These three tips to learn Spanish, if you apply them, could tremendously improve your performance and learning in your Spanish classes with your teacher.
How many times have you heard me emphasise that learning Spanish is like a workout for your brain?
Probably quite a few.
Now picture yourself heading to the gym for your weekly Zumba, spinning or African dance class. They are classes with a lot of physical activity, right?
So, what is the first thing you do when you arrive?
You warm up your body of course.
It is essential to prepare your muscles with some gentle exercises before diving into intense physical activity.
Well, the same thing applies with your brain before one of our Spanish classes.
At the beginning of our classes, we usually chat a little to say hello, to see how the week is going, discuss what the weather is like in Scotland 🌧️, in Spain ☀️, etc.
And then we proceed to start with our class.
That brief conversation is great to get into the classroom environment, but… It’s not enough warm-up for your brain.
Here’s my tip for you today: warm up your brain before our class.
Right before our class, try the following routine:
In total, this would be 8 minutes of warm-up.
Use your phone’s alarm if you need to keep track of time.
Now, your brain is primed and ready to start with our class.
Our individual sessions generally last 55 minutes + 8 minutes warm-up = 63 minutes.
It’s not that long, right?
If you do this small activity, you will enhance and improve the performance of your Spanish class.
So remember the first of the tips to learn Spanish today: warm up your brain before class.
Do you enjoy cycling? Are you fond of writing stories or poems? Do you like hiking in the countryside or mountains? Are you interested in gardening? Do you play tennis? Do you go swimming in the sea every week?
For me, I prefer to go hiking.
I love walking in the countryside and the mountains.
And for this, I keep a good pair of hiking boots.
They are my tools.
Well, when you study Spanish, what you do is learn new words in another language and how to use them correctly.
What tool do you usually use at home for your language-speaking activities in Spanish?
A translator.
The most used online translator is Google Translator.
This tool has improved a lot in the last 5 or 4 years.
But that is not the one I am going to recommend to you today.
My favourite online translator, since 2016 when I started learning English seriously and, now, as a Spanish teacher, is Linguee 👈
Why do I recommend this online translator?
Because it shows the context in which the words are used.
That is very essential.
It offers you several translations for a word, with very slight or subtle variations, but which can change the meaning of that word, depending on the context in which we use it.
If you type the verb “dar” in Linguee and translate it into English, you will get 17 different options.
17 possible meanings!!
Each one of them is suitable for a different context. Therefore, with a different meaning.
So remember the second of my tips to learn Spanish and use good tools to learn Spanish.
One of the questions I ask in the free trial class is:
Why do you want to learn Spanish?
The most common answer is: because I want to speak with native Spanish speakers.
Afterwards, each student elaborates this sentence a little more: I live in Madrid and I need to speak Spanish for my daily interactions, I go on vacation to Alicante, Malaga, Seville, Cuba, Mexico… I operate a small business in Spain and many of my clients are native speakers…
There are many reasons.
But the answer remains the same: because I want to speak with native Spanish speakers.
Well, speaking is nothing more than putting words together to convey a message.
Some students do not know any Spanish however, after just 5 or 6 individual classes, they can construct and speak a sentence.
And here’s a real example that happened in one of my classes. We were practising character adjectives. Specifically, the adjective “inteligente”.
I showed a photo of Elon Musk and this was the conversation in class with my student:
Gloria: “¿Crees que Elon Musk es inteligente?”
Estudiante: “Sí”
Gloria: “¿Por qué?”
Estudiante: “Porque hace coches buenos.”
Four words! ENOUGH 😊👍
Whether you are a beginner who knows a few words in Spanish, or if you are a more advanced student, who has more resources, this is the third of my tips to learn Spanish today: put words together and start speaking in Spanish.
Spanish teachers reflect a lot after our classes with our students, on what went well in class, on what can be improved, on how to help each of our students more…
From these reflections, we get ideas like these tips to learn Spanish from today’s article.
If you want to learn Spanish in a well-structured way, with the guidance of an accredited native teacher, and practising key skills such as conversation, you can take a look at our Spanish class catalogue or you can take a look at our Membership Programme.
Book your trial class with us today and meet your teacher!
