We all desire to travel. It’s really rare to find someone who wants to stay in the same place without even visiting other places. I’m the kind of person that thinks we were not made to stay in one place. And I know that if you’re learning Spanish, it will be a very good idea for you to travel. Maybe traveling is one of the reasons why you started studying Spanish. Well, I’ll tell you why it would be beneficial for your Spanish-learning process to visit a Spanish-speaking country.
Let’s go back in time again and we’ll talk about the same example that we’ve talked about in other post entries. It is a clear and proven method of how to learn a language.
I’m going to put it as if it were you. OK? You’re in the belly of your mom and you start listening to sounds you don’t even understand yet. However, these sounds are very repetitive. It’s always the same words “Hi baby”, “Hi there”, “I love you”, “Mommy loves you”, “Daddy loves you”, etc.
You don’t know what they are talking about. Months have passed and you finally come out of the belly of your mom. Your mom and dad keep saying the same things. You keep listening to it but now it’s more interesting. They start pointing to things when they talk to you. You start associating what they say with what they point to. They slow down when they talk so you can mimic what they are saying. It’s interesting!! You feel the natural need to communicate with them, so you try as hard as you can to repeat and actually mimic what they say. And as you keep growing you start to understand what you hear and you start to say it. That is speaking a language. Yes, now you know how to speak a language.
By traveling to a Spanish-speaking country and changing your mind-set.
Traveling to a Spanish speaking country?
Yes. Let’s say you go to Colombia. When you get there, you will experience a lot of changes, frustration and difficulties. But after all that, you will experience rewards and results. Let me explain. You will be in the same position as a newborn baby. You will not understand a lot of the things you hear. You will be listening to new things every day. If you go to the same restaurants and stores for a period of time, you will hear the same repetitive things. And eventually you will understand the pronunciation and the meaning of these words and phrases. If you do this and you keep studying and applying what we teach you here in SpanishToMind, your Spanish will improve in great manner, you will understand natives, and guess what? Understanding is an amazing improvement, apart from understanding, you will be able to listen to accents and you will accommodate with the one you like the most.
Changing your mind-set
What do I mean by that? Well, lots of English-speaking friends come to visit Medellin to learn how to speak Spanish. Guess how much they learn after a few weeks? Nothing. The reasons why they don’t learn very much is because they speak English all the time when they are here, and they focus more on traveling and fun than actually improving their Spanish. Don’t get me wrong I’m not telling you that traveling is just for learning or traveling should be boring. I’m just saying: It’s good to be balanced. That’s what we recommend. You can practice your Spanish while you’re traveling. Try not to hangout a lot with people that speak your mother tongue after you know the basics of the place that you choose to learn Spanish. Test yourself. If you travel there and apply what we have talked about, you will see important and very fast results in your Spanish.
Practice as much as you can
You’re in that country. Should you feel embarrassed of looking like a baby or maybe a maniac? No! You came all the way down here to explore, learn and practice new things. Try to talk in Spanish as much as you can. Go to a cafeteria. People would love to talk to you, especially Latin Americans. They love to speak, so you won’t look like a crazy person. They would listen to you, they would help you and correct you with pronunciation and most importantly, they would make you feel at home.
That’s all. We want you to enjoy your trips to Spanish-speaking countries and keep learning with SpanishToMind.
