how I would learn Spanish (if I could start over)

Hello , everyone .

Welcome back today .

We're gonna be talking about all of my mistakes that I have made in studying Spanish .

I have been studying Spanish now for six years .

Oh my God , I feel old .

I feel like there's so many things that if I could go back in time and do differently , I would .

So I'm going to share them with you guys today .

But please keep in mind these are like personal things that I would do differently .

It's not objectively better than what I did before because I already know some of the things I'm going to say people are going to be like , no .

So the first thing that I would do differently is I would learn vocabulary completely differently .

I would start with more specific vocab to my life because when I first started learning Spanish , I started learning all the colors , every single type of family member , you could have every single occupation out there .

And I didn't even know how to like explain what kind of subject I studied in school and like what we did there day to day .

Like I had all this vocab that I didn't need and I didn't have the vocab that I did need .

And this even kind of passed on to when I was born an intermediate level because I got to a point where I knew all the basic vocab and I was kind of just like getting a lot of vocab from movies and vocab was still useful .

But for example , I realized at a point that I didn't even know how to say gap here .

And I had been on my gap year for like three months at that point , which was crazy because it was such a huge part of my life in that moment and I couldn't even talk about it .

So what I would advise you guys to do is if you feel like I don't know what specific V COB is .

To me , I would honestly turn on the voice recording app on your phone and just set a timer for 15 minutes and just speak about your life , speak about what's going on , speak about your hobbies .

I don't know , you can even do this a few times and do specific topics each time .

Listen back through that and just pause it at every time that you're like , oh , I don't know this word in Spanish or like your target language .

And then you're slowly going to get a vocabulary specifically for you .

I really wish I had done that earlier because I start doing that now .

Like now once in a while , I'll just like at a timer and speak in Spanish nonstop .

And I really noticed the words that I'm missing .

Like there's always a lot of words that are for me , very common in my life .

But words that in Spanish , I never knew that is the first thing I would do differently .

The second thing is this is going to be controversial guys .

Please don't come at me .

I personally wish that I chose a specific country's accent slash slang earlier on because my accent and slang situation is very weird .

Like my accent is not from any specific country .

Basically in majority of Spain , they speak with a lisp .

So instead of saying Policia , they say , but I don't say that my accent is more similar to the Latin American accent .

But in a lot of country , I know also not every single country but in a lot of the Latin American countries , they also kind of drop their ss .

So like they would say not all of them once again , that's why I'm saying don't come out here because I know it's not all of them .

But my accent is like I pronounce every single syllable .

But the slang that I'm speaking in is Spanish slang .

When you listen to me speak based on the words I say like it sounds like I learn Spanish in Spain because I say Valle sometimes I'll say instead of , oh my God , I forgot how to say literally because I kind of use the Spanish version more .

But based on my accent , I don't sound like I'm from Spain .

I mean , obviously I don't sound like I'm native but also it doesn't sound like I learned Spanish in Spain or another thing , for example , in Spain they use the form instead of , but I , I didn't learn Spanish with the form .

So I use so for me it's just like it's so it's so confusing like I speak with Spanish , but my accent is not Spanish at all .

And for me , I know that nobody cares .

But for me , it really irks me .

I really wish I just stuck with one and I know that there's nothing wrong with that .

But for me , it kind of makes me confused and it makes people confused when they speak to me .

So personally , I would pick a country early on and focus on their slang .

Because another thing I just want to mention , I really did not want to focus on learning a lot of slang because when I was studying Spanish , living in Ireland and living in the UK , I really was like , look , I don't want to focus on one specific country because I just want to travel , I want to use Spanish in any country .

And if I stick to one country slang , I'm going to feel limited as soon as I move to Spain .

Obviously , this is an over exaggeration , but it genuinely felt like 50% of the words they were saying was slang .

I felt like I know so much Spanish and I don't know anything they're saying .

So I had always regretted not , I was studying this long earlier .

But the reason that I'm saying it's controversial is because I think a lot of people learn Spanish to be able to travel everywhere .

So it wouldn't make sense to learn one country slang .

But if you know , you're going to be in one country more than the other , I would honestly tell my old self to just focus on that country slang .

So actually tying in with that , I want to talk about today's sponsor Lingo Pie .

So if you've never heard about lingo Pie before , I've talked about them many times on my channel .

I feel like it's honestly an amazing resource for language learners .

