Tips for being super awesome at Spanish
- Read the Spanish on labels. It can be a Ketchup bottle, cereal box, appliance container, or the back of the shampoo while you're in the shower. Look for cognates and challenge yourself to figure out what the labels mean--which can sometimes be easy when they have it in English to compare.
- Change all your social media accounts to Spanish. You've already memorized the buttons, now you'll learn some Spanish while you second-guess whether or not you want to click :)
- While you're studying, listen to Spanish music in the background. Your brain will subconsciously soak in the Spanish sounds and your accent (and maybe even vocab) will improve.
- Try singing Karaoke with Spanish pop songs. Look up lyric (letra) videos on youtube or follow along with TuneWiki on Spotify.
- Get into a Spanish soap opera! I recommend Al Fondo Hay Sitio, a Peruvian telecomedia. It's clean and family friendly, both dramatic and funny. Watch 1 part of a "capítulo" per day.
- Listen to Spanish music. Check out my Spanish playlist on spotify.
- Turn to the Spanish radio stations while driving. Try to repeat and imitate everything you hear.
- Find Spanish-speaking friends and neighbors. Practice telling them stories. Listen to theirs.
- Review quizlet sets from our class. Set a timer or reminder for a time when you're usually bored (waiting in the lunch line, at the end of 3rd period, etc.) and see how many you can get right. Compete with a friend.
- Pick a favorite book of yours that you know fairly well (e.g. Harry Potter). Check it out in Spanish. Read and see how much you understand. Only look up words every 5 pgs. if you find them repeated often and essential to understanding.
- (For advanced learners) Look up words in a Spanish dictionary like the rae instead of a Spanish-English dictionary. This will help you learn to think in Spanish.
- To learn to think in Spanish, instead of looking up words in a Spanish-English dictionary, look them up using twitter. Search the Spanish term you want to know the meaning of and look through a collection of tweets using those words. Try to figure out by context what it means. Whenever you figure something out on your own you remember it much better.
- Go to church? Lots of religious music has been translated into Spanish. Look up in Spanish the songs you know by heart in English. You can sing along to the Spanish lyrics because you already know the tune and you can probably even guess what it's saying.