English translation of Cómo aprender español, Episode 1 of SpanishPodcast.net (Google Translator Version)
The aim of our website is to give students the opportunity to learn Spanish in a practical and interesting way. It is difficult to learn to speak and understand a language using traditional courses or studying grammar for several reasons:
- The actual language, as it is used in day to day is not learned.
- Study alone grammar is boring and usually causes the student to lose interest and leave the studio.
- It is not a natural method, our brain is not ready to learn a language in this way.
- No help to speak fluently.
- The learning progress is very slow, which demoralizes students.
- What alternative is there to learn a language easily?
- In our opinion the best answer lies with children. How we learned to speak our native language ?.
Research confirms that babies begin to understand the language from 4 months of life.Four months continuously listening to a language! After four months, babies begin to understand if you are angry or happy, sad or happy, tired or full of energy. To understand if you are angry or happy, sad or happy, tired or full of energy, have had to be four months listening to the language daily.
Later, children begin to try to imitate the sounds they hear until they get to say their first words. From the sixth month of life, infants begin to try to speak in Spanish call these babbling sounds: gaga, ma, gugu, tata … The reason that the baby is trying to form increasingly complex sounds, is because parents motivate you. The baby knows that every time he makes a sound, her parents rewarded with a smile, answering or just paying attention. In traditional language courses, the opposite usually occurs courses only focus on errors, negative, causing frustration in students. Forget about it, babies learn and focus on your successes. Enjoy what you know, and learn more. A language must be a communication tool, not a form of punishment.
The first words of a baby usually: mom, dad, water. Generally similar to the babbling words that are easy to pronounce. From 12 months of age, babies learn many new words, although not yet formed sentences are very effective forms of communication. For example: “pupa” is a way of saying that is hurt, “and ta” is a way of saying you’re done (“already”). A feature of this stage is that the baby understands more than he can say. Many have been in this situation when we learn a language.
But it is from two years of age when language is triggered. From here the baby learns about a new word every day and starting to be able to form sentences. At this stage, it is advisable start reading fairy tales and stories, because it begins to understand much more. Three years is typically when children start reading. Realize this, spend almost three full years listening and learning to speak, before knowing the alphabet. Once they start talking more or less, start to learn the alphabet and to read his first letters. Then, by imitation begin writing their first letters too.
The learning process of traditional courses is very chaotic. They usually start by telling you a basic vocabulary and basic grammar rules. At this point you are required to read a new language without being accustomed to the new sounds. You also have to write it after the exams, without knowing exactly how are the sounds, that causes errors to accumulate and is difficult for the student progress.
The language, the ability to form sentences using different words and understand others continues to develop until about 18 years. Our brain continues to learn throughout childhood and adolescence.
We can mimic this process to learn a language that is not ours. Just have a little patience. No waiting eighteen (18) years to be able to speak and understand a language, because our ability to speak is already developed. All you have to do is get used to listening and imitating new sounds to be used.
There may be many more, but from our point of view, should follow seven important tips to learn to speak Spanish fluently.
Our first advice: LISTEN
We must listen carefully to the messages, phrases, words, sounds. Paying attention and listening many times, we get used to the new sounds, intonation and pronunciation.
Listening, that is how anyone who wants to learn a language should begin. The language they speak best is our mother tongue, did not we learned by listening? No one told us: “Son, this toy is for you to learn how to conjugate the subjunctive.”It would be absurd !. We learned to talk by listening to our parents, family and friends. And this is the only way to master Spanish or any other language: LISTEN.
Our second tip: REPEAT
The key to success in anything, including learning Spanish is to practice a lot. When you hear some Spanish, try it again. Listen again to the audio. No need to be away, you can do it later or the next day. But listen again. That will help your brain in the learning process.
Children just learning to speak many times they hear the same words, phrases or expressions. His first words are often mom or dad because they are some of the words most heard. Moreover, they are easy to pronounce.
