One of my Spanish learning tricks
Hey, ¿qué es la que hay?! (what’s up!?)
Quick reminder before we dive into today’s email: Tomorrow we are opening up enrollment to the Become A Spanish Speaker Workshop.
Spots will be limited.
We are only accepting the first 100 students that sign up.
There were about 650 people that raised their hand to show interest so those spots may go quickly.
Just saying.
Okay, let’s get started…
So did you see yesterday’s email? (this one here)…
Well, here’s the follow up —
Because I told you that the #1 rule to becoming fluent in Spanish IS…
Real acquisition comes ONLY from comprehensible input.
That’s it.
I then explained that a piece of content is “comprehensible” when you understand at least 80% of it.
But how do you check this?
It’s simple…
Take the first 50 words of the text and break it down into 5 lines of 10 words.
You should understand at least 40 of the 50 words… so on average, 8 out of the 10 per line.
If you can do this, the content will likely serve as “comprehensible input.”
But that brings the question…
What do you do if you can’t understand 80% of the content?
Do you just scrap it and give up?
No, of course not.
Instead, you use Spanish and English text to decode it.
This sounds complicated, but it’s pretty straightforward.
What you want to do is compare the texts together and read along as you listen.
As long as you have the content in Spanish, you can always copy and paste it into Google Translate.
I know that our teachers in school prohibited the use of Google Translate…
But guess what?
We are not in school…
And we are not trying to get an entirely grammatically correct English translation.
We simply want to know what’s being said in Spanish.
So here’s 3 simple steps to follow:
- You read through the text in Spanish and compare it to the English version to get a general understanding of what the content is about…
- Listen to the content 1 time through while reading the Spanish text.
- The 2nd time you listen to it, read along in English.
I recommend that you keep alternating between Spanish and English until the content becomes understandable.
You will be shocked by how fast you retain the words and how few times you have to listen to understand.
Over time your comprehensible input range will grow so vast that you won’t even need to have the text to understand it.
This is when your results will skyrocket.
That’s because you will be able to consume MASSIVE amounts of content without having to check for translations and meanings.
This makes it easy to consume even when you’re on the go.
I know, this seems so dang simple…
This is why most people “mess it up.”
So if you’ve ever wondered why some people just “pick up” foreign languages so quickly…
The answer is they do an excellent job of ignoring the traditional methods of memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules…
And instead, consume massive amounts of Spanish input… whether they realize they are doing it or not.
More comprehensible input = faster fluency
So that’s one of my tricks to acquiring Spanish and becoming fluent quickly.
I’ve got plenty more…
But you’ll have to wait until the workshop to get them 😉
I mean, I can’t give away all the secrets away for free…
Or else I would be without a job 🙁
Anyways…
I hope that helps!
Hablamos luego,
Rocky
P.S. If you are really serious about leveling up your Spanish this year… You should definitely think about signing up for the Become a Spanish Speaker Workshop.
Inside of the workshop, we will be piggybacking the ideas I’ve been emailing about.
I’ll be walking you step by step through everything you need to know about integrating these types of strategies into your daily routine so you can become fluent in Spanish faster.
Enrollment opens tomorrow right here on this page.
I recommend you open that page and refresh it in the morning so you can be one of the first 100 students to reserve your spot…
That is, if you want to sign up. If not, that’s cool too.
At the end of the day, the choice is yours.