I’m taking the first intermediate level Spanish language class at my High School. I understand my teacher when he speaks in Spanish, because most of the day that’s all he speaks. But when it comes to understanding a customer at my store when my friends speak Spanish, I can only catch of few things. Are there ways to help me learn conversational Spanish.
I can’t travel over seas at the moment. I need to get my high school diploma.
And my teacher says he speaks with an Argentinian accent. I don’t know if that changed anything.
I've taken the introductory classes to Spanish.
I am 16 years old, and considerably good at Spanish. I am not fluent, but I can usually say whatever I am trying to say some how or another. And you, as I was, are struggling through the hardest part. To me, Spanish is extremely hard to understand. I say this because I am also taking German, and even though I am not nearly as good at German as I am in Spanish, the words are easy to hear.
So, what I did, and still do because I am still learning, is to watch the Simpsons in Spanish. Buy a season or two, because they have every Episode in English, Spanish, and French. This show also has many characters, many with completely different accents/dialects. This will help you recognize the different sounds, especially if you know the episode in English very well. You will find that sometimes you can almost understand one episode completely, and some episodes you will barely understand at all! So just stick with it, I have watched at least one episode a night, for about 3 months now, and I have already seen drastic Improvement.
Good luck!
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Did you take intro to spanish first? You should usually be at least comprehending the words in order to take an advanced language class. Maybe you’re past the point in your life where your brain simply won’t learn new languages. There is a limit in ages where you can easily pick up languages… kids can so easily but once they get past like 9 or something they stop soaking it up. But my idea, try one of those languages tapes and just listen to it.
References :
watch a lot of movies in spanish
watch them first with subtitles then without
you will remember a lot
also- don’t be afraid to try to speak spanish even though you are struggling
its flattering to native speakers and the more you try, the faster you learn
References :
im fluent (though i grew up speaking spanish, its not my first language)
watch spanish tv channels and listen to spanish radio. This is how I learned to understand when people are talking. You probably have to put (spanish , not english) captions on the tv so you understand at first.
There are lots of different Spanish dialects and accents. In the long run it won't matter though; once you are fluent you will understand all the different accents.
AND BTW in response to babyblue learning to understand when native speakers are talking to you is the MOST difficult part. Even if you take intermediate spanish! books and classes are not the same as real life. It's normal that you can't pick it up right now.
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personal experience
I am 16 years old, and considerably good at Spanish. I am not fluent, but I can usually say whatever I am trying to say some how or another. And you, as I was, are struggling through the hardest part. To me, Spanish is extremely hard to understand. I say this because I am also taking German, and even though I am not nearly as good at German as I am in Spanish, the words are easy to hear.
So, what I did, and still do because I am still learning, is to watch the Simpsons in Spanish. Buy a season or two, because they have every Episode in English, Spanish, and French. This show also has many characters, many with completely different accents/dialects. This will help you recognize the different sounds, especially if you know the episode in English very well. You will find that sometimes you can almost understand one episode completely, and some episodes you will barely understand at all! So just stick with it, I have watched at least one episode a night, for about 3 months now, and I have already seen drastic Improvement.
Good luck!
References :
I’m having the same problem right now.