In my experience as a Spanish language teacher, here are three mistakes that can make you waste precious time, ruin your confidence and eventually give up. As you will see, they are easy to avoid:

1. Rushing through your first Spanish lessons

Having a sound knowledge of the basics will determine how fast, and how well, you can learn Spanish.

If you’re a complete beginner, concentrate on each and every lesson of your course, from the beginning, for as long as you need. Do not rush yourself. If a lesson takes you three hours, so be it, but never allow yourself to skip any material.

Basically, the more time you put into the first lessons, the faster you’ll be able to learn later on.

If you’re past the beginners’ level but have some gaps in your knowledge, stop learning new material and go back to the beginning. This may sound drastic, boring, defeating or simply mad, but it will work wonders and no doubt boost your confidence in no time.

To succeed, follow this routine: review all the words you have learned so far. Make sure you understand all the grammar you have covered. Do not allow yourself to make more than one mistake per exercise or drill. Listen to the dialogs until you can say them out loud along with the recordings.

Remember: small gaps at the beginning become enormous holes by lesson twelve. By lesson twenty, giving up will feel like the only way out.

2. Not focusing on the Spanish pronunciation

Working on your pronunciation might not be the obvious thing to do as a beginner, but it has many great advantages:

• The better your pronunciation is, the better you’ll be able to understand native speakers.
• Having a good accent is hugely rewarding and motivating.
• Having a good accent from the start also allows you to avoid bad pronunciation habits that aren’t always easy to get rid of.

The best way to improve your pronunciation is to concentrate on one letter of the alphabet at a time, and then on words you’re having difficulty with. To get a good Spanish accent, make sure you learn only from native Spanish speakers.

Acquiring a very good accent requires patience and perseverance, no doubt, but once you start working on it you’ll notice some improvement almost from the start. Guaranteed!

3. Learning Spanish nouns without ‘el’ or ‘la’

Whenever you learn a Spanish noun with its article, you’re avoiding endless future mistakes. In other words, you’re saving yourself a lot of time and unnecessary, repetitive work.

As you may know, the Spanish gender rules can help you ‘guess’ the gender of many words, especially those ending in ‘a’ and ‘o’, but there are many nouns that will let you down if you try to guess their gender. That’s why it’s safer, and faster, to learn them all with their article when you first come across them.

The good news is that any good Spanish course gives you every new noun with its article.

Warning: Unfortunately, there are many Spanish courses that still teach nouns without their article. To avoid wasting your time, make sure the Spanish course you get gives you the new vocabulary with ‘el’ and ‘la’. The simplest way to do it is by checking the free lessons before buying the full product. If there are no sample lessons, get a different course!

Useful Spanish learning material

Free Spanish course
Spanish pronunciation lessons

In this free Spanish pronunciation lesson we’re going to learn how to pronounce the vowel ‘a’ correctly.

You can hear all the Spanish words in this post, including the exercise at the end, in the free Lesson 1 of my Spanish for beginners course.

1. Tips on how to get the Spanish ‘a’ always right

• The Spanish a sounds like the ‘a’ in the English word: ‘father’.
• The Spanish a has a pure, unchangeable sound. You should pronounce it always the same way.
• The Spanish a sounds the same whether it comes at the beginning of a word, in the middle, at the end or on its own.
• Often it will be tempting to say the a like in the English words ‘table’ or ‘hand‘. Unfortunately, doing so will make it difficult for Spanish speakers to understand you.

Pronouncing the vowel ‘a’ correctly will dramatically help you communicate successfully in Spanish.

2. Difficult Spanish words with the letter ‘a’

To master the Spanish a, practice saying words that look similar in English and Spanish. Those words often sound quite different in Spanish, and it can take a while to get them consistently right.

Here are ten words that will help you quickly master the a. To hear them said by native speakers, go to the multimedia Lesson 1 of my Spanish for beginners course. It’s free.

3. Saying a difficult Spanish sentence

Here’s a sentence with several words with the letter a. Read out this sentence paying particular attention to the way you say each a. In my free Lesson 1 you can hear this sentence said slowly and at normal speed.

Can you say this sentence fluently? Try every so often over the next few days and you will soon master it!

4. Spanish pronunciation exercise

We are now going to practice saying ten very useful words: ten place names. They all contain at least one a. Can you say them out loud correctly?

Remember that you can hear all the Spanish words in this post in the free Lesson 1 of my Spanish for beginners course. There you can also download the free Lesson 1 podcast and videocast, and go through them on your iPod or any other mp3 player.

Do you have any questions? Are there any Spanish words you are not sure how to pronounce? If so, please let me know through the comment box below.

One of the biggest frustrations we all face when learning a foreign language is having to learn the same words over and over.

As a Spanish language teacher, here are 4 tips I’ve found will help you stop forgetting the words you’ve come across:

1. Learn new words with audio material rather than from print only

The difference between learning new Spanish words by reading them in your lesson’s glossary and hearing them said by a native speaker is abysmal.

Hearing new words said by a native speaker, preferably with their English translation afterwards, will not only make you familiar with those words substantially faster, but it will also allow you to remember them more easily.

There are dozens of good Spanish courses with audio material on cd, dvd, cd-rom, podcast and videocast that can help you do just that; and most of them are very affordable.

Check out this example of a vocabulary lesson online, on mp3 and videocast.

2. Learn new words in context

Whenever you learn a new Spanish word, make sure you also hear it in context. Remembering lists of words without context is practically impossible for most of us, because the human brain works best by making associations. In my view, dialogs are the most effective tool for learning new vocabulary.

