How Speaking 5 Minutes A Day Can Stop You From Sounding Ridiculous In Spanish
If you want to learn Spanish quickly because you feel ridiculous when you speak it, this article is for you.
Perhaps you have been studying the language for a while but you still don’t feel comfortable speaking it. Or maybe you think you sound ridiculous in Spanish and you’re starting to lose your motivation.
No need to despair. This is normal and can be fixed with just 5 minutes a day.
Keep reading to learn the easiest way to learn Spanish, as I’m going to give you five useful strategies to learn Spanish with just 5 minutes every day.
What’s the Easiest Way to Learn Spanish?
If you want to know the best and easiest way to learn Spanish quickly, online, and at home, the first thing you need to ask yourself is, “what are you willing to do?” or even better, “which language skill do you want to develop first?”
Because you can read a book in Spanish every night before going to bed and you’ll get a lot of vocabulary and become great at reading. Or you can also get yourself a Spanish grammar workbook, and develop your writing skills.
But, are reading and writing the skills you really want to start with? New Spanish learners usually want to learn the language to speak it. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a balanced approach to language learning that develops the four basic language skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. But, if what you want is to learn Spanish quickly, then focusing on speaking is the way to go.
Learn Spanish Quickly
The easiest way to learn Spanish quickly for free is to practice speaking for as little as 5 minutes per day. If you do that, I promise that you’ll stop sounding ridiculous in Spanish. It’s like everything else, “practice makes progress,” and almost perfect.
Do you want to speak Spanish?
Speak Spanish. Every day. For 5 minutes.
Ok, but how?
How To Learn Spanish in 5 Minutes
The easiest way to learn Spanish is to speak it for 5 minutes every day and you have a variety of options to do exactly that.
Here, I’m sharing my Top 5 Strategies to learn Spanish quickly with you.
1. Practice Your Pronunciation With an App
Language learning apps such as Duolingo or Brainscape are excellent tools to practice your pronunciation and learn Spanish fast. They usually come with pre-organized lessons that don’t take more than 5 minutes from your day, give you new vocabulary, show you how to pronounce it, and then challenge you to pronounce every new word yourself. Duolingo even goes as far as not letting you advance until you get the pronunciation right.
The good thing about apps is that they’re always available in your own pocket and I’m sure you can find 5 minutes every day that you can actually spare. The important part is to remember to take your phone out and start practicing. Some of these apps will send you reminders, just in case you tend to forget your speaking practice.
2. Record Yourself
This is one of my favorite exercises for my Spanish students. Get some Spanish text from any source you prefer, it can be a book, the vocabulary you learned from your app or workbook, or even the lyrics of a Shakira song. That’s up to you.
Then, read it in front of the camera, record your pronunciation, and listen to yourself afterward. I recommend you to choose 5 different texts and read a different one every day of the week from Monday to Friday (I’m giving you the weekend off!). When the following week arrives, start over reading the same text from the previous Monday, and repeat the process for the whole week.
Do that for 4 weeks in a row and you’ll end up with 4 versions of 5 different texts in Spanish by the end of the month. Now listen to them. Notice your progress. Focus on the details of your pronunciation and then you tell me if you still sound ridiculous in Spanish.
3. Get Your Spanish Word of the Day
I’m including this strategy because I find it a very creative way of helping you to learn a language. I would go as far as saying that this might be the easiest way to learn Spanish for free.
Think about it, you get to work or school, open your laptop, check your word list, and there you have a fast and easy way to get your Spanish going for the day. You can use options like forvo to get audio for the correct pronunciation of the word.
Then you can make up sentences where your new word is applied. The next day, you get a new word. By the end of the year, you have learned 365 new words and you have pronounced thousands of phrases in Spanish.
4. Read a Spanish Newspaper Aloud
Remember what I said before about how focusing on reading might not be your best way to learn Spanish quickly? Well, reading aloud changes that. That’s because yes, you’re reading, but crucially, you’re also speaking.
Find a Spanish news site you like and read-aloud for 5 minutes every day. I recommend the following sites, but there are plenty to choose from.
5. Call Your Native Spanish-speaking Friend
Ok, I know that you may don’t have a native Spanish-speaking friend, or that even if you had one, you wouldn’t be calling them every day to talk for 5 minutes. That would be weird, right?
But if you really want to learn Spanish quickly you have got to do whatever is necessary. You may have to look for a Spanish language partner, other people call them “Spanish parents,” but the point is the same. Find a native speaker with whom you can talk every day.
There’s no substitute for that.
If you want to learn how to play chess, for example, you go and play with those who know how to play it. Same thing with Spanish.
Do you want to speak Spanish? Go and speak with those who’ve been speaking it since they were toddlers.
You Can Learn Spanish Quickly!
Now you know it, the easiest way to learn Spanish is to speak 5 minutes a day and soon you’ll stop sounding ridiculous. Use one of the five strategies I just shared with you, or mix them up and make it even more interesting. The important part is to invest those 5 minutes in your Spanish speaking skills every day.
Those 5 minutes can change your life! According to The Economist, speaking a foreign language with fluency can add anywhere from $50,000 to $125,000 to your annual salary. Sign up for a free class to practice your Spanish in real-time with real teachers. Gain fluency faster by speaking with native, certified tutors from Guatemala—we offer flexible scheduling and tailored Spanish packages!
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