Ideas for learning Spanish

Here are some tips we have compiled -both from you and us- that will help you to improve your language skills, during and after the Spanish course. Ask your tutor for advice on how to best develop these ideas, specific to your case.

 

Speak Spanish

• Talk to Spanish native speakers.
• Sing in Spanish.

Listen to Spanish

• Watch Spanish speaking films first with English subtitles if you are a beginner and then, as you progress, use the Spanish subtitles. 
• Listen to songs in Spanish.

Read in Spanish

• Read newspapers and look for international words or cognados, that are words that are almost the same in Spanish and English. If you activate these words, you'll have an intermediate level of vocabulary inmediately, because there are 4000 of them.
• Read comics: they have illustrations to help you understand the meaning and the dialogues use everyday vocabulary.

Write in Spanish

• Draw a mind map of related vocabulary: if the topic is food, add sections for verbs, vegetables, fruits, ingredients, etc. Every time you revise, you can add some more and keep expanding it.
• When you learn a new piece of Spanish grammar or expression, write examples that are autobiographical, meaningful and relevant. This makes them motivating and communicative. It involves choice and emotion and is therefore a 'whole-brain activity'. It also makes revision and recycling easy.