9 ways to make yourself fluent in Spanish

Spanish, Espanol, is a Romance language that originated in Europe’s the Iberian Peninsula. It is also called Castilian.

Around 360 million people worldwide speak it as their first language. In the early twenty-first century, Mexico had the most speakers (more than 85 million), followed by Colombia (more than 40 million), Argentina (more than 35 million), the United States (more than 31 million), and Spain (greater than 30 million). An official language in 18 American countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela), Spanish enjoys the privilege to be an official language of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is the world’s second most spoken native language, trailing only Mandarin Chinese, and the fourth most spoken language overall, trailing only English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi. That is quite an accomplishment!

1- Set objectives for yourself.

Long-term and short-term goals for all four skill categories: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Aside from that, create a guideline for yourself that you can use to measure your progress! A typical short-term speaking goal might be to learn 35 words per week, while a long-term goal might be to be able to speak and remember at least 500 words! Your objectives should be attainable, measurable, and realistic. Avoid overly ambitious goals that can exhaust you. Instead, use the Pomodoro technique to divide your learning into small chunks that can be addressed at several small intervals throughout the day.

2- Use the internet extensively 

To help you practise your language skills, look for error-free, authentic resources online. Use free flashcard apps like Anki and Memrise to help you improve your memory. To help you practise and learn more, look for free online apps like Duolingo. You could also learn Spanish online through sites like Rosetta Stone, Busuu, and others.

3- Join a Spanish class

This is your best bet since not everybody is meant for self-study. Join a class to learn from a teacher, clear doubts, practice speaking, receive feedback and various other important helpful tips

4- Watch Spanish movies, TV shows, YouTube videos, documentaries, talk shows and as many authentic video resources that you can find online;

Initially, these would be of great help to develop your listening, as they would help you get familiarised with the accent, the speech modulation, besides helping you train your ear to catch Spanish words. In this manner, if you would be able to identify the Spanish language from, so many other European languages when spoken. Watch the videos with English subtitles and if possible the same English videos, if available, with Spanish subtitles. In order to improve your Spanish speaking, I also suggest you to use the shadowing technique and mimic the speech that you hear in the videos with a near possible accent. 

5- Use authentic audio resources 

I also encourage you to listen to multiple authentic Spanish audios such as the Spotify playlist, podcast, songs and many more to recognise words, sing along, and speak along.

6- Read a lot and read aloud

In order to improve your reading, I suggest you start by reading children’s books first! Do not feel embarrassed to read these; instead incorporating this tip in your language learning would go a long way. Language learners are extremely anxious to be able to start building their own sentences and start speaking the language. However, in order to do that they need to be able to start framing simple meaningful sentences in Spanish. And that’s exactly where children’s books would prove helpful. Children’s books contain smaller words and simpler sentences that a child can understand. As a language learner, these small words and simple sentences would be of great help to you when you try to build your own sentences and initiate your first ever conversation. Underestimating the power of learning through children’s books could be disastrous. Apart from these, learners could access and use authentic and reliable literature from the internet or libraries. 

7- Write a Journal or a diary

I suggest learners of the Spanish language capture all new words they hear through an audio or video in a journal or a diary. If you are a beginner you must ensure that these are words, which are commonly used in day to day conversation. Keep a tab on the meaning and the context used, so that these could serve the purpose to the dictionary for you whenever you need to make sentences of your own and initiate a conversation. As you progress, you could look at a slightly higher level or more complex words to build longer sentences. You could also use online Spanish translators to help you if you do not have any Spanish speaking person available around you to help.

8- Remain a ‘seeker’ in your entire life

Never stop learning! Continue your search of new Spanish words slangs, idioms commonly used phrases through various audio, video resources, newspapers, or magazines. This would enable you to enrich your vocabulary, and progress to a higher level of learning by becoming proficient in framing and using sentences using complex words.

9- Conversation 

My final suggestion, while still not the last, would be to go ahead and seek conversation partners for yourself. I recommend you practice speaking Spanish, with the Spanish natives. If they are not available in and around your neighbourhood, you may want to search them online through various sites such as Hello Talk, Tandem, Italki, Language partners, conversation partners and many such sites. Use them to give you feedback, correct your mistakes and also give you information about words that you may have collected in your journey or diary, but you do not understand or need clarity about.

Spanish is a lovely language that belongs to the romance languages. Spanish, like Sardinian and Italian, is a descendant of Latin and has one of the smallest degrees of separation from it (about 20 percent ). Approximately 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is derived from Latin, including borrowings from Ancient Greek. As a result, Spanish is a simple language to learn for English speakers who are already familiar with Latin alphabets. Its vocabulary, which developed in the Iberian Peninsula during the Al-Andalus era, has also been influenced by Arabic, with approximately 8% of its vocabulary having Arabic lexical roots. In this manner Iberian, Basque, Celtiberian, Visigothic, and other Ibero-Romance languages,  all have a common ancestor. It has also absorbed vocabulary from other languages, most notably French, Italian, Mozarabic, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Occitan, and Sardinian, as well as Quechua, Nahuatl, and other indigenous American languages. You could consider taking online Spanish classes to improve your language skills and become fluent in the shortest amount of time.

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