Each Wednesday I meet with a Spanish tutor to practice my Spanish. We keep it very informal and just have a conversation. This week we talked about Apple, Amazon, and Westworld. Last week we talked about cryptocurrency. We don’t pre-plan topics, we just start talking and follow the conversation wherever it goes.
Since we are usually talking about complex topics, there are often words I don’t know, so I have to guess or use other words to try and communicate my points less precisely. But since we are having an actual conversation and not a forced lesson, I feel motivated and excited about finding a solution to communicate the ideas I want to communicate. These Wednesday night conversations fly by, and looking back I often lose track of the fact that I’m speaking Spanish because I get so absorbed in the ideas we are talking about.
I still butcher a lot of grammar and occasionally use Spanglish or the wrong tenses, but the simple fact that we are talking for an hour each week dramatically helps my Spanish.
Most people try to force themselves through heavy grammar lessons that are incredibly boring. They focus on getting tenses and conjugations right, but never actually make use of the language they are learning. This makes learning much less enjoyable, and then they wonder why they can’t consistently stick to a language learning practice.
To learn a language, you need to practice a lot. To practice a lot, you need to make it enjoyable. That is why I throw away lessons and the traditional structure and instead have fun conversations, watch Mexican TV shows, and listen to Spanish music. If you’re finding it hard to stick with Duolingo or feeling resistant about the language classes your taking, it would likely be better to stop and focus in on having more fun.
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