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Learn spanish reading1/7/2024 ![]() This high-frequency vocabulary will serve as a strong base for sentence decoding (and later sentence construction), and will allow you to pick up additional vocabulary along the way. Once these words are mastered, you will be able to mentally process and understand the language at a high level. What's the solution to this problem? For most, the solution is to limit vocabulary to only the essential words. Many students give up out of frustration after just 10-15 words. I get it. In addition, these vocabulary lists tend to be way too long. It becomes an exercise in rote memorization, one that most people are destined to fail. Unfortunately, these lists rarely give you enough (or any) context for the words. Sometimes they will break those down into categories, which is better than the whole list of words in one or two big columns. Your Spanish textbook will likely present vocabulary in long chapter lists. The second big struggle for many Spanish learners is to actually learn enough vocabulary to do the tasks they need to accomplish. If you really want to speak Spanish well, you need to learn grammar through vocabulary building. But too much focus on how to say things will lead to a shallower fluency. Admittedly, sometimes passing the test is all we need to do. Indeed, studying grammar rules will only help you pass a grammar test. When you spend too much time studying grammar rules, you begin to consciously think about how to say things, instead of what to say. You simply think about the message you want to express and the words just bubble up from your subconscious, like the carbonation bubbles in can of soda. Now, your brain automatically knows how to use words within the rules of your own internal grammar structure. After mentally processing for thousands of hours in your native language, your brain built a grammar around the messages you had received. When you were a toddler learning English (or whatever your native language happens to be), you didn't spend a single second learning the difference between a participle or an infinitive, or how to use double object pronouns while in the imperfect subjunctive mood. Instead, you focused all your attention on receiving and sending messages to those around you. Studying grammar is not the natural way to learn a language, and it will not lead to any real fluency. Many students over the years have told me that their biggest struggle is with the grammar. ![]() Many college professors expect their students to know lots of grammar rules and be able to reproduce them on tests. The main struggle for college Spanish students is mastering the grammar. Picking Up Spanish without Explicit Grammar Instruction Since processing comprehensible language is the driving force behind acquisition, you want to have as many chances as possible to do just that. If you want to learn to speak Spanish, you need to get serious about reading Spanish. When you read for fun in Spanish, your brain gets lots of opportunities to process the language. You cared about his perilous and heroic quest to destroy the ring. When you read (watched?) the Lord of the Rings, you didn't care that Frodo used the first person singular form in the present indicative. In other words, when we hear and read stories, our brains only care about the message of the text. Engaging stories take our focus off the "how" we communicate and put it squarely on the "what" and "why". Our brains are hard-wired for storytelling. ![]() We make original and compelling stories to help you achieve natural and, over time, native fluency. At Read to Speak Spanish, we take a different approach to language acquisition.
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