Getting really worried about Spanish

Hey guys,

I have my A2 speaking exam on the 6th of May and my writing in June, and I'm terrified. The thing is, the teachers at my college are very bad at teaching the language, so the class has learning near to nothing. We're going through the content at snail's pace, and it seems the teachers don't even know the syllabus. Whenever I speak Spanish I feel a sort of mental block -- I know what to say but not how to. Nothing is going into my head, I'm forgetting the simplest tenses and rules.

I have a predicted A and I need it to get into uni -- but I know I have like 0.001% to get that the way everything is going now. I feel like I'm working at a D right now. I have NO clue how I'm gonna improve that much for May.

Any tips? Please, anything would help.

x

Reply 1

Broadhallian

4

I've been learning Spanish myself but only ever had 2 weeks of classes. Everything else has come from the internet or speaking to Spanish speakers.

Internet; YouTube senor Jordan...this guy has amazing videos on pretty much every grammar aspect you could wish for.

Listen to music; there is a music that translates all the music into English for you; lyricstranslates.com I think. If you don't like the following Spanish groups then listen to English music and look at the spanish translation

Calle 13, mana, vetusta morla, Luis Enrique, jaunes, Molotov, fito y fitipaldis, Luis fonsi, Camilla, prince royce. Marc Anthony

I recommend calle 13 as the best for picking up words and analysing the grammar. No hay nadie como tu, latinoamericano, La bala are places to start

After teaching English many years I can always tell what students in the class listen to a lot of English music or even watch top gear in English.

Learning a Language is about motivation, its all to easy to blame your teachers, maybe they don't help but there is so many opportunities to teach yourself these days with the internet.

Speak Spanish in your head when having a shower, going to the toilet, improvise role plays in your head... Speak out loud after a while if you're alone. If you're in a big city they normally have language exchange groups on Facebook.

What language do you speak in class? You should be aiming to speak absolutely no English in class.

If you need practicing in writing, change your tinder GPS to south America, get some !matches and start speaking to them!! I learnt a lot from tinder when travelling in Mexico. Or visit some football forums of spanish clubs. The smaller ones like real betis will only be in spanish.

Do you like the inbetweeners??? Well on YouTube they have every episode uploaded with Spanish subtitles. Watch it and take notes.

Buena suerte mi amigo!

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 2

кяя

OP

11

Original post by Broadhallian

I've been learning Spanish myself but only ever had 2 weeks of classes. Everything else has come from the internet or speaking to Spanish speakers.

Internet; YouTube senor Jordan...this guy has amazing videos on pretty much every grammar aspect you could wish for.

Listen to music;

Calle 13, mana, vetusta morla, Luis Enrique, jaunes, Molotov, fito y fitipaldis, Luis fonsi, Camilla, prince royce. Marc Anthony

I recommend calle 13 as the best for picking up words and analysing the grammar. No hay nadie como tu, latinoamericano, La bala are places to start

After teaching English many years I can always tell what students in the class listen to a lot of English music or even watch top gear in English.

Learning a Language is about motivation, its all to easy to blame your teachers, maybe they don't help but there is so many opportunities to teach yourself these days with the internet.

Speak Spanish in your head when having a shower, going to the toilet, improvise role plays in your head... Speak out loud after a while if you're alone. If you're in a big city they normally have language exchange groups on Facebook.

What language do you speak in class? You should be aiming to speak absolutely no English in class.

Hey, thanks for the tips, I'll definitely try everything.

I used to watch a lot of telenovelas and try to imerse myself but they never talk about the topics we're studying (pollution, global warming, poverty).

We try to speak in Spanish only but what our teachers do is basically just answer questions from a textbook. We're good at reading it now, but speaking is like...6 y/o level lol.

Time to get serious...hopefully I can improve enough by May.

Again, thanks! :smile:

Reply 3

Broadhallian

4

Also,take a cheap flight from Ryanair to anywhere in Spain!!! Doesn't have to be a major city, any city will do... Just speak spanish to people!!

In Mexico I spoke a lot spanish in bars, to taxi drivers etc.

The speaking in your head is a tip from people who speak over 6/7 languages!! Then you know if you don't know something, and to look it up.

Señor Jordan however is great.

P.s I added some more stuff to the previous post!!

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 4

Broadhallian

4

5 months, you have time so tranquilo mi amigo!!!

Si tenia solo 2 semanas antes tu examine, despuis diria tienes una problema.

Maybe there is a free walking tour in spanish in London if you live close by!??

Join it and speak to the people on the tour!!

Reply 5

ikhan94

16

Just learn spanish online, look for language revision sites, there are quite a few online. good luck :smile:

Reply 6

кяя

OP

11

Original post by Broadhallian

5 months, you have time so tranquilo mi amigo!!!