Our third tip: MIMIC
At six months, babies begin to try to imitate the sounds we produce. Babies like to experiment with sounds that roll your tongue, lips move, move your mouth …
The muscles of our face, our mouth and our throat are used to perform only certain movements. Why? Because usually only practice a language. When studying a new language have to get used to the muscles in our mouth, tongue and throat to the new movements have to do. Cuesta some work, but it takes practice, practice and more practice. Some of the sounds that costs more play the Spanish are the letters R, J and Z, but with patience and some work, you can improve the pronunciation of these sounds.
Human beings have a very large things to learn by imitation ability. To imitate means to copy what makes another person, animal or thing. Copy exactly what you do or say. When we have HEARD and REPEATED often the same podcast, try to imitate it. We can pronounce the sentences, words or expressions hardest we’ve played. Thus, we can improve the pronunciation of the language.
Perfect, so far three basic rules: listen, repeat and imitate. What else do we need to study Spanish?
Our fourth tip: PROOF
Constancy means perseverance. We can define a simple word like “often perform actions to achieve a goal.”
Another fault committed when studying a language is not used properly study time. To study a language need not study for a long time, but often it takes study. For example, if we study on Tuesdays and Thursdays for four hours, we’ll be spending 8 hours a week to study. If we study an hour every day, we will be devoting seven hours to the study of language, but the improvement will be much higher, because the effort is continued.
Again you do not need to study for a long time, but the study is done every day if possible. Many people study a long time but a few days a week. Learning a language, and anything you get through daily practice.
What if I do not have time to study?
To study Spanish with our method you can use any of those times of the day when we can not do other things:
While you go to work
While going to school, college or university
Every time you travel
When you’re doing housework
…
Ultimately it aims to harness the “dead time”. Those moments are great to listen to a podcast for example. Just download the episode, save it to your smartphone or MP3 player and listen while you do other things. Once you’ve created the habit, whenever you will be easier to have consistency.
Our fifth tip: LEARN FROM A NATIVE
Play much the language you are learning is important. But it is also very important that you learn by listening to native speakers. Why? Because you will try to mimic the language from the original source. You get used to the sounds as the natives pronounce them, listen expressions using native and no better than they can advise on the use of language.
Our sixth tip: Do not translate
When you learn a language you tend to try to translate everything. This is a learned mistake, since in many language courses do try to memorize vocabulary lists. For example: dog – dog, cat – cat building – building … Eventually the brain gets used to make these associations and just learning how to do a literal word for word translation. To understand anything, you need to study the context in which it is. If this were not so, the translator of Google has already solved all the problems of languages in the world.
To learn a language, the better, more powerful, more useful and much easier to learn to understand sentences. No need to go analyzing every word, focus on the message conveyed by the sentences. When you get used to it you will realize that it is not necessary to know all the vocabulary to understand what someone is saying. You’ll also notice that it is not necessary to study vocabulary, you will learn the meaning of many words through the context of the sentence where they are.
And our seventh tip: FUN
To learn a language is important that we study is the content interesting content. Many students leave the study of a language because they find it heavy or dull. Studying much grammar, vocabulary lists or verb conjugation you will get tired and find it boring. The worst is that as our brain is not ready to memorize information that way, you’ll end up forgetting most.
Try learning to use a material that is entertaining. All people learn much faster and more effectively when they do something they like. So when checking better understand people who speak Spanish and gradually have more fluency, you you will encourage you to keep learning.Speaking other languages is fun! If you have the ability to have a conversation with a native at some point, you will have less fear.
Spanish speakers are as a rule friendly, very sociable and expressive people. This is evident in the language.
In summary:
- Listen
- Repeat
- Imitate
- Constancia
- Learn from a native
- Do not translate
- Have fun
Feel free to make your comments in this blog or on our Facebook or Google+. We would love to know what your opinion to improve and to offer interesting content.
A greeting and thank you very much to all.