How to learn Spanish when you’re busy – Episode 005

How to learn Spanish when you’re busy – Spanish learning tip

Podcast episode 5 – SEE ALL EPISODES

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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Today we have a question from Vernon, one of my podcast listeners. He says:

I’m having trouble staying with it, studying with my busy schedule. Therefore I forget stuff that I’ve learned. How do I stay with it? I learned so much in almost two years, and I’ve forgotten a lot because my schedule is busier than it was.

See also: Maria’s step-by-step Spanish course.

How to learn Spanish when you’re busy – Tip 1

Well, I’ve come up with six main points that will help you study even if you’re very busy. The first one is to:

Get a good Spanish course that you like. I know it’s very tempting to study Spanish by finding free lessons on the internet. So you spend hours every week just trying to find the next free lesson. And that works for a while, but it becomes very tedious very soon, so the best thing you can do is to get a course that you like. Which can be quite cheap, actually. And then just stick to it. Go through it from cover to cover, or the entire app, or the entire online course, whichever format you’ve chosen. But just do the whole thing, so you never have to think what you have to do tomorrow because the course author has done all the planning for you. The structure is there. All you need to do is just, study, and review, and practice.

So, if you need help finding a good Spanish course for your budget, or for your needs, or for your likes, just send me an email and I’ll help you find it. It really is the best way of learning a language.

How to learn Spanish when you’re busy – Tip 2

The second point is to use a course with short lessons. Courses that have very short lessons are much more motivating, and much easier to use, to follow and to stick to than those with very long lessons. I remember when I first started learning English I had a course that had about 150 lessons within 300 pages. It was absolutely fantastic. You could do one lesson every day, you could review things really fast. I was just wonderful, I learned so much.

So the second point is to use a course with short lessons.

How to learn Spanish when you’re busy – Tip 3

Point number 3 is one of my favourites. And I’ve insisted on it to all my students for years now. And it’s to use a course that has plenty of recordings, and all those recordings are by native Spanish speakers. Always keep away from courses that are not recorded by native speakers.

Now, courses with plenty of audio material are fantastic for learning vocabulary fast. For hearing real Spanish. For getting used to the intonation. For remembering things faster. For developing a good pronunciation. Even learning the verbs without even noticing it. It’s just great. Really, focus on courses that have plenty of audio material. Whether they are online courses, audio course, courses with books, apps, but always make sure that your course has plenty of audio material. And always recorded by native speakers.

Have a look at
Maria’s step-by-step Spanish course

How to learn Spanish when you’re busy – Tip 4

Point number 4 is to make the most of what I call “the lost minutes”. Those are those minutes we all have throughout the day where we can’t really do very much, but we could do something. For example, when you’re waiting for the bus, or for the train, or for the subway, or when you’re waiting for somebody, or a meeting is about to start, or even in your lunch hour. Or when you’re walking the dog, having a bath, just sitting around trying to rest for a little bit, but you don’t want to be doing absolutely nothing.

In those five, ten minutes here and there throughout the day you could be learning a lot. And with today’s technology it’s really mind-blowing what you could learn. So, you can have a video course, an audio course, a podcast like this one. Or even a book, an app, anything that you like. Preferably if you can take it in your mobile device and have it always with you. So, in these 5 or 10 minutes in the morning, midday, in the afternoon, late in the evening, you could be learning Spanish, at the end of the day, for about half an hour without even noticing. So make the most of those “lost minutes”.

How to learn Spanish when you’re busy – Tip 5

The 5th point is to review your lessons regularly. In order for you to be able to progress, to learn more, and faster, you need to review what you’ve done before very frequently. Reviewing what you’ve learned is as important as learning new things.

So, for every lesson that you do, try to review at least one other one. Never go ahead with a new lesson without reviewing one that you’ve done before. It’s a technique that has helped me tremendously learning not just English, but other languages that I’ve learned.

And you progress so much faster. Sometimes when you’re reviewing you feel like you’re wasting your time. That you could be doing other things. Learning new stuff. Learning new words. Sometimes reviewing a lesson is just a matter of five or ten minutes. So, don’t think of reviewing as something overwhelming. Think of reviewing your lessons as a reward. Something that you should be looking forward to, because it’s so much easier than learning new things.

So, review your lessons as often as you can.

How to learn Spanish when you’re busy – Tip 6

And my sixth point is to build a solid base. If you have a solid base in Spanish. If you know your first 300 words really well. The pattern regular verbs really well in a few tenses. And if you know 50 expressions. The pronunciation rules. All these things will be so helpful for learning more Spanish much faster.

Always make sure that you build a solid base. Now, to build a good solid base all you need is a good Spanish course. Which is going back to the first point. A good course will always give you a good solid base.

How to learn Spanish when you’re busy – Let’s recap

Let’s recap. To the question: How do you study Spanish when you have a busy schedule we’ve got six main points. And they are:

1. To have a good Spanish course

2. To use a course with short lessons

3. To use a course that comes with plenty of audio material recorded by native speakers.

4. To make the most of your lost minutes

5. To review your lessons regularly

6. To build a solid base

If you follow these six points, your Spanish will skyrocket. It will be mind-blowing what you can do in two or three months.

How my Spanish course will help you

Because this is such an important issue, a few months ago I decided that I was going to put together a new course. I know there’s a huge gap on the market for good courses for people like Vernon, who are very busy, they only have a few minutes here and there to learn Spanish. They really want to learn. They want to have something that’s going to make their job easy. They don’t want to spend their time looking for lessons here and there. They want a good course. They want it entertaining, motivating.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done.

I’ve put together a Spanish video course. A course with plenty real of conversations and role playing exercises. It also has pronunciation practice, and vocabulary flashcards where you can learn new words really easily.

Find out more about my Spanish for beginners course.