustratingly difficult as them academicians would have us believe. I have always advocated total immersion as the only route to the Holy Grail of native-level proficiency. The benefits of immersion are applicable to Spanish as much as they do to any other language including our native tongue.

Spanish Acquisition Through Total Immersion - II

Many Spanish learners, who can afford it, often travel to a Spanish-speaking country seeking the ultimate immersion experience and quick fluency. To be honest, I second this philosophy because being surrounded by only Spanish-speakers for an extended span of time is really a hell of an immersion strategy. There is, however, just one small drawback with this technique. The depth of immersion that comes with living in a Spanish-speaking society is not really such a great idea for absolute rookies. Expect swift demotivation if you start living in a Hispanic society with absolutely no knowledge of the language whatsoever.

Spanish Acquisition Through Total Immersion - I

As is the case with any foreign language, the key to native-level Spanish is simple: Absolute immersion. Immerse yourself as deeply as possible. Build Spanish around you. Bit by bit. Word by word. Phrase by phrase. Until Spanish becomes a second nature to you; until you start thinking in Spanish. When I was new to this idea, I didn’t take it much seriously as it seemed way too easier said than done. But after a few months of experimenting with various techniques of Spanish language immersion, the results were far from disappointing! Read on and I bet learning Spanish will never seem a dead-beat exercise to you anymore.

Stop Learning, Start Acquiring

Learning Spanish is easy. We would all have a common answer if asked how we learned our native language and that would almost unanimously be, “Just like that!” Nobody is born with skills of any kind, let alone linguistic abilities. And yet by the time we turn four, we are more than reasonably fluent in at least one language, our native tongue. All this at a time when we were yet to face the grammar-boogie at school! How come? The key is, we didn’t learn our mother tongue – we just absorbed it. We acquired it organically, gradually, steadily, in fits and starts. And we can acquire some easy Spanish in the same fashion!