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The Easy Way To Learn Spanish Fast

The Easy Way To Learn Spanish Fast

If you are looking for an easy way to learn Spanish, to get a basic conversational foundation fast, here are some tips to get you started.

When speaking, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. If you are afraid to open your mouth, you will never learn to speak Spanish. Think about little kids learning English and all the funny mispronunciations they come up with. But they don’t wait until they think they can say everything perfectly, they just go for it! I love to listen to foreigners speak English. They come up with some pretty charming ways of putting things that I find delightful. Just remember, the more mistakes you make, the more you are learning when starting beginners Spanish.

When you are feeling discouraged or unmotivated is the time you are likely to give up, so find something to keep you motivated. Would planning a trip to Mexico motivate you? If you can’t swing that, find a fellow student so you can practice together or encourage someone you know to learn with you. Then hold each other accountable. That can help you through the rough patches.

If you want to learn “speed Spanish”, find a course designed to teach you conversational Spanish with as few words as possible, a “Spanish for dummies” type of program. There is one popular online program that claims that by learning only 138 Spanish words, you will be conversational enough to get by in many situations.  There are other programs that claim to teach you Spanish in weeks or months, not years.

The best way to learn Spanish is the same way a child first learns to speak, by first listening and then repeating. Notice the emphasis is on the word “listen”. Don’t try to learn from books. You want to hear the language being spoken and repeat what you hear. Don’t get hung up learning a lot of grammar rules or memorizing long vocabulary lists either.  Most schools teach languages this way and it is all wrong. It not only is boring, but it doesn’t work.

Find either some online Spanish lessons or learn Spanish audio CDs or CD-ROMs that are interactive. Even if you spend only 15 – 20 minutes each day, you’ll soon have some basic conversational phrases under your belt. If you, like most of us, spend a fair amount of time commuting, you can learn Spanish rapidly while driving to and from work or doing errands.

If your goal is to master the language, obviously expect to put in more time and effort than this. But if you just want to learn some basic Spanish phrases so you can function when needed, these ideas should get you well on your way to learning “rapid Spanish”.