Blog
What is your worst enemy, if your goal is to understand and speak Spanish fluently?
The answer is simple: You!
It’s not verb conjugation, double R nor past tenses.
There are two main reasons why you are your own worst enemy when trying to learn Spanish, but today I’ll focus on one.
[Note: the other is lack of confidence and fear to speak the language in conversation.]
I see people spending countless hours deciding what’s the best method to learn Spanish. They are hoping they’ll find the latest hack that will make them fluent in no time.
Well, bad news: there is no one-size-fits-all method to learn a foreign language.
And, on top of that, the most important part of any strategy, is its implementation. If you don’t implement the tactics that will take you to your goal, nothing will come of your “perfect strategy”.
But wait, how am I supposed to find the perfect strategy, if there is no one-size-fits-all method to learn Spanish?
Well, you must learn which is the perfect strategy for you, and only you.
You will have to try different approaches. You will take up some ideas that give you good results, and rule out other ideas that just don’t work for you, or your current situation.
And here comes the most important part:
If you don’t actually put those ideas into practice, you’ll never find out what works for you, and what doesn’t.
In short, working on your Spanish is what is going to help you find your own best method to learn Spanish, and also what is going to allow you to make the most of that method.
By know, I guess you’ll be asking:
“And, where’s that worst enemy?”
Enter Procrastination
When I said that you are your own worst enemy when trying to learn Spanish, I didn’t mean that you are a bad person.
It’s just that you are human.
And that means that you have a human brain. And human brains are complex. They are powerful. But not perfect.
There is a part of your brain that is great at making plans—like creating a foolproof strategy to become fluent in Spanish, for example.
But there is also a part of your brain that is an expert at protecting your energy and your feelings. It doesn’t want you to spend energy in anything that’s not essential for survival (protecting your body, eating or procreating). And it doesn’t want you to do anything that may hurt you physically or emotionally neither.
It’s the part of our brain that makes us procrastinate.
And procrastination is your worst enemy.
So, basically, the most natural course of action when someone decides to learn a language is:
First, planing on what they will do in order to reach their goal.
Some people will continue planning forever, looking for a perfect strategy they will never implement.
Only some people will start—everything is new at the beginning, so we are really motivated.
The problem is that results are not immediate—at least the results we dream of.
And once we experience this truth, motivation naturally decreases and it won’t help us sit down and practice, or join that “scary” conversation group, or finish that online course we started.
And at a given moment, without us even noticing, we forget about our strategy to learn Spanish, and maybe even about our goal.
If this has ever happen to you, it means you are a normal person. It’s human nature.
Our brain is quite good at planning, but not at executing. And it’s great at procrastinating.
To tell you the truth, I think that procrastination is not only the worst enemy for Spanish learners, but the worst enemy for every human being.
The Solution
So, what can we do to avoid this dark fate?
I don’t have the cure for procrastination. Our brain is a really complex system, and our emotions play an important role that we can’t always control. I my self suffer the effects of procrastination in some areas of my life.
But at least, I have beaten it when it comes to learning—not only foreign languages, but also other topics—and I also have helped many of my students do it.
What we have to do is to build momentum.
How?
As soon as you start thinking of learning Spanish and which would be the best strategy, whether it is the first time or the tenth time you approach the matter, set a short learning activity that you are going to do every day.
It is really important that it is really short: it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes, because we want to be able to do it every single day no matter how busy or tired we are. Who hasn’t 10 minutes? You can even start with a 2 minute activity.
Preferably, it should be something that we can do by ourselves, so we don’t depend on other people.
And also, that we can do almost anywhere.
Think also, that, since you are going to spend only a few minutes, it doesn’t have to be the most important - effective activity. Even if it isn’t, you won’t have lost your time. It is important that you recognize this, so you don’t spend time deciding what is the best thing you could do. Just start.
It could be things such as:
● Review a list of vocabulary
● Look for a couple of new words to learn
● Practice the conjugation of one verb—choose just one tense
● Read one page of a book in Spanish
● Listen to a short audio in Spanish
● Watch a short video in Spanish
In case you choose to listen or watch, make sure to concentrate in the activity for the minutes you have chosen.
What this activity is going to make for us is building momentum.
When we have managed to repeat it for 30 - 40 days*, we’ll realize that we are capable of following a plan. And you will be able to continue.
*some experts say that we only need 21 days to build a habit, but it can take longer.
The idea is also that, when you have more time, even if you started the activity with the idea of doing it for only ten minutes, many times you will feel like continuing—that’s also momentum.
However, I don’t recommend you to do it during those first 30 - 40 days. If you wish to study or practice longer, and have the time to do it, do it in a different moment. Separate the short habit building activity and the longer activity in two different sessions.
This is because making the habit building activity longer can have a negative effect. You may end up forgetting the point of this activity, which is building momentum, and dismiss doing it when you don’t have more than 10 minutes.
First build a strong habit, and then, slowly, schedule longer study sessions.This habit will help you beat procrastination, and assure a long constant learning for you.
Try It
By the way, in order to help Spanish learners build a learning habit, we've just started the Spanish Learning Log in our Facebook Group.
It's a daily post where you can comment with your daily achievements. The goal is to build some accountability between members which will help you stick to your goals.
Light On Spanish is here to help
At Light On Spanish, we are aware that many Spanish learners are unable to reach their Spanish learning related goals due to their difficulty to develop a study and practice habit, being unable to persevere.
Our membership program is not only a resource to really understand the language and improve more easily. It is also an accountability system in itself.
Our members receive a catch up message every week. We don’t only invite them to tell us what they have worked on during that week, but we also invite them to reach out with their struggles, whether they are grammar or usage related, or they are related with their learning schedule and performance.
Once you are a member of Light On Spanish, you are no longer alone in your path to Spanish fluency.
How about you?
If you are a person who cares about the quality of your learning, and you are interested in joining our awesome community of committed Spanish learners, or just want to know more about our system, click on the link below, or send us a message through the contact form.
We'd love to hear from you.