I never thought I would finally be having fun studying Spanish on my own. 😅 Seriously, I was having a hard time since I started in mid-December last year. Now I know I must be doing something right.
If you've read my self-education plan (part 1 & part 2) then you'll know what I've been doing for more than 2 months. However I was not enjoying the process at all. I felt overwhelmed most of the time.
Turns out I really need to do the most basic of them all: expand my vocabulary. I've run through all the steps already except step 5. (I'm way behind on that part because I'm not focusing on it at all. 😅)
This is what makes studying enjoyable
The right materials in education will really make a huge difference to students. When I decided to go back to the basics, I decided to start with learning like a kid. That means listening to children's stories, at least. So that's what I did, I checked YouTube for Spanish audiobooks for kids.
I started out with those but eventually I found something else. Nursery rhymes! 😂 Now I'm hooked and I also laugh at some of the videos because they're funny and cute! If I have kids I'd definitely let them watch. 😍
Here's one of the funny ones:
Baby Shark was very popular a few years back. I know because we have a neighbor with kids and they kept playing it. My gosh at some point it actually became irritating since I was hearing it everywhere. It was being sung or mentioned locally on TV, radio, and online. 😅 But then when I watched the above video I couldn't help but laugh. It's just cute and really funny the first time I saw it.
Of course there are more videos, I actually watch the compilation ones. I think I've watched a lot of them now and laughed at a few more, like this one:
That reminded me when as kids we used to do the same. For fun we'd use a single vowel in all the words we said, haha.
Now do you see why it's fun to learn this way? 😆 A kid's life is really enjoyable when you watch these very well made videos. 👍 We can learn the language easily by watching and listening. No need for translations most of the time. Haha. It's better to learn by association rather than having to translate the words.
Nursery rhymes make me think of my childhood too. Back then my mom made me listen to English ones though. I only learned the Filipino ones in school.
Increasing my vocabulary makes learning a lot easier!
Here's the other thing I'm doing. I mentioned I went back to the very basic of them all: learning words!
I have to learn hundreds of beginner words otherwise I won't even understand watching most of the videos. Yes I already know some but it's not enough. Haha.
As previously mentioned, unfortunately I still haven't been able to buy a Spanish-English dictionary nor a Spanish-Spanish one. So I have to make do with online tools. Of course I don't want to pay for anything so I just used one of the sites I signed up with.
Here's a sample of the long quiz I'm currently taking:
That's the beginner vocabulary of 1,000 words. Taking this quiz makes it easier than what I was doing with apps or other sites. Haha. I don't use any online/offline flashcards so I am just using this beginner list instead.
As of this writing I have gone over 700 words so far! Whew. Because of it there are more Spanish words I can finally understand! I changed a mobile game language setting to Español and wow I noticed I already know the gist of what some sentences meant. Haha.
This is how I realized doing the very basic things first helps me a lot! Going through all the steps in my plan then going back to the beginning is quite helpful indeed! Plus, learning while enjoying what you're doing is so much better.
Of course I will continue doing these two things until such time I can move on to the intermediate words. Haha. I need to repeat words a lot in order to get used to Spanish. Nevermind the grammar and sentence construction for now. I can't deal with those yet until I understand thousands of words. 😅
Doing the two things above really makes me enjoy learning now. Since I am finally having fun, maybe you can do it too! 😉 ¡Vamos aprender! 😆
XOXO,
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