It is a subscription based video on demand platform and it basically has a lot of like TV , shows movies , it's like a language learner , Netflix .

And it's incredible .

For example , if you're learning Spanish , you can get subtitles in both Spanish and English , you can turn one or the other off .

So if you just want to see Spanish , if you just want to see English , you can also do like a mash up of them , which is really cool .

So you can basically get English subtitles with like a few Spanish words thrown in there to kind of like make you learn a few words at a time .

Another thing that I love is that if you press on a word that you don't know , first of all , a little thing will pop up to kind of tell you what the word means , how is it used the translation of it basically .

And when you do that , it's going to be automatically added to a flashcard deck which you can then study after watching the episode or the movie or whatever you're watching .

This is incredible because it saves so many steps like you don't have to like watch a movie , pause it , write down the word , find the translation , make a flashcard do that all again , every few seconds .

In this case scenario , you just press on a word .

OK ?

That's the word .

It automatically goes in your flashcard deck and you just smoothly learn like that , you can also see all your transcripts on the site and you can just follow along .

And the reason that I'm mentioning it in this tip is because lingo Pii has this option to basically see kind of like what country that TV show was filmed in .

So for example , if I want to watch specifically TV , shows from Spain , then I can see all of the TV shows and movies that were filmed in Spain .

So they have Spanish Song Spanish accent and I find that it is extremely useful .

So if you have a specific Spanish accent that you want to focus on like Argentinian Spanish , you will have choice because you will be able to see a little vlog and that is honestly my favorite favorite feature of theirs .

Like that's not even the main feature , but it's one of my favorites .

So if you want to check out lingo pie , all the links will be in the description and let's move on .

Thank you lingo pie for sponsoring this video .

The next tip that I have is not tip .

I keep saying tips , guys , these are not tips .

This isn't me speaking to my old self .

OK .

Third thing I would tell myself is to speak right from the start .

I don't care if you know 50 words like speak right from the start .

I have noticed that my favorite , favorite way to study is by setting a time .

I already literally mentioned this two minutes ago , setting a timer and just speaking right ?

And then through speaking , you will realize kind of what vocab what grammar points you're missing when you're a beginner , you're kind of like , how can I do that ?

Like I can't even talk for five minutes .

Like how do you expect me to do 15 minutes as a beginner ?

You should be able to do even one minute , even if that one minute is like , hello , how are you ?

My name is Anna .

This is my age like this is the color of my hair , whatever you should be able to do one minute from the first week of learning , right ?

Because it's just a few seconds sentences .

So start with that and build on it .

Keep setting a timer for one minute , say what you usually say and then just add in an extra sentence .

I don't know if you're talking about like , oh , I have brown hair add in the fact that it's like long or , I don't know like whatever you want to , but you just slowly add up , add up , add up and slowly build your way up to 15 minutes .

So you can start with one minute .

Once you feel like , oh , I can easily talk for one minute , go up to two .

Once you feel comfortable with that , go up to three , like it's almost like a fun game .

It's like you're literally leveling up in the beginning .

First start learning a language .

One minute is hard , like 15 minutes , you can't even picture speaking in that language for 15 minutes .

So that way you slowly level up .

But even after one week of learning , you should be able to do one minute .

So I really regret not having done that earlier because that way , first of all , I would have found my specific vocabulary much quicker and vocab with specific context of what's going on in my life .

And second of all , I would have prioritized speaking right from the start and it wouldn't have been such like a comprehension game just like , oh , do you understand this ?

Do you understand this ?

Write an essay on this ?

It would have been more exciting because I would have realized more like , oh , I'm speaking a language like I can speak to another human .

So , yeah , I would honestly say do it from the start .

It's fine if you've been learning a language for a week , set a timer for 30 seconds , like , start slow but start and make it a habit and work your way up .

If anything , you can even write down the date that , you know , you raise the time and started doing this exercise for longer .

Like you can literally make a game out of it .

My next thing is I wish I did not buy so many grams books .

And I honestly just wish I studied with study Spanish dot com .

I wrote it down there because I always forget the name of the website .

It's so simple and I forget it .

Basically , this is not like I'm not affiliated with them in any way , but I genuinely think this website has every single basic grammar point you would get in like a basic Spanish grammar book .

So I'm like , it doesn't make sense to buy all these grammar books when more or less they all kind of say the same thing .

Obviously , when it gets to a more advanced level , like I wouldn't recommend using this website .

