The other day, my husband and I chatted with an American friend of ours who has lived in Mexico off and on since the early 1990s. She is more at home in Spanish than we are. I’ve enjoyed noticing how easily Linda speaks with Mexicans when I’ve been out and about with her.
She had taken a look at LearnSpanishRapidly.com, and she had some recommendations for people learning Spanish. Since she knows more Americans and other foreigners here in Mexico than I do, she has had more chance than I have to observe how foreigners here deal with the Spanish language.
“People assume that they will learn Spanish faster than they do,” she commented. “And then they get discouraged.” She added that remembering things takes more work when you are no longer so young.
“Reading, speaking, and writing all use different parts of the brain, and in learning Spanish it’s important to do all three,” she said. “I know people who started studying Spanish while they were still in the US, thinking that they wouldn’t bother with speaking Spanish till they got down here. Once they arrived, they found that they were not as far along as they had expected to be.”
Linda emphasized the importance of reading and writing for learning Spanish. She added, “Work above your level sometimes, really challenge yourself – you will be amazed at how much you can understand.”
“Work on your Spanish every day,” she advised. I concur, though I don’t always do it! I agreed with her on another idea, too: learn whole phrases. I do this a lot. Not only do you get more than one word at a time, the context helps it make more sense.
Her final point was that you should speak Spanish a lot, even if just to yourself. She said, “Linguists who study how people learn second languages say that a word or phrase isn’t really yours till you have USED it 80 times!! That backs up my belief that a learner must USE a word or phrase in speech, out loud, or it will never be his/hers. Why I learned in the US, alone, is that I spoke out loud after I heard the phrase on a tape.”
