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Improve your language skills!

A child learns to speak by listening and repeating. A child often makes numerous mistakes while learning to speak. By age four or five, children can communicate in a language without taking a single grammar course.

Many students of a language only practice reading and writing in a new language and never progress past beginner or early intermediate levels.

The result is that possibly after several years of learning, learners can hardly hold a conversation or understand a native speaker.

Our goals:

  • Jump start your language skills
  • Actually learn to speak a 2nd language
  • Practice 4 skills, but focus on listening and speaking
  • Track your level and see your improvement
Level Up!

Skills to practice

Each of the four main skills is important in order to progress.

Many students of a language only practice reading and writing in a new language and never progress past beginner or early intermediate levels.

The result is that possibly after several years of learning, learners can hardly hold a conversation or understand a native speaker.

In order to stress each of the four skills, you can find a menu item for each on the top menu. Each of these pages is filled with videos on topics mostly from YouTube.

My blogs, as described below, are about how I practice. The first thing I would do is to check your level of understanding. I’ve written a post describing what content usually makes up each level in Spanish. At the end of the blog there are two links: one to test your level of Spanish and one to test your level of English.

https://spanish1a.org/en/check-your-level/

I encourage you to join me in my journey.

Begin Now

How to practice

First and foremost, this is a language blog. But just what is a language blog? Well in this case it is a practice site. By that I mean that the objective here is not necessarily to teach a language, but rather to show some of the steps necessary to acquire a language.

The manner in which we practice here is by using a few different methods depending on the skill desired. With a balanced learning approach, there should be four skills practiced: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

In order to practice each of the skills, there is a dedicated page for each containing videos to help learn, refresh and practice. For example, the listening page is broken up by level (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and the advanced section is further subdivided (vocabulary, listen and absorb, patterns, sounds, and slow to fast practice) for specific areas of practice.

Additionally, the creative content of the site takes a few forms. From the main menu, one can access blogs on a variety of topics and by level.

Blogs will typically include:

  1. an introduction
  2. a vocabulary list
  3. flashcards related to the content
  4. a reading (story, song, poem, etc.)
  5. audio to accompany the reading
  6. a link to recording software for you to read, record and compare
  7. comprehension activities about the reading (aka homework)
  8. related fun activity, such as crossword, word search, etc.

Most information appearing on blogs, such as vocabulary, quizzes, flashcards, and helpful videos will also appear on a dedicated page. For example, by selecting Quizzes from the main menu, one will see a collection of quizzes from blogs, organized by level.

Get Started

Translations

Did you notice the language changer in the menu? Click on either English or Spanish will translate the site. The language changer may also be visible in the right side of each page where categories and tags appear.

The language switcher works by simply clicking on the language name to change the site’s language.

In some cases the language is not meant to change, such as vocabulary, flashcards and games. Those may be unaffected.

The site is also in the process of evaluating a few language translators to assist, since the site can be accessed in either English or Spanish. Some of these translators use Google Translate and while others allow for a more hands-on translation.

The English on the site should be reasonably OK. If the Spanish is lacking, please leave a note at: steve@spanish1a.org. Constructive criticism is appreciated.

About

Acquire your Spanish

Hi, my name is Steve. I was a licensed Spanish teacher and a certified ESL instructor. Welcome to my site.

I’ve noticed my Spanish skills slipping a bit, so I’ve decided to do an A-Z review. The review that I have chosen is distinctly different than the one used to learn Spanish.

In school, I learned Spanish by memorizing and practicing grammar and vocabulary. Unless one loves grammar, it is a boring way to learn.

Knowing what I know now, that way seems counter intuitive.

Rather, the approach here will be to acquire Spanish through reading and listening actual content that I present with explanation and activities.

The single piece of advice I can give is having consistent practice. First, find your blind spots. By first finding where you are the weakest, you can target those area for improvement. My biggest concern is listening skills, so I am target those. Additionally, I am seeking my blind spots to target. An example would be: verb expressions with prepositions (such as aprender a, dejar de, etc.).

Feel free to use any of the activities and join me in my quest to improve.

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