Voices en Español

Tips, advice and words of encouragement related to learning and improving one’s Spanish are some of the recurring themes here at Voices en Español. That’s why I think the Linguist’s manifesto is a fabulous idea. It’s kind of like a mission statement for language learners. Here’s a sample passage:

Nunca diré que no soy bueno. Cuando leo y escucho me diré a mi mismo, “buen trabajo”, aun si hay partes que no son siempre claras. Cuando trate de pronunciar el nuevo lenguaje y cometa errores, no me importara. Yo sé que estoy mejorando en forma natural. Siempre seré consecuente conmigo mismo. Trataré de no estar nervioso. Si cometo un error diré “No importa”. Si olvido una palabra diré “No importa”. Si tengo un problema diciendo lo que quiero decir, diré “No importa”. Yo seguiré adelante hasta que hable en forma FLUIDA.

There’s also a podcast recording of this manifesto that you can find on iTunes. Just do a search for “The Linguist” in the educational podcasts category. A fun and useful exercise is reading the text out loud while listening to the podcast. That’s an excellent way to work on pronunciation since you can check what you’re saying immediately against what the native speaker is saying. (In this case, the speaker is a woman from Colombia.)

But even if you don’t do that, having something like this manifesto at hand, either in written form (like a print out) or in audio form (on your mp3 player), could be just the little bit of encouragement you need to keep up with your Spanish studies.