A blog to help English speakers with their common problems when learning Spanish
Learning a new language is a difficult process which requires dedication and perseverance. The first contact with the new language is going to be crucial to either gain motivation with it or suffer from a mental block and reject the idea of learning it.
English-speakers often have problems to understand how the Spanish language works and some grammatical concepts. This is totally understandable because native languages are learned in different ways. For example, English educational system focuses on phonetic and spelling while the priority in Spain is grammar and how to use it.
Over the last 5 years teaching Spanish I’ve noticed that my students usually make the same mistakes and have very similar doubts. Something that helps me very much in my lessons is the fact that I´ve studied English and this puts me in my student’s shoes to see what their mental processes are for not understanding something.
With the time, I’ve found new ways to explain Spanish grammar to my students. Sometimes, using explanations that are more rudimentary, simpler or even funnier. For example, changing the names helps my students to understand things better and producing the language in a correct way without having to use very elaborated and technical explanations.
In this blog, I would like to address these problems and share with you all these tricks and explanations which have been very useful for my students. Hopefully, in the future, Espamundi will become the reference for English speakers that are learning Spanish and want to take advantage of what they already know to retain certain concepts. Spanish teachers are also very welcome to use these approaches and I would love to hear their stories about it.
Your Spanish journey starts here.