Tips on studying Spanish in less than 3 months

I am considering dropping French to pursue, spanish a subject i always liked but I don't know if i'll catch up since I last learnt it in Year 7? Any tips on how to study spanish in under a year?

Reply 1

Castrovalva

Original post by nul_student1

I am considering dropping French to pursue, spanish a subject i always liked but I don't know if i'll catch up since I last learnt it in Year 7? Any tips on how to study spanish in under a year?

From the get-go, I'll be honest, it depends on your age and goals with the subject. If you're in Year 13, almost certainly not, but it's doable in Year 12 and below I suppose. I picked up Spanish in Year 13 as an A Level with the proviso that I caught up on everything I missed over the summer (which was about 3 months I think?) and I recently recieved an offer from Cambridge to study languages, so I will say it isn't impossible to learn a language "quickly" (though I think that's such a subjective thing to say - what do we count as learning? what do we count as quick?), but that does require a lot of dedication. I studied for at least two hours every day (often more!) to catch up with the year or so I missed. For context, I did Spanish up to GCSE so I had only missed a year of Spanish though. I had basically no free time because I wanted to be absolutely confident in everything, especially because I wanted to go to a Russell Group uni (though back then, I wasn't sure in what subject) so I needed a good grade. If it's a passion project and you don't have set required bits of Spanish to learn, go for it, so long as you can commit! If you want to get a qualification (GCSE/A Level/etc.) then I would definitely suggest speaking with staff, not only the Spanish teachers but your French teacher, director of studies and so on, because they're the people who know how much you'd need to learn and if you could do it before the deadline. I think a big indicator for you to decide is how well you're doing in French; if you're doing well then it's probably a good indicator on how you'll do in Spanish, but also, if you're doing well in French then I wouldn't drop the subject! I hope what I'm saying makes sense because I feel like I'm rambling lol