Learning Spanish the Right Way

In The United States, with the exception of English, our official language, there is no language so widely spoken as Spanish. Due to our geographical isolation, few other languages have taken hold sufficiently to offer much opportunity for use here within the U.S. borders. I speak some Portuguese besides Spanish, but I rarely have occasion to use that language, and this is typical for many other languages as well. You could choose to try to learn French or perhaps German, but how often would you find occasion to make use of these unless you are planning a trip to Europe sometime soon? Consequently, your experiences in your language classroom would likely be the extent of your usage of all that knowledge that cost you so dearly to assimilate. So, if you are going to put out the effort, why not pick the one that you will actually have the most opportunity to use? And I assume that you no doubt agree, or you wouldn't have found this article to be of sufficient interest to invest your time in reading it.

Since you have determined that learning Spanish is of interest to you, lets have a look at what the Spanish teachers aren't likely to tell you - how you really go about learning Spanish successfully! And what, you ask, makes me so eminently qualified to determine what is needed to be successful in learning Spanish? Well, for starters, I have had to learn it myself, and did it "the hard way", just as you will need to do... from scratch, as an adult learner - and I did it successfully, much more so than most of my fellow English-speaking U.S. citizen counterparts who study Spanish. I actually get mistaken for a native speaker much of the time. On one occasion, I had to briefly interrupt a conversation in Spanish with a Hispanic fellow I had just met, to discuss an issue with an English speaking associate who had tracked me down. Upon resumption of the conversation in Spanish with my new acquaintance, he commented (translation, of course...), "Wow! I can hardly believe it!!! ...your English is almost perfect!!!"

It isn't that I am really that exceptionally talented, but rather I have benefited from understanding that there are certain mind-sets that will kill your ability to learn Spanish, and others that will boost your success, and I have been able to leverage my awareness of that fact into a greater level of Spanish competency. So, lets talk about these mindsets and how they can make or break your learning of Spanish and other languages (you aren't likely to get this stuff in the high school or college classroom in most cases).

The "Obstacle Course"

We all know that when we originally learn what becomes our native tongue, it doesn't happen in a classroom nor through structured assignments that we are expected to grind out and turn in the next day to the instructor. So, what really does work if you are more interested in function and true learning than in "academia"?

To begin with, you must understand what some of the primary obstacles to your learning are. The one that comes readily to mind, of course, is that your brain and your tongue are already trained and wired, through long years of habit to do English. The patterns of grammar and pronunciation associated with the English that you have learned conflict with those of the Spanish language, and it is a tedious process to burn new neuronal paths in your brain and train your tongue muscles to do new and unfamiliar things. However, there are other less obvious obstacles that can roadblock your progress in learning Spanish.

First of all, consider the psychological effect of looking at this as a "foreign" language. You could learn several new words today in English and think nothing of it, but as soon as you are aware that it is Spanish you say, "oh... this is foreign", and you subconsciously decide that it equates to something difficult, if not impossible. A new word in Spanish is in reality no more difficult to learn than one in English, but subconsciously you sense or believe that it will be, and you let that subconscious subliminal message color your attitude towards your learning in ways that tend to sabotage any possible success. Since it is "foreign" and therefore difficult, you of course can't be expected to seriously be successful in learning it, right? So when it comes time to put in all the work and effort necessary to train yourself into learning all that Spanish pronunciation and grammar, subconsciously your mind is telling you, "why even bother? This isn't going to work, so give yourself a break - go watch that TV program instead... the result will turn out the same."

With the subconscious mind giving help like that, it is no wonder most people experience very little success in learning Spanish (or any other new language, for that matter). So, first of all, you need to make a conscious effort to combat the attitude that this is something foreign and not really feasible to do. Remember that people in places like Europe often grow up learning 3 or 4 languages, and we are not inherently inferior to them - we all have the ability to learn other languages, if we are willing to stick with it through the necessary steps.