As an example, here’s the dialog where you can hear all the new words listed in the vocabulary lesson above. You can see and hear it in three formats: online, as an mp3 and a videocast.

3. Find similarities between words

If you can find a similarity between a Spanish word you’ve just come across and another Spanish word you already know or, better still, an English word, you won’t forget it easily.

For instance, when you first see the word encantado (pleased to meet you) you can associate it to enchanted (which it’s related to), or el vino (the wine) to the vineyard.

Other associations are less strong, but they can still help you a long way. Here are some Spanish and English words with the same origin:

I find this way of learning new words so effective that I’ve included word associations throughout my Spanish course, and continue adding new ones to the lessons whenever I find them.

4. Review your vocabulary with audio material regularly

The secret of success, when it comes to mastering Spanish, is to review your material regularly. Listen to your dialogs and vocabulary lessons as frequently as you can. Repeat them out loud, along with the recordings, with and without the printed text in front of you. In other words, make reviewing part of your study routine.

Reviewing always pays off. The more often you review what you’ve learn, the more solid your knowledge will be, and the faster you’ll be able to learn and remember new words.

Do you want to learn Spanish fast? Do you want to have fun while you study the language? Do you want to be able to study whenever you have some free time, without pressure and with a lot of choice?

If your answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, here are 5 tips that will help you improve your Spanish faster than you ever imagined:

1. Listen to Spanish language learning podcasts. Podcasts are downloadable mp3s that you can listen to on your iPod or any other mp3 player. They’re usually short lessons that focus on one aspect of the language and encourage you to practice speaking. If you’ve never listened to a Spanish learning podcast, here’s a sample from my series called Spanish Podcasts for Beginners

2. Listen to audiobooks in Spanish. There are literally hundreds of Spanish audiobooks on cd, from children’s stories to El Quijote, The Bible, Dan Brown’s bestsellers, poetry anthologies and self-help books. Audiobooks are great on their own for developing your listening skills, but you can also practice reading by following the audiobook along with the printed version. Here are some popular titles.

3. Watch Spanish movies and TV programs dubbed into Spanish. Dexter, The Simpsons, 24, Stargate Atlantis, Bones, Star Trek, House … just about every TV program on dvd has been dubbed into Spanish. What’s more, many come with optional English and Spanish subtitles, so you can choose any language and subtitle combination you want.

4. Listen to Spanish songs and follow the lyrics. If you like Latin music, this is a great way of learning and practicing the language without effort. Lyrics are easy to find on the Internet, and many cds come with them too.

5. Watch videocasts on your iPod. Videocasts are basically a podcast that you can see and hear. Spanish language learning videocasts allow you to follow the lessons with the text in front of you, practice speaking and reading, improve your vocabulary and, overall, learn the language in a natural and intuitive way. To see a videocast in action, go to my Spanish for beginners course. There you can download the Lesson 1 videocasts for free or watch a sample online.

Do you have a favorite way of learning Spanish? If you want to share it, please feel free to write a comment.

Getting the gender of basic Spanish nouns wrong is not only frustrating, but also highly de-motivating. In this article I give you an insight on what causes this problem and I help you overcome it from today.

In my experience as a Spanish teacher, the reason why you find yourself making gender mistakes is because of the way you learned the nouns when you first came across them, and the way you’ve reviewed them afterwards.

You may be wondering, then, if there is a way of learning new Spanish nouns that will allow you to get the gender always right. The answer, without any doubt, is ‘yes’. Here are the two steps you need to follow:

1. Always learn new nouns with their article, rather than on their own, and review them with their article too.

2. Always learn new nouns with audio material, preferably audio flashcards.

I’ve recommend this way of learning new vocabulary to my students for many years. It’s the fastest and most efficient method, and the one I use in my Spanish for beginners online course and downloadable podcasts.

Learning nouns with their article the first time you come across them takes the same effort as learning them on their own, and it will save you a lot of time and frustration later on. So, for instance, instead of learning that:

‘flor’ means ‘flower’

Make sure you learn that:

‘la flor’ means ‘the flower’

This will guarantee that soon you won’t need to ask yourself anymore whether ‘flor’ comes with ‘el’ or ‘la’, because ‘la flor’ now sounds right to you, just like it sounds right to a native speaker.

As for audio flashcards, those are flashcards where you can hear the Spanish vocabulary said by a native speaker, and see or hear the English translations too.

Audio flashcards are an invaluable tool that allow you to learn new words accurately and faster than you ever imagined you could. They help you develop a good accent, and they make it easy and fun to review your vocabulary. You can play some examples of Spanish audio flashcards here.

Briefly, learning new vocabulary following the two steps I’ve described in this article is not only more efficient in the short, medium and long term, but also much more enjoyable.

If you want to speak Spanish with confidence, even if you just know the basics or have only studied the language for a short while, the single most important aspect you should concentrate on is the pronunciation.

You may only be able to say simple, short sentences, but if you can say them clearly and with confidence you’ll be able to get by in most situations. If every Spanish word you know can be understood by Spanish speakers when you say them, those words will take you a long way.

Being able to communicate successfully in Spanish is also a great encouragement to continue studying the language. With a good pronunciation you’ll find it easier to remember new words, and you’ll make much faster progress.

To help you master the Spanish pronunciation, I’ve created some interactive multimedia lessons. You can play those lessons at your own pace and hear the native Spanish speakers in them over and over.

In those lessons you can find out what the common pronunciation mistakes are and how to avoid them, and you can go through the drills to practice building up your confidence.

You can get my free interactive pronunciation lessons at Spanish Bookworld.