Learning Spanish, or any foreign language, is great for many reasons. It develops the language center of your brain, which helps you speak, read, and write better in your own language. It teaches grammar. Studies show learning a foreign language can protect against mental deterioration as we age.聽 Some say that learning the melodious sounds and rhythms of another language develop your ear for music.聽 The benefits are many.
Learning a language is within anyone鈥檚 grasp, but it takes patience and determination. 91国产自拍麓s high school Spanish curriculum is designed to give students the knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and culture that they need to become proficient in Spanish.聽 Nevertheless, those of us teaching Spanish in high school can encourage our students to practice in their daily lives by implementing the following strategies both inside and outside the classroom:
- Begin to speak the language as soon as possible. Don鈥檛 worry about making mistakes. You aren鈥檛 expected to speak it perfectly yet.
- Integrate the language into your everyday life. Use Facebook in Spanish. Watch television shows from Spain and Latin America. Listen to rock music en Espa帽ol. While going about your normal daily routine and you say something in English, stop and ask yourself: 鈥淚 wonder how you would say that in Spanish?鈥澛 Take a guess, and then look it up later. It鈥檚 a fun game. Go to a Mexican restaurant and read the menu in Spanish and order in Spanish.
- Read in Spanish. Go on line and spend ten minutes every day reading about a topic you love. If you like sports, Google your favorite athlete and read a story about him or her in Spanish, or read his or her Wikipedia page in Spanish. You麓ll get the gist easily, given the tremendous number of words in Spanish that sound like English, and you麓ll be naturally motivated because of your interest in the topic.
- Look up Spanish words when you read or when you hear them in a song. Write them down and look at them three of four times during the day. Keep a running list of your vocabulary. You can easily learn six new words a day. That麓s over 2000 words in just one year!
Turn these into Spanish activities for your high school students by hosting an ongoing discussion about what they have learned out there, living in Spanish.