A huge component of being able to speak Spanish fluently is being able to understand what someone else is expressing to you. This is half of the battle, because you will then have to formulate a response to whatever they have said and then reply with decent pronunciation, vocabulary and verb tenses. But lets not get ahead of ourselves and talk about the reply yet. Lets just focus on understanding what another person is expressing to you in Spanish.

If you take a Spanish class, you will most likely find that the instructor only speaks Spanish in class. You may find this maddening at first if you are brand new to the language. However, if you are really serious about learning Spanish, you should thank your instructor for having the patience to be dedicated to your improvement. The only way to get better at understanding Spanish is to listen to it a lot. Proper expectations and attitudes will help you to improve with less frustration. Do not expect to understand everything your instructor is saying to you. Relax and do your best to absorb the meaning from the context of the lesson and body language. If you don’t get hung up on comprehending every little word, you may find that you understand much more than you formerly thought possible. Of course there will be times when you simply cannot get your mind wrapped around a topic without some explanation in English, and that is ok. However, you will benefit the most from resorting to English as a last ditch effort and using your Spanish as much as possible.

Keeping in line with your attitude of listening without expecting to understand everything, you can begin to pick up a lot by simply increasing your exposure to Spanish. You can listen to the Spanish radio station when you drive in your car. You could listen to a talk station, music or even commercials. It doesn’t matter as long as Spanish is being spoken. If you look around you will probably find some Spanish music that you enjoy, and this can be one of the easiest ways to influence yourself with more Spanish. You can simply put Spanish music on as background noise, or you can get a copy of the lyrics and read along as you listen to the words. Both will help to increase your comprehension and familiarity with Spanish.

Another fun way to listen to more Spanish is to watch Spanish language movies. Many Spanish speaking countries have a healthy and vibrant movie culture and there are a plethora of high quality Spanish movies to choose from. By watching Spanish movies you will learn a lot of new vocabulary as well as insights into the culture. Don’t worry if you can’t understand what is going on in the movie without turning on the English subtitles. Movie characters speak very quickly and often have thick accents or use a lot of slang. All you can do is do your best to listen to the words being spoken and don’t completely rely on the subtitles.

Lastly, a great way to improve your listening skills is to practice speaking one-on-one with a native speaker. If you have a friend, acquaintance or language exchange partner who speaks fluent Spanish, you will really improve your listening skills by conversing with them on a regular basis. In this context you will also need to have decent speaking skills so that you can interact with your partner and that sort of practice will take your Spanish proficiency to a whole new level.

Other articles you might like;

Related posts:

  1. How To Learn Spanish Are you interested in learning Spanish?  More and more English speakers are seeing the benefit...
  2. Practice Your Speaking Skills Maybe you studied a little Spanish when you were in high school, or you have...
  3. How To Use Spanish In the Real World You took the plunge and bought a computer assisted Spanish course. Maybe you enrolled in...

Filed under: Spanish Tutorials

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!