Si tenia solo 2 semanas antes tu examine, despuis diria tienes una problema.

Maybe there is a free walking tour in spanish in London if you live close by!??

Join it and speak to the people on the tour!!

I know but the exams creep up on you...considering how fast 4 months just flew by...

Thanks to everyone ITT so far!

Reply 7

jennifercarr

Original post by кяя

Hey guys,

I have my A2 speaking exam on the 6th of May and my writing in June, and I'm terrified. The thing is, the teachers at my college are very bad at teaching the language, so the class has learning near to nothing. We're going through the content at snail's pace, and it seems the teachers don't even know the syllabus. Whenever I speak Spanish I feel a sort of mental block -- I know what to say but not how to. Nothing is going into my head, I'm forgetting the simplest tenses and rules.

I have a predicted A and I need it to get into uni -- but I know I have like 0.001% to get that the way everything is going now. I feel like I'm working at a D right now. I have NO clue how I'm gonna improve that much for May.

Any tips? Please, anything would help.

x

Hey!
I HATE the speaking test!
If you're with AQA (that's who I'm with) go through their A2 textbook, read every page, and if you are with them then your school should have a subscription to Kerboodle which has been a God-send. Do as many activities in the book (using Kerboodle) as you can - there are loads of good listening and reading exercises where you can pick up vocab!
Something my last teacher told me was you can never have enough vocab! Read articles from El Pais y El Mundo and even if you don't understand every word, you can either translate it to practice for the translation element of the exam (and the same with paragraphs of English articles into Spanish) or just highlight good vocab and practice using it in sentences that are relevant to your topics! It's surprisingly easy to find articles about climate change, immigration, law and order and wealth and poverty!
I LOVE listening to Spanish music and it's helped me a lot to pick up silly little words that I wouldn't have thought to learn in a vocab test! It's also good to see if you can keep up with saying the words with the accent - really good practice for pronunciation! (as long as they're not Latin American!) I know about 6 songs off by heart and this was actually a suggestion from my first teacher (who helped me to get 47/50 in my AS speaking!)
Buy the Animo Grammar workbook and self study guide - you can just sit down and do a 10-15 minute grammar exercise on the preterite tense, por and para o the imperfect subjunctive! It's great! The self study guide is for AQA but the tips in there are great if that's your exam board!
Lastly, if you can spare the time or money, get out here!! I've been living here in Madrid with a family for about 3 weeks now (and I'm here to stay until July but I'm flying home for the exams!) and I cannot tell you how much I've improved! Last week I dropped 2 marks on both the listening section and the reading section on a past paper and I can promise you I was nowhere near that when I came here!
I hope I've given you some ideas of ways you can do a little self-help! One thing I will say didn't help me was watching programmes in Spanish - it was frustrating that I didn't understand the dialogue because it was colloquial or too fast and I would just get annoyed. But there you go - things that help others may not be right for you :smile:

Best of luck!

Reply 8

jennifercarr

The speaking in your head is a tip from people who speak over 6/7 languages!! Then you know if you don't know something, and to look it up.

This is a really good idea too! I often sit and think of a scenario where I'm talking to someone and I have to reply in my head to their imaginary replies in Spanish! I promise I don't need therapy but it works really well because it makes your mind curious as to what a word is and you just have to go and find the word and then find out how to conjugate it correctly and it's great! :biggrin:

Reply 9

paula.alonso

I can help you with any questions you have, I'm from Spain, so Spanish is my first language :smile:

Reply 10

PerplexedBird

7

Para practicar nuestra gramatica por ejemplo, nosotros, los estudiantes de espanol A2 deberiamos crear una 'thread' donde conversamos sobre todo posible. Estoy segura de que si empezaramos a hablar con otros, mejorariamos nuestro espanol un monton... :P

Ahora estoy a tratar de hablar minimo ingleis en la clase para que pueda mejorar no solo mejorar mi pronunciacion sino tambien mi gramatica. Necesito una A* y voy a intentar sacarlo en el examen de aqa.

My tips would be to use the grammar book activity book for AQA it has a purple front cover and you should find it on amazon. Practice as much as you can and watch Caillou en espanol for grammar too :biggrin:

Also, make model answers for each bullet point of the spec and think about how you can counter argue the examiner's points.

Good luck amigo! :biggrin:

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 11

Sgt_Haytham

2

There are loads of free Spanish courses/programs online.

You can also brush up on words by looking up synonyms (which is what I do).

Make sure you put yourself in a relaxed atmosphere!

Getting really worried about Spanish

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