Alicia’s Language Fluency Formula

I started learning Spanish from zero in April of 2016, and within 9 months I was having two-hour phone conversations. Fast forward 2.5 years, my working language is Spanish, I teach ESL in Spanish, plus tutoring Spanish to English speakers. I did not attend any courses or classes, and I did not pay a single cent for any applications or online programs. I possess exactly zero textbooks and those electronic ones that I have been sent by friends sit unread in my Google Drive.

As I travel around Latin America, a lot of people ask me how I managed to become fluent within only a year and now sound like someone who has been living in Mexico for decades. I am going to give you the formula that I followed that shot me to the tip of fluency.

This very formula I use to teach my students in both English and Spanish and am seeing incredible results. I can guarantee that if you apply these techniques daily, you will raise a level within 3-6 months of solo study without paying a thing.

 

WRITING AND GRAMMAR

1. Storytelling

Telling stories is PROVEN to help people commit things to long-term memory. Long lists of vocabulary are not going to stick in your mind as well as a story including those words. Every time I had an interesting day, I would write the story of my day into a message in Spanish and send it to someone in my contacts list in HelloTalk. They would then reply with all their corrections.

I would then rewrite the story (NOT copy/paste), integrating all their corrections, and send it to someone else. Usually the next person would find a few extra mistakes and correct them too. I would repeat this process 3 or 4 times until I had learnt all the new vocabulary involved in the story, plus I understood the mistakes I made grammatically.

For an extra task, once you’re sure of the correctness of your story, send it as an audio story to all of those friends for pronunciation correction.

Everyone has stories to tell about their day or their week, so this is a simple one!

2. Moment of the day or goals for the next day

As I have written in a previous post, every night I write a short sentence about my favourite moment of my day. My glass jar has turned into a daily agenda book so I can bring it travelling with me, and I have now expanded that idea to also include a list of my goals for the next day, so my brain works as I sleep, committing myself to those goals for when I wake up and throw myself into the next day with a purpose.

Create a nightly or morning routine that involves writing something in your target language.

AUDIO COMPREHENSION

I have observed that there are two forms of audio comprehension: active and inactive. With active comprehension, you are intently listening to something, noting the words used and trying to understand what is being said. You must focus and listen to something at your current level of comprehension.

3. Listen to a podcast in the car or on the train

For this kind of exercise, I used a learning podcast on Spotify called Coffee Break Spanish. Season 4 featured 40 episodes that told a story. I began listening with a pre-intermediate comprehension level of Spanish and I used my journey in the car on the way to work every day to listen to an episode a day for 40 days (which, with breaks and weekends, amounted to about 2-3 months). By the end of the season, I understood everything they said.

4. Stop watching movies with subtitles

I know this is scary and you won’t understand everything, but I asked myself this question and I ask you the same right now: what’s more important: understanding all the lines and subliminal messaging in the plot, or improving your listening skills? At the end of the movie, will you feel better for laughing at that joke, or for moving up a level in your listening comprehension?
Work your way up in steps:

1. Find a movie (or TV episode if you’re short on time) that you do not get tired of watching.
2. Watch it with audio in your native language
3. Watch it with audio in your native language and subtitles in your target language
4. Watch it with audio and subtitles in your target language
5. Watch it without subtitles

Do NOT watch movies with subtitles in your native language. You will only be reading and not practising your listening comprehension.

I KNOW this works, because here in Mexico, when I go to the cinema, if it’s in Spanish, I have to cope without subtitles. And I do just fine! I get the general plot and I don’t die for not picking up on the regional humor.

5. Play the radio in the background at least 2 hours a day

The other type of audio comprehension is inactive listening, which involves having something playing in the background. We use this with music to change our mood. People often listen to things whilst the sleep because it works unconsciously on their brains as they rest. Whatever works for you, download a radio application, choose an accent of your choice that you struggle to listen to, and play that channel for AT LEAST 2 hours a day. You have a LOT of opportunities to do this:

• Whilst you’re getting ready for work
• In the car
• On the train (put away your phone for once!)
• Cleaning the house
• In the office (if you can concentrate whilst people are talking, personally, I can’t)
• At the gym
• Whilst cooking
• Or generally whilst you’re doing anything that would otherwise bore you

Look for radio stations that talk a lot, rather than non-stop music stations. Or podcasts. For the Australian accent, I recommend the Hamish and Andy radio show podcasts. For the British accent, BBC. For Spanish, the RNE network (Radio Nacional de España).

 

NUMBERS

Although numbers are simple to learn, they are hard to understand in quick conversation or in shops. They are used in so many aspects of our lives during the day that I find it super important that you learn to dominate them early.

6. Number plate game

Stuck in traffic? Use that dead time to look out the window at the car registration plates in front of you and recite the numbers out loud. The more you do this, the quicker and more fluent you will get.

