THE NUMBERS SPEAK
About 95% of adult learners fail in their attempt to learn to speak fluently a foreign language. Avoid the mistake made by others.
LEARN TO SPEAK WITH YOUR EARS, NOT YOUR EYES
If you want to learn to speak Spanish automatically and naturally then develop your Spanish listening skills first just like a native speaker does.
Listening provides the foundation for speaking.
The speaking ability grows out of the listening ability.
Listening leads speaking and pulls it along.
As your listening ability improves, it will pull your speaking ability up, too.
If you focus on listening to Spanish first, you will train your brain to think in Spanish and when you think in Spanish, you no longer translate, you no longer think about grammar, pronunciation or vocabulary. The Spanish language will become a deep part of you, just like your own native language; the hesitation, the strain, the stress, the doubt, the confusion, all gone. Spend most of your study time listening - repetitive listening is the key to great speaking. Your brain needs LOTS of repetitive listening for effortless speech to emerge.
Languages are acquired in prefabricated chunks that we hear repeatedly; chunks are groups of words that can be found together in a language. For example, “I want” is a chunk that you use to create an infinite number of expressions by adding another chunk for example “an ice-cream”. What we do as fluent speakers is essentially put together pieces of prefabricated language. Very little of what we actually say is original content.
Set your audio device on repeat. You must burn the Spanish phrases into your head through repetitive listening and the Spanish language will just pop into your head, the Spanish language will come out of your mouth effortlessly like a native speaker. It’s the sounds in your head that form the sounds that come from your mouth.
I've never heard of a human being who could produce words without first receiving them as input. If you can’t hear it, you can’t say it. Listening then must come before speaking (understanding precedes production). Clearly, in order to have a good quality output (speaking), you must have a lot of good quality input (listening). Lots and lots of listening first. You can always understand more of a language than you can produce. If you hear something enough times, you’ll eventually be able to say it aloud quite effortlessly. You don't have to be "gifted" to learn to speak any language, but you do have to be smart about how you learn it.
STUDYING SPANISH GRAMMAR
For adults there’s a rush to know everything. Our adult analytical mind compels us to want to know all the details, now. Knowing that information will not make you a better speaker. Focus on the meaning and function of a phrase. For example: hasta la vista, adiós, nos vemos, hasta luego, hasta pronto, hasta otra, hasta la próxima, etc - they all mean the same thing. Forget about why it is like that, it doesn’t matter, just accept it and move on. By studying grammar, all you’re doing is impeding your progress toward fluency by focusing on details that you’ll pick up automatically over time.
Usually a native speaker does not know grammar at all, what a native speaker has in terms of speech with proper grammar is a feeling for the correctness of the language, that is, they are competent in recognising what sounds right and what sounds wrong and they have developed this competence through listening. By listening to phrases again and again you're naturally learning how to use a word correctly with other words like a native speaker.
OUR LESSONS
Our 69 audio lessons are 100% Spanish (6 hours). You won’t hear anything else but Spanish in our lessons. You'll immerse yourself in the sounds and patterns of the Spanish language, just as if you were living in a Spanish speaking country. Complete transcripts and English translations as needed are provided in the pdf files for understanding. Reach your goal of fluency in the shortest time possible by only listening to Spanish in our course.
Our question and answer lessons teach you to think in Spanish just like a native Spanish speaker. Our lessons will burn the Spanish language into your brain.
Our focus is on teaching you to speak Spanish clearly, correctly and fluently whether you have zero or advanced knowledge of Spanish.
Our audio course has been carefully designed to deal with the Spanish grammar in an intuitive and natural way so you will be able to effectively and confidently communicate ideas, thoughts and feelings in Spanish.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO LEARN TO SPEAK SPANISH
Whether you’re a beginner, intermediate or advanced Spanish student, you may be wondering how long it will take to become fluent in the Spanish language. We use ‘fluent’ to mean ‘speaking correctly and without hesitation about everyday matters’. There is a study done by Dr. J. Marvin Brown of AGL (Automatic Language Growth) about this, it says that 720 hours of listening are needed to become fluent from English to Spanish. That is:
If you listen to Spanish for 2 hours everyday, you'll need 52 weeks (12 months) to become fluent.
If you listen to Spanish for 4 hours everyday, you'll need 26 weeks (6 months) to become fluent.
If you listen to Spanish for 8 hours everyday, you'll need 13 weeks (3 months) to become fluent.
Spread you listening time throughout the day. You can become a fluent Spanish speaker in less than a year.