is and okay here's my spanish background before i started and here's a breakdown of the steps of this method i'm working on a video that details this entire process so subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss it and give this video a like if you find it helpful in a nutshell what i did was research the language learn the basics reach fluency and now i'm working toward reaching the native level each step of this method was designed with a specific goal and with two exercises designed for reaching that specific goal here are
the three goals first learn to put together basic sentences correctly second learn to recall the words that you know automatically in order to communicate with other people third develop an advanced vocabulary and a native level accent the first thing i did was research the language this is something that i didn't do when i learned french i did it this time to understand what i was up against to be able to build a plan of attack and to avoid getting stuck down the line all i did was search google for things that trip people up when
learning spanish in order to prepare accordingly step one learn the basics the goal of this step is to learn to put together basic sentences correctly if you're a total beginner i recommend that you start off with a few weeks of duolingo about an hour to a day so when you start learning with this approach you'll have confidence and won't feel lost learning the basics for me included mastering just two things vocabulary and verb conjugation here's how i built a basic vocabulary i only wanted to learn the most commonly used words in the language instead of
finding and memorizing a list of common spanish words i decided to learn vocabulary words within the context of real conversations of native spanish speakers to do this i watched five spanish language ted talks several times each with the goal of making all of the words in these five videos my base vocabulary in spanish i use ted talks because very often they include perfect verbatim transcripts written by real humans and not auto-generated first i looked up every single word that i didn't understand in each of these ted talks and then i watched the videos repeatedly while
reading their transcripts until each video sounded nearly as clear to me as english my goal with this exercise wasn't perfect comprehension of the entire spanish language but rather to be able to understand all the words in these five videos in context in order to use them to build my base vocabulary the repetition of watching these videos while reading their transcripts really helped me to understand nearly every word and phrase in these five videos a quick word about flashcards just fyi when i learned french i used a lot of flashcards and a flashcard app called anki
but now i prefer by far learning vocabulary with this new method because flashcards remove the words from their context this method allows me to no longer have to use flashcards to learn words because i can study all the words and phrases in these videos just by watching all five videos every day i choose videos that are about 10 minutes a piece so i can watch all five in about an hour studying vocabulary with this method gives you two things that flash cards don't context and pronunciation to start learning verb conjugation i developed the method that
allowed me to study the most common verb conjugations as efficiently as possible i researched spanish verb conjugation and learned that there are ar er and ir verbs there are also irregular regular and stem changing verbs i determined that the short irregular verbs in spanish are the most common and most important these are the verbs like etc i found about 20 verbs like this and decided to spend the most time mastering them because they were the verbs that i was seeing most often in my vocabulary exercise i also took about 30 verbs that fell into the
categories that i mentioned a second ago ar er ir regular irregular and stem change and i studied them as well verb conjugation is all about being able to recognize the patterns that you find between the verbs once you understand the pattern you'll be able to guess with high accuracy the conjugations of words you've never used before when you want to use them in conversation for this reason i didn't study any other verbs apart from these 50 and i spent the majority of my time with the 20 irregular verbs that i mentioned before the full list
of verbs that i mastered is in the description here's an example of my verb conjugation study process i use a google sheet to do this step 2 get fluent the goal of this section is to learn to recall the words that you know automatically in order to communicate with other people most people believe fluency means complete mastery of a language but fluency for me is the point where you can easily communicate your thoughts needs etc in conversation even if it's not perfect reaching fluency is the most important part of this method because this is also
the point where language learning becomes fun and the point where you become less likely to quit to get to this point i use two exercises the first is called the 10 by 10 and the second is the basic speaking exercise in my 10 by 10 exercise i did the same thing i did with the five videos that i talked about in the learn the basics step but this time i watched 10 new videos with general subject matter 10 times that were on average about 10 minutes long i read the transcripts while i watched the videos
again in order to be able to better understand them i repeated this several times per day until i began to naturally incorporate words and phrases from these videos into my active vocabulary when i practice speaking by active vocabulary i mean the words that my brain uses naturally without me having to think about it to date i've watched these videos hundreds of times and there's several parts of each video that i know completely by heart repetition is key i continued to watch these videos over and over again and then i incorporated the second exercise of this
method which is a 30 minute speaking exercise here's a video on exactly how to do the speaking exercise that i used for this method for this exercise i take one of the videos from my 10 by 10 list i watch it and take notes on it and then i used those notes to summarize what happened in the video in my target language i did this exercise for at least 30 minutes every day but on a normal day i spent four to six hours doing the speaking exercise in 30 minute segments using the notes of a
different 10 by 10 video to speak from each time after doing these two exercises intensively for 30 days i was able to communicate with other people notice i treat this like my full-time job i do these exercises on average eight hours a day but spent several days working 12 hours a day or more at this point i found two language partners and started practicing my speaking with them one i found on hellotalk and the other was actually my french language partner's spanish partnership that's as far as i went for the 44 days of this method
and this was the result it's been a couple of weeks since i finished this 44 day project and reached what i consider basic fluency now i've started the step that i call native fluency where i try to reach a native speaking level this part will take the most time and is best not to rush it this should be relatively stress free because i can already communicate with other people and use the language for what i realistically needed for in my life step 3 reach native fluency the goal of this step is to develop an advanced
vocabulary and a native level accent to reach native fluency i'm using two exercises with the first exercise i'm developing an advanced vocabulary for this i do a new 10 by 10 exercise but with specific topics that are important to my life for example videography is a big part of my life because i make youtube videos with this technique i can get better at videography and improve my spanish at the same time this is a very important concept to me because i spend nearly all of my time learning languages if i wasn't able to study both
videography and spanish simultaneously like this i wouldn't be able to improve my videography skills for lack of time this way i can kill two birds with one stone and i suggest you use this technique to do the same improve in other areas of your life while you learn your new language i made a 10x10 for videography and i watch it every day for about a month then for example i'll make a 10x10 for digital marketing and focus on acquiring that vocabulary next month the second goal of this step is to develop a native accent i
do this with something called shadowing here's a quick example of me doing it it's very simple choose a video of someone whose accent you'd like to have and play about five minutes of that video in this manner pausing the video to repeat each phrase as accurately as you can this is tough at the beginning because it can seem like your accent is way off even though you're trying your best again repetition is key every time you do this exercise you mentally capture a little bit more of the accent until you're able to hear and master
even the subtle nuances of each word practice like and subscribe if you enjoyed this to the left is a video showing the method that i use to get fluent in french and to the right is a video that shows exactly how to do the speaking exercise i mentioned in this video check them both out and i'll catch you next time on language lords five
