Speaking spanish

Why spanish ? First, because it sounds so sweet to ears and it is so perfect. It abounds in its cultural wealth of music, song, dance, cuisine, sports, places of interest, literature, customs and traditions. Spanish culture has all this and much more to offer.

A person who begins this journey will never want to reach the destination because the journey itself is so interesting . All said and done , do we really learn a language to know all this? Yes, we do but there is much more ! The most exciting moment for any beginner is to be able to speak spanish.

After almost 6 years of learning spanish and 2 years of spanish teaching experience ,i have derived that language learning is not just gaining knowledge but also living 2 lives. One in which you are born and the other which you choose to live. Sounds really strange; to be able to choose the life you want to live but that is possible by learning any new language not just a foreign language.

Coming back to being able to actually communicate rather than just speak spanish, we must understand that speaking , listening and understanding , reading and writing are four different and important skills to be acquired here. Not to forget ,that all 4 skills are deeply inter-related and help each other through out the entire learning process. In my opinion , speaking is the most important skill to be acquired since it makes language learning difficult and easy at the same time. How ??? Practically, speaking is diffilcult since just as you can't learn swimming by reading a book on swimming, you can't start speaking spanish unless you actually speak to someone . In a country where spanish is not the native language it is very difficult to find fluent language speakers to practice your langauge. You get to practice only the 2 or 3 hours of the class you attend. On the other hand, if this difficulty is solved, spanish becomes so easy since all other skills just follow. If first you learn to speak well , naturally you listen well and comprehend well and of course you can put on paper what you speak .... so your writing skills improve.

Watch out for the next post , where i will discuss more on improving your speaking skills.
The first sentence you learn in a beginner's spanish class is ¿ Hablas español ? ( Do you speak spanish?) and the answer is " No muy bien "( Not very well ) We should remember that we don't want to end up saying the same at the end of a spanish learning course !!!!!!!