Tag Archive for: Spanish language

Squeezing in some Spanish over the holidays!

Squeezing in some Spanish over the holidays

I know, I know, I know, you are very busy right now and the last thing you need to think about is how you are going to practice your Spanish over the holidays!
But, I am a firm believer that anyone can find five minutes in their day for a little practice. And those five minutes will help you to not come back to class in January feeling like a total dumbass, so I highly recommend it!

Here are a few recommendations:

Things that you can easily do for five minutes:
Talk to yourself
Participate in La conversación del Día on PBO’s Facebook page
Journal about your day (on your phone if necessary)
Do DuoLingo or better yet, Busuu
Listen to Spanish radio, a podcast, music, and audiobook, whatever…
Listen to music in Spanish
Read a paragraph or two or three of a book/magazine, whatever you can squeeze into five minutes
Hear someone speaking Spanish? Strike up a conversation!

When to squeeze in these five minutes:
While you are getting ready
While you are having breakfast
While you are waiting in a horribly long line somewhere
You can use it as an excuse to get away from your crazy family for five minutes
While you are driving
While you are at an airport somewhere
While you’re cleaning

So, as you can see, you can always find 5 minutes to practice your español :) How will you practice over the holidays?

Besos,
Caro

Spanish tip: Diccionario vs Dictionary

Spanish tip: Diccionario vs Dictionary

Hola chicos,
¿Qué tal la semana?

As you probably all know by now, immersion is the best way to learn a language.  Yet most of the time, when we are studying Spanish, we look up a word in the dictionary with the English definition. Why do we do this?  Because it’s faster & much easier I would think.

This week our tip to you is to look up words in a Spanish dictionary. Most of the time we can understand the meaning when it is explained in Spanish and this allows us to stay in our target language, which in the long run is a much more effective learning strategy. If it’s still not clear, you can always look it up in English, but try Spanish first.

What is a new word for you this week and what is the definition that you found in the dictionary in Spanish?  Give us the definition, but not the word…let’s see if we can guess!

Besos,
Caro

 

My favorite dictionaries:

Real Academia Española

Word Reference