Hello.
Welcome to Why Not Spanish.
I am María, Spanish teacher
as a foreign language.
And if you already started the process of
learning Spanish, today I recommend five strategies
to improve your Spanish even faster.
The first strategy is called 321.
This strategy is divided into four parts
and you need a timer or a watch.
First, choose an interesting topic for you with
vocabulary you feel comfortable with.
These are examples of general topics you can talk about:
A description of your house or apartment,
a television series that you are watching,
your most recent vacation, an activity you do in
your free time or describe the city where you live now.
Second, use your watch or timer and set it
to ring in three minutes.
During those three minutes you will talk about the topic you chose.
You will use the words you know
and it's okay to make sounds and pauses.
Anyway.
The idea is to speak spontaneously.
That is why it is important to choose a topic you feel comfortable with
and that you can use vocabulary you feel familiar with.
Vocabulary you already know.
When the alarm goes off, you are going to set another alarm,
but this time to ring in two minutes.
repeat the exercise, talk about the same topic,
say the same things
What is the difference?
This time you will only do it in two minutes.
Here you already start to eliminate or avoid sounds
And you're going to try to talk more
confident about the same topic.
The idea is not to speak fast, but to speak
clearly and to the point, that is,
avoid superficial details and focus
to talk about a topic with confidence.
And finally set your timer
to ring in a minute.
repeat the exercise, but now only in one minute.
321.
Try to say everything you said before,
but in less time, more
concrete and more confident.
Avoid making very long pauses or making sounds
In this strategy, what interests us most is not
to speak Spanish perfectly or correctly
and the idea is not to memorize either.
It's not a memory job, no
and it is not important to speak faster.
You should maintain your normal rate of speech,
neither faster nor slower, and avoid silences
lengths and filler sounds
Before continuing, I will explain what a strategy is.
They are tools in the form of actions that you are going to use
as a student to enhance your learning.
Look, you're not always going to have a teacher to guide you,
And it is very important to develop a habit of
self-learning and self-assessment.
Many language students get used to the fact that all the information
the teacher gives it to them, like when a baby receives
teaspoons of food
Many students prefer to wait for the teacher to tell them what to do,
how, when, for how long.
These attitudes are negative to improve your Spanish and you should
change them if you think you do so.
Another strategy that can help you a lot with
different skills are dictations.
Dictations have a reputation for being old-fashioned and boring,
but in reality they are an activity that has many variations
And it also has advantages for you.
It is material that you can keep and review,
you can correct it quickly, you can improve the understanding of
listening and learn more vocabulary.
You can search for them on the Internet or also go to our playlist of
dictations here on YouTube and find one.
Just grab a pen and paper and start writing.
Then compare if you have a more advanced level of Spanish,
you can take short sentences spoken at normal
speed and do the same exercise.
Let's do a
spoken voice dictation.
Take paper and something to write with.
The idea is to listen to the audio at least two
times and then write what you hear.
Let's do an example.
Listen
Thanks for coming.
We will be calling you.
Thanks for coming.
We will be calling you.
Thanks for coming.
We will be calling you.
Thanks for coming.
We will be calling you.
Did you manage to write what you heard?
Let's check
Thanks for coming.
We will be calling you.
How did it go?
The following strategy is excellent if you want to improve your pronunciation.
I know it as imitation exercises
and in English they are called shadow reading.
Speaking a language is a physical process that involves the use of different
muscles in your face, muscles that maybe
you do not use to speak your native language.
So this strategy is like a gym session.
to better speak the language you are learning.
This is what you are going to do.
Find a short audio.
I'm talking about two or three seconds,
hopefully with a transcript.
First, listen to the audio as many times as necessary.
If you have to listen to it ten times, you listen to it ten times.
Then read what the transcript says
while listening to that audio.
If you don't know a word, look it up in the dictionary and then
try to read that sentence or that phrase in Spanish at the same time
with the same pitch as the original audio.
I'll show you an example of how Cody does it.
He is also learning Spanish, just like you.
The house of my childhood.
The house of my childhood. On our website www.whynotspanish.com
you can find our courses and in all
I make sure to offer imitation exercises.
They are short exercises of only seconds where you can exercise
controlled and organized way your pronunciation and also
improve your listening comprehension.
Many times we limit ourselves too much because we say oh,
I don't have anyone to practice with
and sometimes when we practice with someone,
yes we interact.
But there is not always a correction nor
confirmation of what we said.
It is well said.
A way to improve your Spanish quickly and while alone
is to record your voice and listen to you.
Yes, in fact, if you are listening to this video and
You understand a lot of things I'm saying
you can do this exercise
right now.
A Spanish student already knows vocabulary,
pronunciation, knows grammar, so it is very likely that if you
you record, for example, doing the exercise of 321 that
We saw at the beginning of the video and then you listen to yourself,
You're going to find mistakes and things you can work on,
So record yourself, listen to yourself and if you find something that you don't
you know very well if it is c orrect or not, write it down and search for
information about that.
Even if you hear something that you know is not correct,
For example, you say something like me is a student of
Spanish too, write it down and correct it.
Of course, in this exercise you are not going to
know if everything you said is correct or not,
but it's a great way to work on autocorrect and to
Know your weaknesses as a Spanish student.
Also, if you record yourself, you will have a record of your
progress and in a few months, when you listen to the audio you recorded
today, you will surely notice a difference and that will
Motivate you to keep learning.
This is another strategy that you can do by yourself,
Here you will work on oral production,
I mean, talk.
You are going to use your Spanish out loud.
I want you to take a not very long audio,
it can be a podcast.
You are going to listen and you are going to listen actively.
You're going to pay attention to what they're talking about in the audio.
I want you to pause and then try to explain in your
own words, with your vocabulary,
with your mistakes, what you just heard.
For now, don't worry about not being wrong,
you are going to make a mistake with the grammar, but
What we are interested in is transmitting the message.
You can also record and listen to yourself to find
things to improve with these strategies.
If you make them part of your study system,
I guarantee that you will improve your Spanish faster.
That's all for this video for now.
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Thank you very much for watching and remember if you are
going to learn a language Why Not Spanish, bye.