Are you planning your next vacation to south America? Do you have a business meeting soon with a Hispanic company? Do you need to speak Spanish to get a promotion at your job? You have come just to the right place at the right time because today, we want to share a secret with you that will get you speaking Spanish right away and you will get fluency in no time.
I want to be honest, the former paragraph of this post is a false promise. I am not going to give you any tip or material to speak Spanish right now or to achieve fluency in a couple of weeks. I apologize for creating fake expectations, but if you’ve been looking for a place to learn Spanish, the first paragraph should have sounded familiar to you.
You probably have seen these kinds of promises before, instant results in the least amount of time possible: “speak Spanish today!”, “speak Spanish from the very first class”, “speak Spanish fluently in less than six months”, and most of the time these illusions come along with somebody giving a big testimony, saying how effective and real those promises are.
If you have crossed paths with these sorts of promises, I will be clear: Don’t believe them, and just runaway. Places that give you this kinds of expectations are not interested on your Spanish learning; all they care about is your money.In fact, many students end up dropping out after a while of falling into this trap and most of them never make it to the final class of the course.
They want to convince you to give them your money, and chances are that prices for Spanish courses in these places are not very cheap; I know this because I have worked for academies, and students come to my classes with a fake idea sold by somebody who doesn’t even speak a second language. Actually most of the owners of these businesses don’t know anything about how to learn or speak a different language than their mother tongue.
How long does it really take to learn Spanish?
Most of the time, these Spanish schools sell the same old story to everyone, they promise that the student will speak right away and that in a matter of months they will be fluent. There are even some schools that promise you that you will learn with a natural method, but when you get to the classroom, you find yourself dealing with the same old methods: grammar analysis, lists of verbs, using your memory more than your natural instinct to learn a language, etc.
“All they want is your money, so don’t believe them, don’t pay those high prices. Instead of that, commit yourself to your spanish learning and do it on your own.”
My personal advice for you is that if the school where you are learning Spanish is not using a natural method (using a natural approach like listening), leave and never go back. Take responsibility of your learning and start doing it on your own using the correct method.
Old methods are not efficient; they will make you feel frustrated and bored, basically this will only slow down your process of learning to speak Spanish. And if you are expecting me to give you an exact time of how long it takes to learn Spanish with a natural method, you’re getting false expectations too because you are the only one who can determine how long it’s going to take.
Let’s think for a minute about babies. How long does it take for them to learn to speak? It depends on many different factors like the time that parents spend stimulating the baby, talking to them or playing with them. It is very well known for everybody that if parents don’t spend time with their babies, these will be kids with many difficulties in the future.
It is just the same for you when it comes about learning Spanish, but this time you can’t rely on your parents, in fact, you can’t rely on nobody because no one will make you learn Spanish, this is only and exclusively your job.
The time that you spend listening to Spanish will be reflected in your progress. The more you listen the more you improve, I can tell you this because this is what happened to me when I was learning English.
It’s a matter of months or years, it’s all up to you, in the end you will speak Spanish!
Let’s go back to the example of the babies. Some of them take six months to start saying their first words, some other babies would take eight months, others take a year, others can even take longer! However, in the end, and unless they have some disability, they end up speaking perfectly.
This is not just for babies, but for adults too. The thing with adults is that they are desperate to get instant results and with today’s instant world is even more difficult to not be eager about quick results.
Most important thing to know before you to start learning like a baby, with the most powerful method to learn Spanish, is that you have to be patient because at first you will probably feel that you aren’t making any progress, but trust me, this is natural, this is what your brain is designed for when it comes to language learning.
Remember that babies have a silent period, when they do not say anything and nobody forces them to speak, they just say their first words whenever they feel ready.
Try to see yourself as a baby in this matter, focus on listening at first and then after a while, move on to some more practical things to learn Spanish; remember that your progress depends on you, so if you listen to Spanish for one hour every two days, you’re probably going to have a slow progress.
My personal advice for you is that you listen to Spanish every day, and several times during the day.
Develop a routine
When you join the gym, you do some routines so you can train and make your muscles stronger, you get a better body and better physical shape by working consistently in these routines. At first you won’t see any significant improvements, but it is constancy and time that will give you awesome results.
Learning to speak Spanish is definitely the same thing, when you begin to listen, you won’t understand everything at once, but over time it becomes easier; remember that babies have a silent period when no one forces them to speak, so you too should do the same thing, don’t force yourself, just relax, and speak when you feel ready, repeat what you listen when you feel ready.
Do little things to learn Spanish every day, try to set a routine during one or two weeks with a podcast or an audio file. Listen to easy things that you can understand, do this when you get ready to go work, when you drive, when you have lunch, when you go to the gym and before going to bed; do it with the same audio file and after a week or two change to a different podcast or audio file; Repetition is very important in order for you to learn Spanish.
I promise that if you do this, you will get better at listening Spanish and over time you will speak Spanish automatically.
On SpanishToMind, we really want you to succeed on your Spanish learning and that is why, we are working on great material that we will be posting pretty soon, keep on watching our posts because great things are coming for you, also let us know what you’re doing right now to learn Spanish, are you listening to some specific audio books or podcasts? Do you have a routine for your Spanish learning? If so, what is it?
Remember that learning Spanish is a natural process and because of this, you need to have in mind that every person is different, and just as some babies learn to speak quicker than others, you too can learn faster or slower depending on how much time you spend listening to Spanish, this is what babies do, this is what you did when you learned your first language and that is why it is 100% guaranteed.