I just wish that I started with that .

I wish that as a beginner as an intermediate level learner , maybe even I didn't buy a grammar book until I had every grammar point on that website learned all the really basic grammar points are covered there .

Every single topic they have , they have like five quizzes on it .

So to be honest , I think it's even more than a grammar book because you're getting all the exercises and you're getting all the grammar points , you're getting examples .

There's even like some kind of oral tests .

The only con of this is , I think for every grammar 0.1 or two tests are free .

But then like the other four are like paid for .

But if you want to do it for free , every single chapter has one or two tests for free , I would personally invest into it if I was a beginner and I found this website .

But I wish I had just learned with this website .

I feel like it would have saved me so much time once again .

Like I could have just went step by step , like said , like , hey , this month I'm going to do 10 of these lessons and that's it .

Like , I don't have to bring a grammar book with me .

It would make life simpler .

I honestly wish I had just studied with this website in the beginning .

And then once I got more intermediate , more advanced , I could buy some like grammar books with more complex things , concepts .

Not the next thing I would tell myself is when reading a book , do not stop every single second to write down every single word .

You don't know .

I still get so tempted by this because whenever I'm reading a book and I don't know a word , like I can't just gloss over it because I'm just like , I want to know what it means , but I find that you really lose the flow of reading and then it's like you lose the whole point of reading .

You're losing kind of the momentum of reading and like two pages in , you're going to get tired , you're not even going to want to keep reading anymore .

I might be thinking like , no , but if I skip words , I'm going to skip out on so much value .

And like , I don't want that , I want to learn all these words .

But in the long run , you're probably going to not finish your book .

Some people study well , that way .

And this is just like a personal opinion .

But for me , I notice that whenever I write down every single word , I get past two pages and I'm done because literally I'm done , like , I'm tired , I've written down like 100 words .

I'm overwhelmed , but I just read naturally and just like , I will look up a word every once in a while if it's like , completely , I don't understand even the context of what's going on , that really doesn't stop my flow .

And I'm more likely to finish a whole chapter .

So that's just something I would say to myself personally , but that's also like personal preference .

I don't know .

The next thing is also kind of related and it is to read out loud when you're reading .

I used to just read and circle words that I don't know .

But I feel like for me reading out loud is really , really important because I've noticed that with Spanish even , I think my pronunciation is pretty good .

I can stutter once in a while , which is completely fine .

Sometimes I even stutter in English , but I sometimes stutter because the sounds are not the same in English obviously .

So it's almost kind of hard for my brain for some letters to go together .

So I don't really know how to explain it in my last language learning vlog .

I showed myself doing this and you could even see me stutter once in a while because sometimes there was just sounds that in English you wouldn't get together .

So I feel like reading out loud honestly helps me a lot .

And every single time I do it , I notice that the next day I speak very clearly and very well .

So I feel like if I started doing this from the start , like , even if I didn't understand a book , just like 10 minutes of reading , even if I don't know anything that's written down on that page , it will really increase your ability to speak it more easily .

And like , you're going to be less likely to stutter when you're speaking , you're going to feel more comfortable as well .

You're going to be used to hearing your voice in that language .

So when you're speaking to another person who is the native speaker of that language , you're not going to feel as self conscious because it's not like them hearing you speak for the first time .

And also you're hearing yourself for the first time because you never speak out loud .

It's like at this point , you would have heard yourself speak so many times that to you , it's like normal , you know .

So I really wish I had done that earlier .

The next thing I feel like a lot of these are very similar .

If you're going to learn lyrics from songs , be picky with what songs ?

Because I feel like I wasn't very picky in the beginning .

Like I used to choose a lot of reggaeton songs to learn Spanish with .

And when I moved to Spain , I realized , I mean , I knew that reggaeton was coming from Latin America and basically , no reggaeton is from Spain ever .

But the slang used in those songs is very different to Spain Spanish .

A lot of the words I would learn from that would not be equivalent .

So for example , even the word I remember in some songs , I would hear the word and they have very different meanings .

So whenever they , people used to sing about it , I was like , this doesn't make any sense in Spain means to take something to grab something .

Whereas in Latin America , it means to a little bit of a different meaning .

I mean , it's not just because of that , but in general , if you know that you're learning like Spain Spanish , for example , try to choose artists from Spain specifically because songs are more artistic and creative and more conversational rather than grammatically correct .

