How to practise Spanish outside of your lessons

Learning Spanish might be challenging at first, but as every single activity you do, it gets easier over time, and if you are just a little bit creative, even entertaining. 

The most important part of learning a new language is how much time you spend learning and using it. If you want to compare it with anything, learning might share some similarities with muscles.

Picture this: you see this big guy at your gym and he is h u g e, he walks to the weights and now you know he lifts up to 110 kilograms, the first thing that you might think is "Today is not his first day at the gym, that's for sure". You know that he had at least came here for the last year a minimum of 4 times a week, and like it or not, your brain works in the same way as the muscles of that man.

When you learn anything, in order to create knowledge, your brain uses its brain cells to process all the new material you are feeding him with, and when brain cells work altogether, in order to improve the "data" handling and storage, they connect with each other, but in order to generate this connection, the brain cells must go through the same process as the muscles of that hypothetical gym guy, they must go through a hard training, just to rest and repeat to have stronger connections between brain cells.

Now you might be asking yourself "How can I train my brain to be like that guy that trains at least 4 days a week in the gym?", the answer is in  just changing your world, getting yourself out of the comfort zone, and start practicing with:

-Videogames: This is the most addictive way to learn for all ages. To talk about video games you must be quite precise, of course, games like Geometry Dash will give you as much Spanish knowledge as watching your neighbors grass grow, but some might give you an entertaining experience, and time will definitely fly away. At first it will feel weird since you never started playing video games in order to learn before, but once you find a game with an interesting campaign history you will almost certainly spend a minimum of 2 hours per "study" session. 

-Language learning apps: personally I have mixed feelings about this one, for sure, they are quite accessible and they are available 24/7, but to use it as your main source of training might not fill your expectations. There is no doubt that their usefulness depends on how constant you  are using it, and they help newcomers improve their vocabulary, the way in which they order sentences, and even with some pronunciation. But sometimes might be not as exciting as having the possibility to use your new language to bla bla bla (agarrar valor y usar las nuevas palabras aprendidas para formar otras oraciones más que las que se usan para clarificar conceptos nuevos)

-Consuming media in spanish: My favorite personal way to learn spanish (and the one you would probably will also love the most) is with TV shows, movies, books, memes, youtube videos, etc. . This is how I got most of my english knowledge, the only cons about this method is that sometimes you will find yourself consuming trash content, and also perhaps will lose track of time quite often, so I would recommend to stick with one medium, either a movie, or either a tv show or either a book, if you don't finish one before starting another one, you will end up being a blob on your sofa/bed just scrolling or repeating "un capitulo más y ya luego iré a dormir", just like you would do it in english.

-Having a dring with native speakers: If you are over the legal age of drinking, and you like to have some drinks from time to time, I will seriously recommend having a drink with spanish speakers. We are all humans, we all have feelings, and one of the most dangerous feelings is the one of being ashamed of your mistakes, but luckily there is a temporary potion out there in the market that not only gives a boost to your social skills, but also lower . Latin party, Latin bars, grills (asados, barbacoas, however you call it )

-Writing in spanish: A nice small super power in knowing another language, besides your native one, is that when you use it to describe feelings, thoughts or ideas it might feel like you have less problems opening yourself, to yourself (or even others). Writing in a foreign language allows you to detach yourself from the words you are using, without necessarily lying, or to modify the truth. Actually some people tends to find quite easy to extend 

-Create a learn or die digital environment: Wouldn't it be funny if just for laughs sake you changed your notebook's, phone's and computer's language to spanish? If your answer it is "no" you are a smart person, but having to push yourself out of the comfort of your native language to actively search for the meaning of new words and when they are used just to use a personal computer/device will certainly make your learning more stressing, but once you went through the first rough part, you won't even notice that all of your notifications are in another language.

-Music: One reason why latin culture is spreading all around the world these previous years is because of the catchy songs and famous artists that you will find in spotify's top 100 global: Bad Bunny, Rauw Alejandro, Daddy Yankee, Rosalia, and more.

Using music to learn spanish certainly will be easy, since finding songs are easy, but I must say that most of them use slang in their lyrics, but if you want to start slowly, the right way to do it is with the oldies but goodies: Los panchos, Eydie Gormé and Los Angeles Azules, mythical artist that had nothing to envy to modern day celebrities, and with a big plus: back then artist using slang were not taken seriously, so you have heavily emotional songs that will definitely give you a nice journey through well written lyrics.

If you manage to follow up all of the previous tips you will definitely find yourself speaking more than "Muchos gracias" the next time you encounter yourself with any spanish speaker, but if you want to make it in under than 3 months, don't hesitate to reach me out, in this platform everyone just wants to lean a hand, and you must make sure that the one you receive it's the right one 😉