Tips For Learning Spanish Quickly – 2 Secrets
For the first time, I will reveal of 2 of my top secrets or tips for learning Spanish quickly. I will begin with the first one which I am sure that you will find very helpful.
The First Tip: Watch Lots of Movies or DVDs in Spanish
I have a friend in Colombia that speaks English fluently and she has never traveled to an English speaking country. I am very impressed with her vocabulary. Every time I try to challenge her with an English word thinking that she won’t understand the definition of the word she surprises me and fully understands the meaning. I have to use some slang that is peculiar to New York City in order to trick her. So I asked her “what’s your secret?” “How do you know so many English words and you have never traveled out of Colombia?”
“Patrick,” she replied “I have two techniques that are responsible for my extensive English vocabulary.”
“One, as I have already told you before I have probably watched just as many movies in English as you have watched in English, usually more than once, first with the English subtitles turned on and then with out.”
“But there’s another technique that I have used and I am going to share with you… ”
The Second Tip: Use a Spanish-language Only Dictionary
“Patrick, I don’t use Spanish-English dictionaries to translate English words that I don’t understand. I use either a Merriam-Webster’s English Dictionary or an Oxford English Dictionary to look up the meaning of English words that I don’t know.”
It has been less than three weeks since she told me about this technique. After she told me this, I immediately went out and bought a Spanish dictionary (Spanish only). I bought a Spanish dictionary that is actually a combination of a dictionary and encyclopedia and it has lots of color pictures. It is called Larousse Junior Diccionario Enciclopédico. And if you are a visual learner, the pictures in the dictionary-encyclopedia will really help you.
In less than three weeks, not only have I added a lot of new Spanish words to my vocabulary, I have done so while ‘thinking” in Spanish and not in English. This is a technique that I highly recommend.
