Hello readers! Today we are going to give you a few tips for you to learn a little of Spanish every day. Firstly, learning Spanish or any other language is based on habits. Secondly, Spanish learning is related to emotions and perceptions. When we are secondary students leaving all our duties until the last moment is our every-day lives. Why? What do we think in moments like that? Mainly that the task we have to do is too long, boring and hard. This provokes a type of fear and the most common response is postponing doing the task. The result is that we dodge the fear and we feel better, but we are very far from improving our Spanish. If studying Spanish has a positive attachment that fear would be replaced by a good feeling and we wouldn’t leave everything for the day after.
Play with a reward system
You may be the laziest person on earth, but you surely feel the feeling of success every time you finish a task such as paperwork, writing a presentation, etc. That small satisfaction is due to a blast of dopamine (the pleasure hormone) and it is something we can work on while learning Spanish. A good strategy is to change your perception by focusing on the fact that you are learning Spanish and rejoice on it. Instead of waiting desperately for the moment when you will announce that you have had your first conversation in with an Spanish native speaker, just value what you have accomplished so far: you are learning Spanish and you are taking it seriously. That by itself is already a great deal of an accomplishment, especially if you have doubted yourself in the process of learning Spanish.
Don’t be too hard on yourself at the beginning
Despite being aware of all that has been said before, you may find yourself sitting in front of your laptop and unable to start. You are still wasting your precious time in Facegram or Instabook. It is clear that leaving everything until the last moment is your greatest weakness, and it is completely normal! There is still a very long way to go until you can taste success… The solution? You need to take a shortcut. As a difference to the writings we all had to write when we were secondary students, there is no due date for learning Spanish or any other language. It is a life-long learning process.
Keep track of your Spanish study
One last time: It is very important for you to keep track of all the work your have realised over time in order to strengthen the feeling of satisfaction.
So as to make a summary of the whole strategy, here you have a series of steps that you are supposed to do in order to learn Spanish:
- Focus less on the long-term objective in order to learn Spanish.
- Divide your learning in short sessions that you can manage.
- Carry out these sessions on a daily basis and enjoy the satisfaction that getting the work done provides you.
- Make a tracking of your progress to see how you have developed your new habit.
After a few weeks, your see that you have been studying every day without making a great effort and that you are progressing fast with your Spanish learning process!
Adapted from Mosalingua
Translated by Silvia Juste Rincón
Photo by MART PRODUCTION