What is your ultimate goal as it relates to learning Spanish? What do you want to accomplish with learning the Spanish language?
Very important questions. How you answer them would determine how fast and how well you will learn Spanish. Let’s take a closer look at this.
The root of any language is the words. What good would it do you if you learn the Spanish grammar, pronunciation, tenses and all of the other theory, when you only know 5 Spanish words? Your Spanish language knowledge would be useless because you won’t be able to communicate. And without communication, nothing happens.
Think of the grammar, pronunciation, tenses and so on, as the branches of a tree. The fruits of the tree would be the results of you speaking the language. Better you speak it, tastier the fruits. The branches hold the fruits and draw food for the fruits from the root. But, without the root, there will be no tree and no fruits.
Now, the Spanish language, like any other language, is colossal as far as speaking it fluently and understanding the language as would a native Spanish speaker. Even though the Spanish alphabet is estimated to have half as many words as the English alphabet, you still have the same ratio of words for an everyday normal communication.
Therefore, being familiar with the grammar, pronunciation and the other theory is given. Without branches, what would the fruits grow on? But, it’s the amount of words and the type of words that you need to consider when answering the questions above. Unless you seek to become a Spanish poet, you need not to memorize all the words in the Spanish dictionary. Only about 500–1500 words are used in active vocabulary, or conversational vocabulary.
To be safe, building a vocabulary of at least 1500 to 2000 words would be favorable. This is because even though you can control the words you use, you cannot control the words the other person is using. Because of this, you need to learn more words to understand well than you need to speak well.
Question: What kind of words do you need to learn?
Answer: People speak about 75 percent of the time in six general areas of life.
- Family
- Business
- Personal care
- Travel/transportation
- Food/dining
- Sports
If you want to learn to communicate well, you need to learn about 300 to 350 words in each of these six areas. What good would it do you if you learn 1500 words in rocket engineering or any other specific field for that matter?
Let’s say that you are a doctor of some kind. If you learn 1500 words of medical terminology, you would not be able to communicate with your patients as well as any average person, because they will talk most of the time in the above six areas.
If you want to learn words that specifically apply to your profession, you still need to cover the six areas of life (listed above) in order to communicate well with anyone. So, the answer to the questions atop would be your reason for learning Spanish.
If you need to learn Spanish for an everyday communication, stick only to the six general areas of life. If you need it for your career, just add one more (or however many more you need) to the above six areas. This way you will have a clear path to walk on, and you would know exactly what to study.
Question: How do you memorize all these words in the fastest time possible?
Answer: Several ways. You don′t have to practice all of these, but use whichever helps you remember better.
- Repetition - decide that you will learn 5-10 new words every day. So, you have the whole day from morning till night to learn the words and repeat them over and over until they get engraved in your brain. The next day, repeat those words one time before learning the next set of words. The day after, repeat the words one time from the previous two days before learning the next set of words. And so on. Create a cut-off point so you don′t repeat the words from the previous 30 days. Let’s say, you would repeat the words only from the 5 days prior to your current day.
- Create a silly game - people have a great tendency to remember funny or silly things. So, make it fun. For an example: the Spanish word for “tree” is “arbol” pronounced [AHR-bohl]. When cutting a tree down, before it falls, the person yells: tiiiiimbeeeerrrr. So instead, substitute it with: ahrrrrrrbohohohohohohohlll. Now, think of any other silly ways of remembering other words. The people who may struggle with this method are the analytical thinkers. People who are very fact oriented and have difficulty with out-of-the-box thinking need to loosen up and have some fun. It will help.
- Picture association - the Spanish word for “book” is “libro″ pronounced [LEEB-roh]. Any time you see a book, you automatically reference it to the English word “book”. Instead, every time you see a book, reference it to the Spanish word “libro″. So, when you go to the bookstore or a library, don’t say: “So many books to choose from”, but say: “So many ‘libros’ to choose from”.
- Retroactivity - retroactivity is the cousin to repetition. Repetition is how many times you repeat something in a given time period, while retroactivity is how long you use and apply it from when you initially learned it. You can do 20 repetitions of a Spanish word over ten minutes or you can do 20 repetitions of the same word over five days. If you do it over five days (retroactivity) it will store more easily into your long-term memory than if you do it the same number of times (repetition) in ten minutes. Try this out and you’ll be amazed of the results.
- Usage - use the words you learn as much as possible. Find ways to use them even if you have to use them on your cat or a dog.
- Your way - you may have your special way to remember things, so use it. Or, you may invent you own unique way to remember things better.
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