To Improve Your Spanish: Look & Listen, Write & Speak

I realized today that the ever on-going quest to improve my Spanish can be compared to my drive to work every morning. Some of the patches of roadway I encounter on the way to the office are smooth-sailing. Flat. The car coasts. It moves fluidly.  Other parts are littered with potholes, typical of a post-winter Northeast USA. I carefully slow my car, dip into the pothole, come up and out, speed up, only to jam the breaks again when another dip comes along. The car jerks around. And then it’s stop-go stop-go, braking and speeding, the remainder of the way to the office.

I find that the more Spanish I learn, the more there is to learn. And then there are more roadblocks and dips I come across. I ask myself these questions constantly, “How can I make myself sound more natural when I speak Spanish to my patients? How can I make word order in a sentence flow naturally and not sound choppy? How can I make my communications in Spanish  seem like smooth-sailing, with no verbal potholes?”

In attempting to answer these questions, I have come to two simple conclusions. In any language:

1 – You improve your speaking by listening

2 – You improve your writing by reading

I am currently in the penultimate month of an 8-month-long English to Spanish translation course. I’ve learned an immense amount of information in a short period of time. I’ve translated newspaper articles, scientific abstractions, technical writing, legal forms and medical consents. I’ve written 500 to 900-word Spanish compositions. I’ve done editing and proofreading in Spanish. I’ve analyzed the opinions of famed translators and/or philosophers like Cicero, Maimónides, Dolet and José Ortega y Gasset. But even armed with tools such as medical Spanish dictionaries, professional proofreader’s marks and parallel texts, I’ve learned the real key to becoming more natural in a language is to surrender myself to its spoken and written word.

My sources for written Spanish include:

-Literary texts I’ve collected over the years. Some of my favorite authors include: Carmen Laforet, Rosa Montero, Esmeralda Santiago, Carmen Martín Gaite, Sandra Cisneros & Carme Riera.

-Online newspapers. I try to read a few articles a day on www.elmundo.es (el Mundo)  and http://cnnespanol.cnn.com/ (CNN en español)

-Medical internet sites. Being an ophthalmologist, I frequently refer to the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s patient-oriented site: www.ojossanos.org  This is the sister site to the English www.geteyesmart.org

-Facebook. There are Facebook pages dedicated to improving one’s Spanish writing skills and orthography. One in particular I found through Twitter: facebook.com/0rtografiaReal

-Twitter. Immensely helpful Spanish orthography accounts that give daily tips on Spanish writing and written expression: @OrtografiaReal, @0RTOGRAFIA, @GramaticaReal

-Personal Websites: www.laimportanciadehablaryescribirbien.com

-Online Translators/ Word Finders: Never use online/ machine translators to translate  your documents. Word order and vocabulary choice are frequently a problem.  However, they’re helpful when looking up a quick word definition or spelling. For this you can use:  Google translate (www.translate.google.com)  For colloquial phrases, I frequently use Linguee Spanish/English or English/Spanish (http://www.linguee.es/)

-The ultimate source for Spanish word definitions, spellings, synonyms, conjugations and overall use is the Real Academia Española or RAE (http://www.rae.es/). There you can also find a link for “Diccionario panhispánico de dudas” which is great for looking up words that appear similar in English and Spanish but have very different meanings and cannot be used interchangeably.

           

My sources for spoken Spanish include:

-My patients. This is an invaluable source for improving speaking and listening skills- learning from and interacting with my patients in Spanish

-Television and Radio

-Online websites. An excellent example is: www.mylanguageexchange.com This is a completely free site where you choose a language partner from anywhere in the world, any language pairing. You can choose to solely be a pen pal to sharpen your written skills, or you can Skype with them to practice verbal communication.

-Friends. Another invaluable source for communication and practice. I find that I am less embarrassed to make mistakes when speaking Spanish in front of my friends, and they are more likely to earnestly help me improve my spoken skills.

I have said time and again in this blog that I am skeptical of these “learn languages quick” programs and schemes. Maybe they can help you memorize a few phrases to help you get by in an airport or food store, but ultimately, to truly know a language-- to speak it at a near-native level, to write it well, to spell it properly, to read with full understanding, to be able to navigate through its medical, legal and technical vocabulary-- one must dedicate a lifetime of learning. And this is not easy. You have to put yourself out there, make mistakes, take the time to write down words you don’t understand.  You have to risk sounding foolish. You may have to read a page in a book several times before you understand the true meaning. Ultimately, learning another language requires a lifetime of dedication.

Don’t just speak, listen. Don’t just write, read. Be an observer of as much as you can. 

Beautiful Bryce Canyon, Utah