Another factor is simply embarrassment. We have all heard people from other countries try to speak to us in English, and may even have been impatient with them when they struggled to pronounce things in an intelligible manner or put together sentences that are grammatically understandable in English - so when it comes time to try to speak some Spanish we are embarrassed and fear that we will sound really stupid trying to pronounce the unfamiliar words and put together unfamiliar speech patterns from the Spanish language. This makes us hold back and be unwilling to venture to use and practice the little bit that we do know, and of course you are all familiar with the old saying that says, "use it or lose it"! Unless you are willing to push the embarrassment aside and open your mouth and speak to the degree that you are able, you condemn yourself to not retain that which you are struggling to learn, and which could otherwise form a good foundation for your new language abilities. Without that practice, this new stuff will never really get burned into your neurons, so if you don't force yourself to make use of what you are learning by going out of your way to practice it on the Spanish speakers around you, then you are DEAD (linguistically speaking, of course!). You need to use your Spanish shamelessly on Spanish speakers around you if you seriously want to progress and become competent. Don't be selfconscious about the imperfections in your pronunciation, nor about the mistakes you will surely make - nobody is born speaking any language perfectly. To not be willing to make mistakes simply translates to not being willing to speak. Those mistakes will be corrected and weeded out over time. It is the process that everyone has to go through - there is no side-stepping it.

The next stumbling block is that of impatience. People seem to have naïve expectations of being able to communicate freely in a new language two weeks after starting a class in it. Don't kid yourself. It takes some time to get to that point. But it can be likened to a jigsaw puzzle. When you first dump out the pieces of the puzzle onto a table and look at all those apparently unintelligible pieces, initially nothing makes any sense. Nothing seems to relate to anything else and it is hard to figure out which pieces actually go together. But in the process of that initial struggle, as you begin to get the first pieces in place, the more pieces you successfully put together, the more easily you see where the rest of them fit into the picture, so your progress begins to accelerate, and before long, rather than experiencing utter confusion as at the beginning, as you manage to fit a modest number of pieces into the rudimentary "frame of reference" you are begining to develop, the more pieces you get into place, the more quickly you begin to perceive where the remaining pieces fit, and you struggle a lot less with the process.

The learning of a language such as Spanish follows this same pattern. In the beginning, nothing seems to make much sense - you can't see how all those unfamiliar pieces or words go together. But if you don't get frustrated and bail out during that initial struggle to get the first rudimentary words in place, before long you begin to develop a frame of reference for it - you begin to find that all those new Spanish words and grammar begin to fit and relate to each other in a more intelligible way. When this happens, the pace of your learning picks up and begins to accelerate at an exponential or continually increasing rate. Not only does the pace of your learning increase, but it actually becomes easier for you as well. That is the "cool" part - that it really isn't that hard at all. You just have to survive that initial difficult phase during which you simply don't have a frame of reference to put all those new Spanish words and grammar into. However, once you get a modest amount in place, your learning begins to take off, and becomes easier as you progress.

The lone holdout in this process is the pronunciation. That comes with just making your tongue go through the effort of speaking those new words on a regular basis. Don't have heart failure about not having perfect pronunciation in the beginning. On the other hand, don't just write it off either - make a consistent effort to pronounce the words the best you are able. Pay careful attention to how native speakers pronounce things and do your best to imitate them. In time your tongue and your brain will figure it out and burn the necessary new neuron paths to allow you to do it pretty well - it just isn't going to come to perfection overnight. But as you are able to distinguish how things are said correctly and begin to be able to duplicate the correct sounds, take pride in saying it right rather than just being content with making yourself understood after a fashion. You will begin to get compliments on your good pronumciation - when a "gringo" manages to do it right, it gets you noticed by the native speakers. That's cause it isn't very common. Most Spanish learners are content to just be understood.

Where the Academic World Goes Astray
The next big issue with learning Spanish (or any other language) is what we might call "quality versus quantity". Here is where I really seriously depart, personally, from the system of language learning normally practiced in high schools and colleges - in other words, the system that is typical in our formal academic education system.