So you're going to be getting a lot of slang , like most of your work words probably will be slang .

And if all of that slang is from a different country , it's going to be like , you're not going to use it .

Probably the next thing that I would say to myself is if you can afford it , take I talky lessons earlier , not traditional traditional classroom style classes .

There's like a few classroom style classes that I think are done extremely well .

Like for example , lingo , I think it's done extremely well .

I don't think I would ever just go back to like a school style .

Me to learn a language for like in a group of 10 people .

I don't know , I don't really see myself doing that unless it's some sort of experience on purpose .

Like I go to a different country to do that for a few weeks .

I feel like you don't like learning it .

So traditionally is the same way that we learn languages in school .

And as we all know most of the languages we learn in school , we don't pick them up .

Well , because they're not taught efficient , they're not taught in a way that you're going to remember it .

So I feel like , and I wanted to improve my Spanish .

I remember I would keep searching for all these classes that I could attend and I realized I could have saved myself so much time if I had just booked a few , I talky lessons because those conversational lessons I learned so much from even just 30 minutes with talking with someone .

This is also a personal preference and your ways of learning .

But personally , I wish I had prioritized I talkie type of classes rather than traditional style classroom teaching .

The next thing I would say is to really take advantage of the easy Spanish youtube channel .

But I honestly think they're extremely , extremely useful and right now the easy Spanish channel , I think they have over 300 uploads .

So more or less each video is like more or less 10 minutes .

So if you literally just like tried to watch a video a day for a year , your Spanish would grow like crazy .

First of all , you're getting so much slung , you're getting natural native pronunciation , not like , you know , Duolingo , like you're also hearing of the intonation of how they speak , the speed of how they speak .

And that is extremely , extremely important .

I think I realized this year and it's crazy that I only realized this year , but I realize that Spanish is so much more about your rhythm and intonation than your actual accent .

My accent is pretty good .

Pretty OK .

But my rhythm is off and I feel like that's the , the main reason why I always give myself away as a foreigner .

That's how people notice that .

It's not my first language .

I mean , I'm not saying my accent is that good , but my rhythm is really bad .

So I think that's the first thing that gives it away .

So with easy Spanish , like you can do so many things , you can either take down vocab , you can either like repeat what they're saying and practice your pronunciation with them , you can mimic their accent like in a nice way , obviously don't do this in real life with people in front of you .

But if you're watching a video , of course , you can mimic them accent .

I once again , I'm not in any way connected to them , like never spoke to any of them .

I just genuinely think it's such a good resource and I really wish I had used it earlier on .

And the last thing we have , this is kind of like a small one .

But if you know a specific country where you're going to be living , like for example , I knew that I was going to be moving to Spain or for example , I don't know if you know that you're going to be visiting Mexico a lot , then I would say to watch some iconic TV .

Shows in that area , I can't give a valid reason .

But for me , like when I was writing the kind of tips , like what I would do differently for this video , this was one of the first things that came to mind .

I was like , I really wish that I had just researched or asked my cousin or something .

What are some iconic shows like iconic shows that every Spaniard has seen ?

Like what is like an iconic show in Spain ?

There's a TV show called Aquino .

I can , I mean , I don't know , I feel like someone's going to , I'm going to say something like , yeah , everyone in Spain has seen on that show and someone's going to comment and be like , I've never heard of it , but it's a very , very iconic sitcom show .

There are hundreds of episodes and every episode is an hour long .

If I watched an episode a day , I would have learned so , so , so much and I would have gotten so much cultural context as well before coming here .

And once again , slang , I never realized until I moved here how important it was to understand slang .

I'm sorry .

But it is if the place you're going to or if the place you're planning to visit and learn Spanish there , if they have a strong slang , it's important to learn it because they're going to be using it a lot and you're going to feel lost .

I'm just speaking from my experience I had a lot of moments where I just did not know what anyone was talking about and sometimes it's words that I don't even get from context because they can , like , say a sentence and like , it's four words and three of them are slang and I'm like , all I understood was like , now I'm doing better , but in the beginning it was definitely a little difficult .

But yeah , these are all things I would do differently if I could start from scratch .

I hope you guys took something away from this .

Once again .

A reminder , these are not like , objectively better things and like , don't do this but do this instead .

But just me speaking with my younger self and like trying to save myself some time .

So yeah , I hope you guys enjoyed this video .

I love you all .

I wish you luck on your spon starting journeys and yeah .