How I Became Fluent In Spanish NOT In 30 Days

I tried everything so in Spanish and all of it was a waste of time except for five things the five keys that took me from zero to fluent in Spanish and I'm gonna share all five of them with you I've wanted to learn Spanish for as long as I can remember ever since moving to the US from Haiti and growing up in Black and Latino communities and I wanted to talk to people and make friends but I couldn't a lot of times because it felt like there was this invisible wall keeping me out well today I can finally say that I am a fluent Spanish speaker and it feels so good to say that I've gone from knowing zero Spanish to just a few months ago taking the Spanish C2 exam which is probably the hardest Spanish certification exam in the entire world and I've done interviews in the streets of Mexico and Argentina with natives in full Spanish so it almost feels as if I have a home in almost every continent and it's a really cool feeling and a dream come true but it wasn't easy and I wish I'd had someone when I first started learning Spanish to guide me and help me avoid wasting efforts and getting frustrated like I did I tried a lot failed and learned a ton about what works and what doesn't work to become fluent so I'll share it all with you to help you avoid making the same mistakes that I did our story starts out during my childhood near the house and at school my childhood was filled with sounds of English Creole and occasionally in the distance Spanish I already spoke Creole at the time as my native language from Haiti so I became deeply fascinated and enamored by the other two foreign sounds I was hearing around me at the time I had to learn them and I learned English naturally pretty fast since that's what I was surrounded by most and what I was being taught in ESL okay so I had Creole my native language and English my second language two down zero Spanish so my English kept getting better but I never found a moment to start learning Spanish so why am I telling you about this part because I did pick up one of the first and most valuable keys to learning Spanish I built a deep interest curiosity and Fascination in the Spanish language to my 12 year old eyes and ears if you spoke Spanish at the time you were the closest thing to a real life superhero learning Spanish can be a long and challenging process and many people give up because their desire to learn doesn't outweigh the struggles because you will struggle so the first thing to do is to really plant into your why why do you want to learn Spanish the why can be simple but it should be powerful enough to move and excite you maybe it's being Star Struck by the beautiful display of colors food dance and life during Dia de los Muertos in Mexico or maybe it's a Dominican girl next door who giggled at you when she saw you trying to dance bachata and now you want to learn all about her culture and throw yourself into the language and food to impress her it can be cheesy and simple like that but it should be powerful enough to make you obsess over the idea of being able to speak Spanish my why was pretty basic I wanted to make friends with the kids around me and get invited to the asado get the courage to finally talk to the girl down the street and not feel left out when trying to make friends so it was super simple but that's why I was seated long enough that I carried a powerful emotional weight to motivate me stage two school I got into middle school and the first thing we did was pick our classes for the year I picked up the list of available classes and my eyes like a hawk spotted the needle in the haystack of courses it read Spanish for beginner my heart instantly jumped with excitement at the idea of learning how to speak Spanish and then classes started and to my surprise I was not a fluent Spanish speaker after the first week we did likely what most grade school language classes do sing the alphabet song learn to say hola all of that is standard and helpful but I felt like I was moving at snail speed I felt like I would take two steps forward during the 30 minute class and then 1.9 steps back the rest of the day so my Spanish drag but there is one thing that stood out for middle school that I would recommend I stumbled on a site called studyspanish.com and this became the Holy Grail of learning basics for me the lessons made sense they broke down the grammar rules they gave quizzes to practice what you learned so I pretty much tossed the books they gave us in school aside and I focused on study Spanish so in the basics of Spanish grammar by the time I left middle school I wasn't able to say more than a few sentences at a time but I did snag key number two to learn Spanish I learned the basic Spanish grammar and language structures just enough to be able to start making simple sentences you can and do learn Spanish mostly by interacting and consuming content in Spanish but it's hard for your brain to know where to put all that information sometimes if you don't have the basics of grammar down you don't have to spend too long here just pick one grammar rule at a time and try to listen to it as you go about your day and consume Spanish content and then stack that until you learn most of the grammar patterns high school was much of the same a continuation of the standard School language education but two special things happened during High School in my senior year we had our first class that was conducted all in Spanish we had to speak and listen to Spanish for 30 minutes plus a day I was taking AP Spanish at the time which is meant to be fully taught and run in a language and boy this was a struggle I owe a lot to the folks out on the AP Spanish program but my brain would hurt for 30 minutes every day but this was the first time I experienced what being surrounded by Spanish actually felt like what you couldn't just memorize three phrases and then go back to English you had to keep drowning the language whether you could swim or not you were actually immersed the second special thing that happened was that I started watching shows in Spanish I brought my immersion home I remember watching a show called The physicianes extremas that was so overly dramatic they could watch and understand the full episode even if you didn't understand a single word that they said the Spanish wrecked me and I couldn't understand much but the fact that I could get the episodes just by watching the show made it interesting enough for me to sit through episode after episode without getting bored this was awesome to be able to continue my immersion at home and listen to what real Spanish sounded like versus classroom Spanish if I had to do this today I'd probably recommend easier content than the struggle I put myself through with the physionist now you have channels like the easy Spanish YouTube channel that give you the real life Spanish but also hand hold you through it more those videos should be a lot easier to watch and pick up from and actually understand some of the Spanish and then came University [Music] foreign [Music] school and University were very similar I would do my hour of Spanish class and then try to watch a show later in the day to refresh my Spanish during this school period I was doing a lot of