Culture  ·  Language

How to create a routine to improve your Spanish

Jun 03, 2021

When learning a second or third language it is important to take the time to create a study plan that fits in with our daily schedule. It is normal that during the first few months of study we feel that we are making great progress but after a certain amount of time we feel stagnant. To avoid this, we must pay special attention to the activities to which we dedicate the most time.

In this post we want to share with you some tactics that you can use to create your own routine and continue learning Spanish or another language more effectively.

Create a list of daily activities

First, we understand that learning another language may not be your top priority so we believe in the importance of creating a list of activities that you do on a daily basis. Then, you can divide them into two categories: important and not important, pay special attention and be honest with this first activity because detecting the activities that you can really eliminate to use that time for your studies can make a huge difference in your routine and regularity of practice. The minimum you should study is once or twice a week to keep improving and avoid your progress from stagnating completely.

Choose your activities carefully

The second thing to consider are the activities that you should do more regularly in order to keep making progress with your Spanish. We want to highlight the activities that are much more challenging and even a bit scary, these are also known as deliberate practice. These activities are characterized by being specially designed for language improvement (often by a teacher), they are repeated several times, they tend to be difficult and challenging but with them you get the best results. With these activities, you may well have to step out of your comfort zone and go through some uncomfortable moments but we assure you that every part of the process has its rewards, so don’t be discouraged!

Essential activities to improve your Spanish

Now, the third thing you should do is to pay special attention to the following activities that will help you to quickly improve your Spanish skills in the following order:

  1. Pronunciation: To improve your Spanish pronunciation skills, you need to have someone to practice with, whether it is a tutor, teacher or language exchange partner who is a native speaker. The important thing is to pay attention to the sounds and try to imitate them as closely as possible. Also, allow your teacher, tutor or partner to be strict with you and give you feedback on how to improve. One tip we can give you is to listen to rap songs. It may sound strange but rap songs are easier to understand at a slightly slower speed as they are more similar to everyday speech than songs.
  2. Vocabulary: In the case of vocabulary, remember that by having the help of a native Spanish speaker, you can ask the different ways of saying or expressing some things. In Spanish, as in most languages, there are terms that have more than one way to express them and you can take this time to focus on learning and using new words. Another way to practice new vocabulary is to use flashcards with words that are difficult for you and practice them by making sentences and looking up synonyms to understand them better.
  3. Listening comprehension: To improve your listening comprehension the best option is to have lessons with a native speaker. However, other alternatives you can use are to actively listen to recordings, TV series and podcasts that talk about topics of interest to you. Try then to write down some parts of the conversation that you have understood and then go back to them with the help of the audio transcript and verify what you have written. This way, your brain will be paying more attention to the sounds and their possible meanings.
  4. Verbs conjugation: When you are speaking with a native speaker an effective tactic is to tell stories to practice verb conjugation. Try to remember some funny stories about your childhood and create a timeline using your knowledge of past tense verbs. This way, you will be pushing yourself to remember the conjugations as you speak. Also, you can use flashcards to keep practicing and remembering the conjugations as you progress in your studies.

We know that finding the perfect study routine does not exist, so we hope these tactics will be helpful in creating the routine that best fits your current schedule. Once you have created a regular rhythm of practice you just need to increase the quality of your practice through the elements of deliberate practice and over time see an improvement in your Spanish skills.