Learning a new language can be a daunting task. This is true for Spanish as well. Especially if you only focus on using textbooks, and trying to memorize verbs, nouns, grammar rules and so on. Studying the theory of a language is not going to make you a better speaker of that language.<\/p>\n
So the most important thing, of course, is learning to communicate with others, especially with native Spanish speakers. Without being able to express yourself to Spanish speaking people and understanding them the rules you learned in your Spanish class suddenly lose value.<\/p>\n
You might ask \u201chow do I become conversational?\u201dor \u201chow do I become fluent in Spanish?\u201d. Well, it\u2019s not as hard as it sounds. There are many ways to do that, but I\u2019d like to elaborate on two of them: Music <\/strong>and Poetry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Why Music?<\/strong><\/p>\n Did you know that music affects the brain, in ways we can\u2019t imagine? Here is a little graphic to give you an idea:<\/p>\n As you can see brain areas responsible for movement, attention, planning and memory<\/strong>, consistently get activated when we listen to music.This means that when we listen to music, a lot of other things happen to our brain, not just simple sound processing.<\/p>\n I emphasized \u201cmemory\u201d on purpose\u00a0 in the previous paragraph, because that\u2019s how this science finding helps in proving that listening to music helps learning to speak a\u00a0 language. This means that music gets stuck into our heads; the beat, melody and the lyrics<\/strong>. This is why many brands try to come up with new jingles in commercials and this is why you should listen to songs in Spanish – to learn Spanish through music.<\/p>\n By listening to Spanish music you can learn much more about the language and Spanish culture that you can from your textbooks. Since we mentioned conversational Spanish, in all these songs you can hear local slang language. So, you\u2019ll learn the language the way Spanish people use it to communicate on a day to day basis.<\/p>\n How To Use Songs To Learn Spanish?<\/strong><\/p>\n You pick a catchy tune (rhythm and melody), that has clearly distinguishable pronunciation. At first you can try to understand the lyrics by hearing, if that\u2019s a problem you can always check them out with a simple search query. Then check for unknown words, highlight them, and translate them. I would suggest you listen Spanish songs from a particular Spanish speaking region, as the dialect and the slang they use can differ greatly. You want to become familiar with just that region\u2019s dialect, not all of them.<\/p>\n When you pick a song, you should listen to it a number of times, until you can sing along. That\u2019s when this whole process of learning Spanish through music delivers the \u201cend product\u201d.<\/p>\n Here a few resources that you can learn Spanish from:<\/p>\n Here are a few songs that you might like:<\/p>\n La Tortura by Shakira<\/p>\n\n