I had the awesome opportunity to hangout with Benny the Irish Polyglot of Fluent In 3 Months. I asked him a few questions about some roadblock I experienced learning Spanish. Here are a few more tips from our chat…
Listen Slowly
In my last post I talked about my struggles with understanding the pace of spoken Spanish (i.e. it’s ridiculously fast). Benny recommended using Yabla to slow down the speed of audio/video. You can find a video in your target language on YouTube and use the slow play back option. He also said to get a tutor and watch telenovelas with Spanish speakers that are known to speak more slowly–for example from Colombia or Mexico.
Use Pictures Instead of Translations
I asked Benny about a problem I’ve heard from other bilinguals, and that I’ve experienced when listening to Spanish audio or in a conversation. I generally find myself translating back into English which slows me down quite a bit and makes me miss half (or more) of what’s being said.
Benny’s advice? Think in your target language. He forces himself to think in a language and uses images instead of words for vocabulary. For example, instead of thinking coche means car, he associates coche with a picture. I’ve experimented with adding images, or mems, to my memrise course vocabulary to help me learn new words. My italki tutor also recommended this, even for verbs and more complex vocabulary.
I was skeptical of this idea, because it’s hard for me to think of an image for every word. I also thought it was limited to verbs. Being an auditory learner, using visuals didn’t seem like a natural idea to me. But so far it’s been working (for example, I still remember entablar means “to establish” by visualizing tablas or tables stacked on top of one another). It’s a technique I will definitely use more in the future.
How often do you get to talk one-on-one with someone who has successfully done what you’re trying to do? Luckily with technology, I was able to have this entire chat via Google Hangout.
In case you’re curious, the whole talk is here (my question is answered around minute 28:30 of the video)
