Learning Spanish, as well as any other foreign language is actually a lot easier than it may appear to be. It’s simply a matter of knowing which method you’re using to learn the language. If you start mixing the ways of learning, you may, and certainly will get confused and potentially get discouraged.

If you know of someone who came in your country, didn’t speak a word of your native language, a few years later he or she speaks it perfectly with a proper grammar and pronunciation and knows how to read and write, just ask that person how they learned your native language and you will understand this article to full extent. By the way, this article was written by such person.

Most folks, when they set out to study a new language, begin by enrolling in Spanish I at their local Junior College. This is not the way to begin. In fact, the formal learning about the language in a course at the JuCo is about 5 years away from where you are at if you’ve had no experience at acquiring the target language.

You begin by listening. You need this exposure to grow accustomed to the sounds of the language. You need this period of silence in which you listen, not produce, so you can bombard your brain with lots and lots of visual and auditory impressions in the new language you are seeking to understand and speak. You’ve got to learn “the music” of the language. You’ve got to experience comprehensible input.

In today’s busy life, setting a time aside for learning Spanish could sometimes create a great challenge. Attending Spanish language courses at the nearby college slowly becomes the thing of the past. Even the colleges are readopting to the new way of life by offering online courses. But, the time constraint is still there. You still need to somehow fit it into your busy schedule along with everything else. You still need to follow their assigned timeframe for attending and finishing the class.

That’s why the self study courses became very popular, because you control your time and you decide when to study. Here are a few tips to help you learn Spanish on your own.

What is your ultimate goal as it relates to learning Spanish? What do you want to accomplish with learning the Spanish language?

Very important questions. How you answer them would determine how fast and how well you will learn Spanish. Let’s take a closer look at this.

The root of any language is the words. What good would it do you if you learn the Spanish grammar, pronunciation, tenses and all of the other theory, when you only know 5 Spanish words? Your Spanish language knowledge would be useless because you won’t be able to communicate. And without communication, nothing happens.

The chief problem for most Americans who want to learn Spanish but who don’t succeed is the Affective Factor. Plainly put, this means the emotional issues; that is, adults become freaked out at the thought. The fear of getting put on the spot and embarrassed is just too much to bear.

I’ve talked to plenty monolingual American and Canadian expats in Mexico who do not learn Spanish. They are, therefore, forced to live in the various Gringolandias because they are too fearful of learning Spanish. They self-perceive the problem as their “advanced years” or, as one cantankerous old coot put it, “I have too lousy of a disposition to learn Spanish.”

Exactly how the brain stores language, spoken and understood speech, has not exactly been known. Recently, however, there have been more clues to what goes on in the brain when spoken fluency in the primary and secondary language is acquired. Our brains, when exposed to hundreds of thousands of repetitions in the target language (First, second, third, etc…), organize and store the visual and auditory impressions. But, what is absolutely amazing is that with regard to speech, these impressions are not being stored in long or short-term memory.