Steps to Learning Spanish

[livingdeb]

I need three steps to learn Spanish.

1. Understand it - Read the book; go to class; ask questions; do the lessons; look up meanings of words, parts of words, parts of phrases; find additional explanations for grammar points. I am great at this.

2. Get it in my head - Make flashcards and go over them repeatedly. Just because I understand it doesn't mean I remember it. I can understand it perfectly, explain it perfectly, practice it, and still have it completely disappear out of my life. It's a gift. (Why no, I'm not good at trivia!)

Basically, if it's not on a flashcard, it's not in my head. But if it is on a flashcard, then even if it doesn't really make sense and I have to just memorize it, usually I can.

I have been keeping up with this step but it is not as fun as step 1.

3. Make it a part of me - No telling. Just because I can get it in my head doesn't mean it's going to stay in there. I tried my flashcards from chapter one today and it seems like for half of them I had forgotten the answer, I had forgotten part of the answer, or it took me way too long to remember the answer. This is stuff I knew perfectly two weeks ago.

After a while, reading and watching TV and movies in Spanish should help things stick, but right now I can't really do those things. Although Robin was watching a bunch of videos on how to make Spanish tortillas, most of them in Spanish, and I could actually understand several phrases here and there.

Meanwhile, I'll settle for practicing daily. And going over flashcards from old chapters weekly.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Personally, I suck at rote memorization - it just never seems to stick for me. I generally need some sort of context or else it just disappears from my little brain. Either that, or it has to get drilled REALLY deep in there!

When I was first learning Spanish we used to have to memorize little skits or "dialogues". Good lord... I can still remember the first part of the first one I learned "Mamá, mamá! Emilio y Enrique van a nadar. ¿Puedo ir con ellos?" But of course, after a while that just becomes rote memorization too.

My best advice is to try to use it as much as possible - even just tossing Spanish words into English sentences to get some vocabulary under your belt can be helpful. Good luck with it!

:-)
Cat

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Those dialogues sound boring!

Yes, ideally having friends in the class gives me someone to try your advice with. Though we don't have too much to work with yet. (Sadly, I rarely see my old Spanish-speaking friends at work and there aren't any in my new job, though there are two French speakers.)

[(Anonymous)]

I was really only able to "get" conversational Spanish after a month of speaking nothing but Spanish. After I came back I could totally eavesdrop on random people and watch telenovelas.

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Cool.

A friend of mine from college said she could totally understand Spanish after her four semesters of Spanish, so I'm still hoping that a month of immersion won't be necessary. I actually got pretty close one time when I was trying to learn with a different person but wasn't taking the class. One of his strategies was to try to use Spanish as much as possible when talking to himself, you know, like when you are planning your day while walking across campus, etc.