You’re Never Too Old to Learn Spanish!

Bond says that some of the factors that contribute to successful language learning are:

personality, attitude and motivation – Bond mentions the “flexible ego” which means that a successful language learner is not ashamed of going full steam into a foreign language and making mistakes. It is this fearlessness that distinguishes the successful student from the struggling one. To be successful at a foreign language, Bond says that assertiveness, passion, confidence, intellectual capability and a strong will are indispensable ingredients for effective learning and immersion.

If fear is your biggest enemy, having daily Spanish lessons sent to your mailbox will erase some of that fear. It makes life so much easier when you know what to say each time you go to a bank, the cleaner’s, the restaurant, the doctor’s and when you’re looking for a date. Visit Daily Spanish Phrases and discover for yourself how it can be of tremendous help.

ability to see the relationship between languages – someone who is accustomed to hearing and speaking foreign languages will immediately detect similarities between languages; this is particularly true with English, Spanish, French and Portuguese, according to Bond. When a learner is vigilant about such similarities, learning is facilitated. If you look at sample lessons from Daily Spanish Phrases, you’ll see that in the quick grammar tips, this association is frequently cited.

mastery of mnemonic techniques – learning a language is like a guessing game. By mastering your memory skills, you learn how to find the foreign word through certain strategies like word association or symbolisms. For example, the Spanish word for “brother” is “hermano.” How will we remember this next time? We can invent a sentence like “all my brothers are called Herman.” The “Herman” name should triggger “hermano” in your brain. It’s like dabbling in a word game!

practice – nothing beats practice. We know of some language students who deliberately seek opportunities to practice only with native speakers. Our friend Luli is learning Spanish. She has temporarily put her English friends in the back burner because she’ll hang out only with Spanish speakers – at least until she becomes a fluent speaker herself.

Still think you’re too old to learn Spanish? ¿Y eso con qué se come? (what on earth is that?)

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