The problem is that they want to establish a curriculum in which you segment what is to be learned into large chunks and then expect that everyone is going to successfully "wolf down" enough Spanish to choke a horse all in one sitting. Language learning just doesn't work well that way. If you care about retaining and actually assimilating the Spanish that you are trying to learn then retaining and assimilating the new material has to trump quantity or volume. What good does it do you to cover a chapter every day if in 3 months you can't remember or understand 50% of the Spanish that you supposedly covered? It is more beneficial to cover it in smaller, better-planned chunks, but assimilate them completely - to the point where you don't even have to stop and think about it any more - and take it out and practice it in real-life situations, rather than taking the high-volume, classroom approach.

With the standard school-type high volume approach, which has you plowing through chapters regardless of the fact that your assimilation of the material has been at best rudimentary and superficial, great frustration results. Since we all sense when we are not really retaining information being studied, you become exasperated and quickly begin to feel that you are "spinning your wheels", and are likely to give up. On the other hand, if you bite off smaller amounts and take the time to truly "digest" it, and to practice it until you are actually comfortable with the use of the new Spanish words and grammar you are learning, a surprising thing happens - you actually begin to retain what you are learning! They have a saying in Spanish that applies very nicely - "El que mucho abarca, poco aprieta" ...which means more or less that if you try to get your hand around something too large, you can't squeeze very hard. It's similar to our saying about not biting off more than you can chew, or the old saying about how to eat an elephant - the answer being "one bite at a time". With Spanish, as in the elephant example, you just have to make sure that you chew it up good and swallow it before you go trying to bite off another chunk.

Some Concrete assignments to get you started toward success
Ok - so we have a major list of what doesn't work. What we need to know is what things will actually help a person to learn Spanish well. I recommend that you start by selecting a few samples of Spanish verbs and look up the complete conjugations of them in all their different "tenses" (past, present, future, etc.). Spanish verbs fall into basically 3 categories. There are those that end in "ar", those that end in "er", and those that end in "ir". You should initially select at least one verb from each of these categories, then write down the complete conjugation of all tenses of each (preferably on something like a 3 X 5 index card) and carry it around with you. Your task will be to commit the complete conjugation list for each sample verb to memory (not as bad as it sounds if you are only talking about 3 of them - one from each of the 3 verb-groups).

So, why do this? Because first of all, since Spanish is a language which is considered extremely "regular" (exceptions to the rules of how you do/say things are relatively few) you can memorize these three representative verbs and their conjugations, and permanently commit them to memory, and now you have a pattern that you can plug almost all the other ones you will learn into. The problem is, if you use the standard school approach, you will likely try to learn 20 or 30 verbs and end up not retaining many or any of them, and not really understand or retain the patterns you could have permanently assimilated if you had concentrated on just 3 or so rather than try to eat half the elephant in one sitting by trying to do 20 or 30 along with a handful of exceptions to standard patterns. Work on 3 representative ones to start with and commit them completely to memory as a starting point - you need to know them "forwards and backwards", to the degree that you no longer even have to stop to think which one applies in a given case - it needs to come out automatically. Then a couple of things will begin to happen. As you listen to Spanish speakers or read some Spanish, you will start recognizing those words in actual use, and additionally, you can then begin to add a few other verbs and other words, slowly at first. You will find that the patterns will make sense to you. You will have a new "frame of reference" to plug those new ones into, and consequently, they will make more sense to you and you will begin to retain them better and more easily. As your frame of reference grows, you can begin to get more ambitious and accelerate your pace because the new Spanish you are picking up actually has that frame of reference to fit into at this point, and the new material more readily makes sense to you. Just be sure to carry around your 3 X 5 cards with you to work from and jog your memory, and when at some point you need to say something but don't know how to express it, make a note in English of what you didn't know how to say. Later you can check it out using a dictionary, or better yet with a Spanish-speaking friend. However, make sure you rely on people who speak Spanish correctly. There are many native speakers around who were born here in the U.S. and have never been educated in their own native language, and generally they don't make a good resource for checking out how to say things correctly, though they could be good resources for "street slang". If possible, find native-speakers that were raised and educated outside the U.S. to use for checking correct speech.

