When I first arrived in South America I just had the little bit of Spanish I could remember from high school, I could hardly string a sentence together and was paranoid that I would sound stupid – my gracias (with the ‘th’ pronunciation sounded different to how they pronounced it over there. I soon learnt though that it’s the same word with the same meaning.
The Spanish I did know was more than enough, and I was soon nominated by my travel companions as the one who knew the most Spanish.
I explored South America by land, sometimes by bus but mainly hitch-hiking with friends I met along the way! It was always me who sat next to the truck driver conversing for hours on end while my travelling companions got some shut eye. It wasn’t a bad thing actually and it certainly improved my conversational Spanish and cultural knowledge of the countries I was visiting.
Now, I would totally recommend hitch-hiking round South America for four years as a learning method to boost your Spanish, but I do understand that’s not an option for everyone š So I definitely recommend immersing yourself in the language as much as possible.
So my Top Tip to you is to try livening up your learning with a mixture of different resources, classes and courses. Here are some of the things you can do to move forward with your learning;
- Download the App “Say something in Spanish”
- Listen to music in Spanish (I’ve been running “Music Mondays” in my Facebook group where I share a song from a different Spanish band each week here’s the link to join us. https://www.facebook.com/groups/821510401268060
- Watch films in Spanish with English subtitles
- Change your SatNav voice onto to Spanish (for journeys you do regularly) this is so much fun!
- Sign up to a group Spanish course
- Book some private lessons
Have fun! And let me know how you get on š
Adventures in Spanish Blog 