hello guys and welcome back to my YouTube channel today I want to talk about how I improve my speaking skills in just six months a few weeks ago I was coming back home from the gym and the Uber driver started talking to me originally he thought that I didn't speak Spanish so he asked me hablas espanol and I said yes even though my brain was screaming say no say no right now and to my surprise I could understand everything he was saying and I could respond to his questions maybe not always with perfect grammar I
have to admit that when I came back home I decided to calculate how long I had been learning Spanish consistently and to my surprise it was only six months so now I'm pretty sure you can do the same thing and you can learn a language in six months obviously not to a very advanced level but you can already start speaking this language and start understanding this language and feel very comfortable in just six months and in this video I'll share everything that helped me the whole process step by step the first thing I did was
I learned the sounds of this language first I think it's important to pick the accent you want to learn from the very beginning because in English and Spanish and in a lot of other languages in different countries and different regions people speak with a different accent and I think it's important to choose the accent at the very beginning and stick to it because this way you will know how to pronounce a certain word and which pronunciation to actually learn at the very beginning I did a lot of pronunciation drills I made sure I could pronounce
every single sound in Spanish especially the way people pronounce it here in Mexico correctly obviously I still have an accent having an accent is a completely normal thing the more you practice the more you learn the language the better your accent will become however from the very beginning I think it's important to really know how to pronounce all the sounds of this language learn the alpha bit and make sure you know how you know all the letters are connected first of all it will help you with your comprehension with your listening comprehension when you're listening
to native speakers because you'll be like okay yeah I'm familiar with all of these sounds and obviously it will help you produce all of these sounds correctly I think in American English for example a lot of people don't really know how to pronounce all the different T sounds that American English has to offer for example in the word water so it's important to master this sound because this is connected to pronunciation it's how Americans pronounce words when they speak the second thing I did was I learned the most common words I personally started with Gabrielle
Weiner's list of 625 most common words you can find lists on the internet of for example 1 000 most common words in this language or 2 000 most common words in this language the idea behind it is you have to know how to learn all of these words effectively the way I did it was by using a space repetition system and the app on key because if you just download this list and you try to like jam all this information into your brain it's not going to be very successful and plus you're probably going to
get super tired and demotivated by the word 200. so the reason why a lot of language Learners love a space repetition system is because you don't even have to think about it too much you just put all the cards into your Anki app and that's it and then at a certain interval it will show you all of these cards you will see the words you will revise them and you will tell the app if this word was easy or hard and then the app will use its algorithm and will show you the word in a
week or a month or a year for example when you are ready when you are about to forget this word because actually that's the most effective way when someone shows you this word right when you're about to forget it and when you are learning new words try to rely on pictures as much as you can instead of on translations for example you're trying to memorize how to say the word phone in Spanish don't just try to say you know phone and English phone in Spanish that's it use the Spanish word for the word phone and
then use a picture this is going to be the most effective method because usually our brains just work better with pictures especially if you can find a picture that is maybe related to your life for example a picture of your cell phone no just the random cell phone but your cell phone so that every time you look at yourself and you're like oh yeah I know how to say this in Spanish and guys I know that a lot of people here who are watching my videos are learning English and if you're one of them and
you like speaking practice I invite you to join my speaking Club the registrations are now open and you only actually have a few days to join because the classes start very soon the speaking Club is an amazing opportunity for you guys to meet me in person to talk to me and ask me for help and advice I'll be there throughout your whole journey we will have meetings every single week and I will be giving you feedback I will share everything I know about language learning and if you choose the pro level you will have classes
with native speakers too the speaking Club is perfect if you need practice if you want to improve your speaking skills and meet people from all over the world and the topics we discuss every single week are extremely interesting and the questions are a lot of fun because I create them myself and I really don't like boring questions so if you want to join my speaking club and learn with me all you need to do is click the link in the description and I'll see you there now let's talk about the next thing I did it's
pretty interesting and I feel like maybe some of you guys are going to be like hmm I have never thought about this before I learned grammar only if it was necessary from the very beginning of my Spanish journey I understood the importance of speaking as soon as possible so on the first day the second day I was already trying to construct simple sentences and obviously the complexity of your sentences will change depending on how much grammar you know and how many words I honestly prefer to stick to just one book one grammar book for each
language because I know that all of this information is available online if I want to go deeper if I don't understand a specific grammar rule in my book I can just Google it the grammar book that I use for Spanish is called easy learning Spanish grammar in English you can use this book English grammar and use and I personally recommend the Blue version because the blue one is for intermediate students and for Chinese I use modern Mandarin Chinese grammar well if you're online Chinese you probably know that grammar in Chinese is not that complicated what
I usually do is I choose a grammar book that is for beginners or intermediate students not something too complex because at the very beginning I just need to understand the basics of this grammar Rule and then I use my space repetition system I use Anki to save a few sentences like an example sentence of this grammar rule I save it to Anki instead of again trying to cram all this information into my brain I allow my brain to rest and use the space repetition system instead for example let's say you're learning the conjugation of this
word in Spanish of this verb right here so you're learning how to conjugate so less what I would personally do is this the front of the court would be blank is and at the back of the Court will be swellow so like I usually go to the beach every three months no translations you know nothing additional obviously I can like add a picture so that I remember the information better but that's basically how I do it number four I speak from the very beginning I think you guys are going to agree with me here we're
all learning foreign languages because we want to be able to speak to people in these foreign languages not because we just want to you know walk around and tell people oh you know what I'm learning Spanish or I'm learning Chinese we actually want to connect with these people I want to speak this language to native speakers of course there are different things you can do when it comes to speaking you can speak to yourself even though I think it's not the best method I personally think receiving feedback is extra extremely important so taking classes with
someone is really going to help you it can be a professional teacher and native speaker it can be your friend if you have any native speaking friends the most important thing is those people have to correct your mistakes they have to help you they have to encourage you you know it's not just a conversation when you're just like talking talking and they're just listening to you and that's it no it has to be a real dialogue they ask you questions you respond they correct you they explain something to you maybe you ask them questions so
it's a real conversation plus they correct your mistakes there are also a lot of language exchange apps out there where people you know they download the app and they can find like-minded people they can find a language partner and for some people it works like if you really like using apps you like chatting with people texting different people then go ahead and try but again the most important thing is finding someone who will give you feedback good quality feed back so the final thing is I practiced regularly I think for me regular practice is a
lot more effective than for example sitting down to learn a language only once a week for like two hours if I get a chance I try to practice this language every single day it might be just watching a YouTube video or listening to a podcast while I'm doing something else for example washing the dishes or cooking if I don't have time to actually sit down and learn this language but I always try to do at least something because when you have this system of language learning built out and the system actually works for you then
you will achieve all of your goals don't even worry about that I feel like people worry too much about their goals like oh my God I have a goal of like getting to be one in English or getting to see one in Spanish like I don't know what I should do but what you actually should be worrying about is your language system like how are you showing up every single day are you learning your language consistently and are you trying to actually like sit down understand the rule are you speaking this language are you trying
to immerse yourself into this language so basically what I'm trying to say here is I usually try to worry more about what I do day to day like today for example what am I gonna do to study Spanish I don't worry so much about like oh by the end of this year I want to reach B1 in Spanish or B2 in Spanish now I mean I don't have any exams or tests and it's not something I have to worry about I know that for me I'm learning the language because I live in Mexico so for
me consistent practice is more important creating this system and focusing on the system rather than on my goal so I think it's gonna be it for this video If you like this video don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel again as a friendly reminder if you want to improve your speaking skills in English make sure to check out my speaking club by clicking the link in the description and I'll see you guys in my next video foreign
