Couple of days ago I reached my 1000 day steak in Duolingo. I do admit that Doulingo alone is not enough but it will for sure give you a nice starting point (You can read more about my Duolingo experience here). I did have to go online to understand some of the grammar but the thing that helped me the most was reading, music and TV. For that I decided to share some of the tools that accelerated my Spanish learning.
1. Finding Music:
Not knowing the culture very well made it difficult at first to find the music that I liked because I did not even know where to start. I remember I was in the middle of my Duolingo tree when I found the song Bailando. I remember how the words were so fast I can barely understand, I had to look up the lyrics. After that I started using Google play and started Bailando radio where they start playing similar songs. When I hear one I like, I add it to My Playlist. If one of the songs was a bit different I start another "radio" for it and start adding what I like to the list. Suddenly I have over 60 songs from different genres (still adding). It is so funny how in the beginning every song felt so fast, and that I had to look up all the lyrics, slowly the same songs start slowing down just because your brain is now synced. Of course singing out load helps make you used to pronouncing words.
2. Reading Magazines and News:
I first wanted to start reading stories and novels right after I was done with my Duo tree, but I found it very difficult to find what I would like. My friend Roberto from Spain suggested reading the news and articles about what interests me. He suggested a magazine called Muy Interesante it has subjects about everything. He was right! It was a lot easier to understand. I felt I had to look up words less just because I can deduce what it means from the article itself. Even though the reading helped me learn a lot more words and the music helped me pronounce the words well, I still felt like I can't really start a conversation with some one. That takes me to the next step.
3. Watching Spanish TV: (Novelas)
I started first tuning to my antena TV one and only Spanish channel. That plan failed miserably and fast, in an age where we get everything on demand, it was very painful for me to watch the TV and wait for something that might interest me. That made me move to Netflix in search for Spanish shows. I first tried to watch the american shows that I watched already dubbed in Spanish. That was annoying to me, it might work for some people but I just could not tolerate it. Then I decided I should try to find Spanish shows. It was hard at the beginning, for the first show I watched (La familia de diez) I had to look at the English subtitles all the time. Unfortunately they only had the one season on Netflix and I was forced to look for something else. What I found next was not that great so I got a bit discouraged, until May of 2017 when my friend Brenda told me about a show to watch (el clone) and that opened so many doors to me and started me on a novela binge-watching journey. I will write more about that journey in another post. El clone was a bit over 180 episodes and when I first started watching it I did have to keep an eye on the subtitles and not do anything but hula hoop in front of the TV. By episode 90 I was able to go back to doing my crafts while I am watching the TV. Since then I have been getting better and better in understanding without looking at the subtitles.
4. Books to Read:
Since my husband is a year behind me in learning Spanish, I felt that it is my job to make life a bit easier for him. So I decided that for my 1000 day streak, I will try to find us some books and here is what I found:
Now this is a fun book, I did not go through all of it yet, but I like how there is a quiz after every section. If you did not figure this out about me yet, I LOVE to study and I LOVE tests. This book is very easy for my level right now, I wish I found it when I was still doing my tree, but it is still fun and my heart still beats fast when I am trying to answer the questions even though it is easy for me. Yeah I know I am crazy (hence the name of the blog ;))
This book has shorter stories and Amazon had an Audio book. I also found a YouTube video of some of the stories by a native speaker, the accent in how they pronounce some of the words is different but I think that is important because we have to be aware of all types of accents. The video can be found here.
4.
Now this is a fun book, I did not go through all of it yet, but I like how there is a quiz after every section. If you did not figure this out about me yet, I LOVE to study and I LOVE tests. This book is very easy for my level right now, I wish I found it when I was still doing my tree, but it is still fun and my heart still beats fast when I am trying to answer the questions even though it is easy for me. Yeah I know I am crazy (hence the name of the blog ;))
This book has shorter stories and Amazon had an Audio book. I also found a YouTube video of some of the stories by a native speaker, the accent in how they pronounce some of the words is different but I think that is important because we have to be aware of all types of accents. The video can be found here.
4.
This is another book that everyone recommends. The book is originally written in Portuguese by the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. I have not read it yet but bought it already. Hoping to get to it soon.
I hope you find this helpful and can aid you in your quest of learning a new language. Remember, even if Spanish was not the language you are planning to learn. These tips can still help you. Also some of the books I mentioned are also in other languages. Happy learning :)