The final point I will make is also a critical one. Practically nobody is willing to go through the effort required to become proficient in another language unless they have some really strong incentive or motivation for doing so. In high school, I took a couple of years of Spanish, and at the beginning I thought it was fun, but as they started handing out homework more regularly and increased the level of actual work required of me, my interest fizzled and my grades began to drop, one level each quarter from that point on. It wasn't until I was sent as a missionary to South America some years later that I finally found the incentive to make the effort to truly learn Spanish. For some people it happens when they meet a native Spanish speaker they are really attracted to that speaks very little English (a boyfriend or girlfriend, or the desire to win one over is frequently the root of someone's incentive to learn Spanish). Other motivations could be job related, or possibly an interest in travel. If you don't have some reason that is strong enough to truly motivate you and build a fire under you, it will be a much tougher challenge to find the determination to stick with it long enough to learn Spanish well, so I recommend working on your motivation/reasons for doing so, and finding some reason that really seriously matters to you - something that your learning of Spanish will open up to you.

If you once learn Spanish, or any other language, you will find that it is a whole new world. All the things that you enjoy in your native English, such as reading, music, poetry, news, - you name it - will be increased. You will find these essentially duplicated in y our new "Spanish world" or other language, so you will "double your pleasure" as the expression goes. If Spanish is your "bag", their music is especially enjoyable, particularly once you actually understand what it is saying. It is very poetic and you will find it will quickly become a favorite with you. If you are curious to check out some of their music, take a look at the links to some popular songs that I will include at the end of this article. You may enjoy them regardless of whether you intend to learn Spanish.

What to Do and What Not to Do - A Summary

Ok - to sum it all up, here are the points to bear in mind:

The Undesirable:

1. Looking at it as "foreign" and therefore too difficult to be mastered.

2. Being too embarrassed to speak, thus not retaining what you are trying to learn.

3. Becoming prematurely frustrated while initially trying to establish a rudimentary frame of reference.

4. Trying to cover too much new material in too short a time, consequently not assimilating and retaining it well.

The Desirable:

1. Realize that you are no less capable than others to learn a language, and that a new word is a new word - it doesn't matter that it is Spanish or foreign, it is just new.

2. Go out of your way to find people to use your Spanish on - make a native- speaking friend or two if possible, and use your Spanish on them shamelessly.

3. Hang on through the initial struggles required to build an initial frame of reference for all that new stuff to fit into, rather than giving in to the impulse to just bail out and avoid the effort.

4. Pick a handful of verbs from the 3 verb groups - 3 would be enough - and write down on 3 X 5 note cards the complete conjugations of each, and carry them around with you. Memorize them to the point that the appropriate form of the verb comes out without even having to think about it.

5. Be sure not to try to swallow too much material at a time. Instead bite off much smaller chunks but totally commit them to memory and practice them on Spanish speakers around you.

6. Try to focus on an interest that you have or incentive that will give you a reason to care whether you learn it successfully.

7. Try listening to some Spanish music. It is even possible to find the lyrics written out so that as you listen to them sing, you can see and read what they are saying, which will help you to practice the ability to distinguish words even when you aren't around any native speakers, aside from the enjoyment you will get from the music itself.

...so, get serious about your Spanish!!! If you run across me, we can have an interesting conversation while all our fellow pale-faced citizens stare at us and wonder if we are illegals or not - which is an experience I actually have from time to time!!! (It's rather educational to see how it feels to be in someone else's shoes).

Some Spanish music references for your help and enjoyment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2R_sRzPNOA Song called "Rosas" (Roses) by a group from Spain called "Oreja de Van Gogh" (Van Gogh's Ear)

The words: http://tinyurl.com/hcz63

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDUCxvIwloo Song called "Ahora que no estas" (Now that you're not here), by a group called "OSE"

The words: http://www.dapslyrics.com/display.php?sid=17415

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nej_D0-gK94 Song called "Candela" by a singer called "Chayanne" (pronounced like we would say "Cheyenne")

The words: http://www.bsasinsomnio.com.ar/cancion-892.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf9lP0v-US4 Song called "A Dios le pido" by a singer who goes by the artistic name of "Juanes"

The words: http://www.lyrics4all.net/j/juanes/u/adios-le-pido.php