Introduction
¡Adelante! Let's keep moving!
This is the third beginners Spanish course, Getting started with Spanish 3. You might have already gone through the previous courses in this program or you might be joining us now for the first time. Regardless, we hope you enjoy the course and find it useful.
This two-week course offers you a follow up to your learning journey. Each week comprises 3–4 hours of interactive activities, explanations, exercises and tips about language-learning. It’s a good idea to keep notes either on paper in a notebook or on your preferred digital device; in any case each week you’ll be encouraged to add to your own personal phrase book and decide how best you can go about memorising and practising key phrases and vocabulary. There is also a weekly quiz for you to practise what you’ve been learning.
You’ll start by learning how to make invitations or suggestions, but first of all, take some time to decide how you’ll allocate your time to your studies. Learning Spanish, like learning any language, is a gradual process; it’s often described as ‘a marathon, not a sprint.’ ‘Little and often’ is the best approach, so if at all possible, spread your 3–4 hours over the week, rather than spending on it one whole afternoon or evening. This will give you plenty of opportunities to revisit vocabulary and language structures, to revise quickly what you did last time and above all to practise and consolidate. This is the best way to learn vocabulary and perfect your accent.
Developing your speaking skills
By now, you should start feeling more confident with your listening, and in this course we would like you to pay particular attention to ways to develop your speaking skills. Here’s some advice on how to do that.
The first thing to do, is to try to speak Spanish as often as you can. You might say that’s impossible, because you don’t know any Spanish speakers! Well, when going about your daily life, you can try talking to yourself in Spanish in your head – this will help you anchor your learning into real-life, meaningful contexts.
On the other hand, if one of your motivations for learning Spanish is to speak to people, the best way you can practise that is to… speak to people! Have you got any Spanish-speaking friends you can practise what you are learning with? Are there any Spanish meetups near where you live? Or you might want to find language exchange partners online, using a free online exchange platform? It might feel a bit daunting, but the sooner you start practising your speaking, the more fluent and comfortable you will feel!
After studying this course, you should be able to:
- greet people in different contexts
- invite friends to go out with you, and accept or decline their invitations
- find preferred ways of recording and organising new vocabulary
- interpret information from tone and intonation
- hold formal conversation over the phone, and leave messages.