7. Phone number practice

Start by reciting you phone number over and over again until you can say it quickly. This will be a common question if you travel overseas.  Next, go through your phone and do the same with your contacts list until you are super fast with reciting numbers.  Ask your friends to send you audio messages with their phone numbers too.

TAKE NOTE: different countries say their phone numbers in different ways. For example in Australia, we say individual digits, so it was an unpleasant surprise to hear people in Mexico pronouncing theirs in double and triple digits.

8. Money practice

Next time you’re at the shops, recite the prices of the products out loud. If you plan to travel to a specific currency, add another level by converting it to their currency. Download a currency converter and have it on your phone favourites for quick everyday access – I use Divisa Plus. This is another common thing you will hear (and misunderstand) a lot if you travel, so it’s important that you practice this. No one wants to give too much money and if you are more confident with your numbers and currency conversion, you’ll have a more confident air about you when you approach vendors and a less likely target for cons and more successful at bartering/bargaining.

9. Dates practice

I don’t need to explain how important it is to easily recite and audibly understand when someone is giving you a date. Ask your practise partners to send you audio messages with important dates in their lives such as birthdays, anniversaries or big decisions. It’s a great way to get to know them at the same time. I now have an amazing friend from Colombia that I will travel with in April because of this exercise.

 

VOCABULARY EXPANSION

The only way to learn vocabulary and have it stick in your head is to commit it to long-term memory by seeing and using those words regularly over a period of time, so make a point to put into action these small things:

10. Stick little labels on all your household objects

11. Turn all your settings on your phone and computer to your target language

12. Write your shopping and to-do task lists in your target language

13. Read the news

Every morning when you wake up, open up google or a newspaper of your choice and read the latest headlines or one full article. I have a Google Home device that reads the headlines out loud in either Spanish or English. I just say “Good morning” or “Buenos dias” and she does the rest. This is also a good way to get connected with what’s happening in the part of the world you are interested in, and makes for a good conversation point with practice partners.

 

SPEAKING

14. Use a language exchange application

As I have written about before in this post, the application HelloTalk was a very big part of my success in improving my Spanish. I began conversations at first in text, but eventually developed confidence to send audio messages, and eventually have calls. I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to have daily conversation with someone. There are literally millions of people on language exchange applications looking to practise. Create a profile and message someone with an interesting introduction, specifying what you want to practise and ask for a response. Not much time in the day? Multitask. I squeezed practice calls into every free moment of my day: on the way to work, in my lunch hour and before bed. I would talk with people whilst was having my morning walk, or I’d put on my hands-free phone kit and have a conversation in the car. Every day about 5-10 minutes before I finished work, I would post a moment asking if anyone was free to chat. There was never one single moment of dead time. All that time spent on Facebook or instagram? Could you be practising instead?

15. Mix up the conversation

“But the same conversation with different people is so boring,” people tell me. “I want to find a regular practise partner so I don’t have to keep introducing myself and talking about the same things but people disappear and never reply to you again.

People are busy, and not everyone can login every week or commit as much as you. However that in no way means that you need to find someone new and start the same conversation of “Where are you from, what do you do, how long have you been learning (language)?”

Challenge yourself and your practise partner by introducing odd questions and conversation topics. There are tons of websites suggesting strange and interesting conversations starters. Personally, I prefer funny questions such as these, because humor, just like stories, tends to stick in your mind more, and who doesn’t want to laugh, right? It will make you want to return to talk to that person and then you have made a regular practice partner.

16. English/Spanish day

If you live with or spend several days a week with someone who speaks the language you are learning, this is by far the BEST way to improve your learning very quickly within a few months.

Force yourself to speak your target language one day with your friend/partner, and make sure they correct you. When things get tough and you don’t know the word for something, you have to find your way around it, using synonyms or asking for the words by describing it. When you want to express a more complicated point or emotion, you cannot change yo your native language. It is EXACTLY at this point that you push yourself to the limits and once you push past, THAT is the point where you improve.

You will be exhausted by the end of the day, but using this technique, you have the bext day to relax, focus on something else in your life, give your brain a rest and perhaps help your friend if they are learning your native language.

I SWEAR by this technique and I encourage everyone who has a Spanish/English-speaking friend or partner to do this.

THE SECRET TO SUCCESS WITH THIS FORMULA:

No matter which of these methods you use, or others, the key to improving a language and it STICKING is CONSISTENCY. If you do something EVERY DAY, eventually it will commit to your long-term memory and it will become natural for you, allowing you to move on from that point and focus on learning the next. There is no magic formula to make you fluent in a month. There is no secret shortcut that I took, nor am I somehow incredibly gifted in languages. The only real formula is persistence and consistency. KEEP GOING AND DO IT EVERY DAY. 

 

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NEED MORE HELP?

If you are struggling with something specific in either English or Spanish, drop me a comment below or contact me using the form and I’ll respond with my suggestions. If you would like 1 on 1 online lessons in English or Spanish with a learning plan specifically tailored and dedicated to YOU and your goals, contact me for a free learning needs assessment call and English/Spanish level test.