listening and some writing so my listening skills went through the roof and my writing got okay but I still never spoke Spanish for more than five to ten phrases at a time in class at the time I didn't know about language exchange partners that you can find from places like tandem but this would have been perfect to practice with someone that I don't know over the phones I'm not embarrassed and in a language learning context they're expecting me not to have the language down but this was another mistake I made at the time College was when I found the second grammar tool I became a big fan of it was called the Manuel de gramatica by sulma egina the explanations were super clear and simple and this is probably one of my favorite tools to this day for grammar out of all the stuff that's out there I really think you can just keep it simple and use studyspanish.com Manuel de gramatica and one more tool that I'll share with you later in the video besides the Scrambler book another thing I started doing in University was listening to music in Spanish I saved all the really slow songs like agua de Palo and El Rey by Jose Alfredo Jimenez [Applause] and I made a playlist that I would listen to in my free time that's how I snag key number three consume lots of content in Spanish around your interests if you like cooking watch cooking shows in Spanish from Equatorial Guinea go see Encanto in Spanish if you like Disney films whatever it is make it easy to have Spanish fit into your life around your interests playlists shows the people you follow all of it stage three study abroad the fourth key I picked up right before I left University [Music] in one of my last semesters of college I went abroad to Seville Spain for a semester we had five months to be in the country so I set out on a quest I took a personal language pledge and said I wasn't going to speak write listen read or even think in English as long as I was in Sevilla this was really hard at first my brain had no way to escape Spanish and I loved it I struggled at first I sort of stopped talking to most people because I didn't have enough Spanish for back and forth conversations and I felt like my brain was empty almost all the time because I wouldn't let myself think in English and I didn't yet have the fluency to have a lot of coherent thoughts in Spanish soon I started talking to myself in Spanish both in my mind and sometimes literally talking to myself before I had enough confidence to speak to other people [Music] I would uh uh and Espana or uh bit by bit I started to understand more and more Spanish then I started to write and then I started to speak safe to say Google translate and SpanishDict became the two most used apps on my phone at the time while abroad some other things I did to improve my Spanish work I switched all my consumption to Spanish changed all my devices to Spanish phone laptop Google accounts you name it I built playlist of songs all in Spanish and I started to watch every show in Spanish on Netflix everything that was out there I then started journaling before bed in Spanish and the writing was a good habit to get into as for vocab and grammar I switched to watching SpongeBob Vicente on YouTube for advanced Spanish Concepts and lethal crisis also on YouTube for fast natural Spanish outside the teaching context more from things like short films lastly I discovered what I would say is the third grammar resource I'd actually recommend espanol avansado puntocom was the first site I discovered that had Niche language concept explained beautifully in a way that English speakers could really relate to and understand by the time I left Spain I was confident enough to listen read write and speak in Spanish I still made tons of mistakes all the time but I grew comfortable that I could understand Spanish have conversations and live all in Spanish even with those mistakes study abroad was a big leap forward for my Spanish so key number four of the five essential keys for me was Spanish Immersion in my case I spent five months in Spain but I don't think immersion means you have to go to another country it means a dedicated period of time where you try to live and think in Spanish as much as possible try to eliminate English or your language completely from your life four times I've done this back in the US through a mix of changing the content I listen to read and watch Finding language Partners to call and have conversations with and using virtual reality language experiences I really believe after learning the basics of Spanish going through a period of intensive Spanish where you try to live and think as much in Spanish as humanly possible really really accelerates your Spanish learning stage four solo studying back in the US allow last key number five is what I'm living through now back then I used to drive off Mason those cops not used to the faces we got they were running my plates and we stopped but I just left work I restarted ever since I've returned from Spain I make efforts to keep Spanish in my life daily and I try to advance by learning Spanish from different regions sometimes either in vocab slang and patterns unique to Mexican Spanish other times I'll do Argentinian Spanish and I have a lot more to go the resources I use most today are espanol avansado to learn complex and hard to find grammar rules I continue to watch shows and listen to music almost exclusively in Spanish I find language exchange Partners mostly through tandem to meet other language students that I can practice texting and calling in Spanish with and lastly I think the language exams they're called The Daily exams for Spanish are actually really useful at this stage to help you organize your studying give you something to strive to and improve your Spanish at that level otherwise it might feel like you're not fully done with Spanish but you're not sure what to learn or how to advance so for the Spanish C2 exam I did a bunch of writing a ton of 500 word short essays on space exploration economic development in Latin America deforestation and other topics that you probably don't get to practice in your everyday life talking to other people in all I'd summarize the last key number five as polish go deep on your specific interests in Spanish and consider taking a c-level Spanish daily exam and don't forget to use your Spanish to form relationships with other people because that's likely why you started learning in the first place so experience that's my Spanish learning experience and it's just one way to do it check out this video where we look at how AI like chat GPT can help you supercharge and practice your Spanish even if you don't have people around you see you there and Hasta la Proxima shoot I think these are the wrong keys

Channel: Jerry Registre

Views: 349,952

Keywords: how to learn spanish, language learning, learn spanish, learn spanish for beginners, learn spanish while you sleep, how to learn spanish quickly and fluently, learn to speak spanish, best way to learn spanish, spanish accent, spanish lessons, how to speak spanish, easy spanish, speaking spanish, how i learned spanish, language learning routine, get fluent in spanish, learn spanish fast

Id: YsH3B9qVShE

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 01 2023