Learning Spanish has less to do with your knowledge of it and more to do with your want to experience the daily life of another culture. This superpower is not one you can/or should want to turn off once activated.
I see Spanish for Black Girls as just the start for all of my students on their path to indistinguishably speaking like a true native. Language is the gateway to unlocking everything.
What I’ve developed in Spanish for Black Girls is designed for the woman looking to culturally immerse herself in this lingual transformation every single day. She is always in her mental classroom and sees that this is more than a touristy excursion she turns on and off like a switch. I would tell her what I’m telling you now: The only way to appreciate and grasp this language is to practice and listen to it in order to see how it is spoken all the time.
1. Active and Passive Listening
Active and Passive Listening are two of the most common ways to test and improve upon the skills you are trying to develop. Direct conversation with a native speaker or someone like me who’s bilingual is a very effective method to achieve a new level of comprehension and annunciation while being corrected in real-time (not like a teacher but by listening to them speak and mimicking it).
I believe this is where your love of this process will take on a new shape the more you speak. Passive is when you are listening to a conversation without participating. Remaining aurally present in the flow and pronunciation of the dialogue moving between two or more other people is very effective when you’re training your ear while learning Spanish.
I encourage all of my students, even the ones who are more advanced than others, to use this method of learning as their foundation of real-world Spanish outside of the classroom environments where they were taught. Surprisingly, there is another classroom where you can carry out your lessons.
2. Listen to various media in Spanish
The media gets blamed for many things, and rightfully so, but one thing I tell my students to do is to indulge in as much Spanish-speaking television, music and other forms of entertainment like podcasts and the news as possible. (Yes, you read that right.) I tell them that the best way to passively learn the sound of the Spanish alphabet is through these passive means of direct research.
When you’re watching a telenovela, put on the closed captioning to see the words in Spanish and then look them up to get their definition as needed. Find a salsa, merengue, bachata, rap or pop song in Spanish and follow along with the lyrics. Reading and listening give you a pace to train your ear and lets you see the words in rhythm. Extremely valuable in identifying what’s being said and to get an understanding that not all forms of entertainment sound like what we hear played here in ‘Estados Unidos’.
Playing music while learning Spanish allows you to sing along with the melodies and practice how to form your mouth when speaking it. There is another valuable lesson that is taught using this method.
3. Talk to people from various places in the Spanish-speaking world
All Spanish is not the same. This is not a one size fits all way of speech. As I have stated in previous posts, every country is unique and within these nations reside complexities in tone and meaning often vary. Despite the common knowledge amongst non-Spanish speakers, Dominicans do not sound like Puerto Ricans identically to how Mexicans do not mirror Colombians in speech.
Similarly, Spaniards and Argentinians have noticeable differences in dialects that can be heard the more you listen. This is true for all countries and means you will always be studying this language due to the variances.
All real achievements, in any area of life, come with challenging tests that force us to really focus on the goal ahead. Learning Spanish mirrors that process. I know how intimidating learning Spanish can be the more you throw in all these other parts in the equation that results, but no one ever said this would be easy. Also, if it was, would it feel as great knowing it was a walk in the park becoming fluent? Not at all because you love a challenge that tests your mettle–and that’s why Spanish for Black Girls is perfect for you.
