4 Sentidos

Escuchar - Hablar - Leer - Escribir

ESCUCHAR - Listen every day and everywhere.

If you’re in a Spanish-speaking country or area, eavesdrop in coffee shops and on the streets. Listen to songs on YouTube that play the lyrics with the song. Repeat short segments until you understand them rather than long podcasts or movies. Listening with meaning and relevance is where language starts.

A wonderful fun way to make progress in Spanish comes from The Spanish Experiment which offers familiar children's stories in a way that follows the principles of learning.

The story is broken down into short segments and here's a process to help build your listening skills:

• Listen to one Spanish segment at a time once or twice, following along with the words, just enjoying the story.
• Note all the unfamiliar words but don't let them stop you.

• Read the segment out loud.  
• Review the vocabulary cards below then listen to the story again. If there are still words you don’t understand, make note of them for later. Try not to use the translation button unless you are completely stuck.
• Read it out loud again and pay attention to your pronunciation. If you’re having trouble with a word, go to forvo.com and practice it until it’s fluid.

This may seem like a slow process but it is building your listening, speaking and reading skills, creating new memory traces that will eventually turn into fluency.

Says Steve Kaufman

Pollito Tito

Two of my favorite stories to start with are:

Pollito Tito ... a contemporary version of "The Sky is Falling," with some really fun rhyming and vocabulary. Good for beginners to intermediates.

Caperucita Roja ... this no-nightmares version of Little Red Ridinghood is slightly more challenging than Pollito Tito but still fun with a great vocabulary to learn.

Other posts about listening:

Escuchar: Los Tres Cerditos

Escuchar: El Pájaro y La Bellena

Escuchar: De Viaje por Latíno América
Escuchar: Eres Bella Tal como Eres
Escuchar: How to improve your active listening skills in Spanish, and how to draw a dog
Escuchar: Conversación con WhyNotSpanish?
Escuchar: Conversación con WhyNotSpanish? Knoxville Asian Festival
Escuchar: Flor de Nochebuena

 
*** HABLAR - When should you start speaking Spanish? 

Benny Lewis, a multi-languaged guru in the field of language learning, says “Day 1.” He speaks 11 languages so his words carry some weight. It didn’t work that way for me, however, unless you count “Hola” and “Buenos días.”

I tend to be an introvert which means I don’t do small talk well. Plus, I like to talk about ideas and stories and events and .... When people said, “Just start talking. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes,” I just shook my head. It wasn’t particularly about fear, it was having no words to say anything I wanted to say.

It took a couple of years before I realized that Benny and all the others were right … but in the wrong way … for me.

We do need to speak from Day 1. We need to start making the sounds of the new language. We need to begin the learning process with our tongues and mouths and ears. We need to say “Hola,” and “Buenos días,” and “Cómo está.” 

A Different Strategy: Voz Alta

That doesn't mean we need to try to carry on a conversation with the closest Spanish speaker. (However, they tend to be very generous with their patience and time, so if that's what you want to do, go for it.) However, an easier way for a lot of us is  to start talking to ourselves … out loud … voz alta.

We can read out loud, repeat new words out loud, form sentences out loud, fill our environment with the sounds of Spanish and the words that will eventually fall into line and march into the world of communication.

Other posts focused on Hablar:

Hablar: Mexican Dichos
Hablar: Aprender Visualmente #1

***LEER - Más fácil ... Más rapido vocabulario

Most of the words you learn, whether they are English or Spanish, come from reading, which is nice since reading is probably the easiest skill to learn in any language.

This page will offer many Pequeñas Historias written during my journeys through Mexico. They are deliberately short and designed to introduce new words. And, of course, we hope they will encourage you to start writing your own small stories.

Espero que disfrutes!

Historia: los problemas con expectaciones en Cuernavaca

*** ESCRIBIR ... memoria mejor

Writing sentences that are related to your life and your world is a great way to expand your vocabulary and your ability to create bits of conversation that are meaningful to you.

However, without writing prompts, there is a tendency to write flat, uninteresting sentences. A great resource for prompts ... and a way to further integrate important verbs into your language is the post:

Verbos: 25 Most Common Irregulars

It will take awhile, however, if you take each verb and write sentences for each tense, by the time you finish, you will be amazed at the progress you've made.

Writings:
Comida: El menú de Origo, Morelia 
Habla Ahora: ¡Ya bastante! ¡No estoy lista!