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A lot of people have a problem with Spanish spoken quickly.

Dave sent me some feedback and thoughs. See my answer below to Dave’s letter to me.

I really like the Synergy course.  So far I have the following thoughts. First of all, I am a retired Electrical Engineer and therefore analyze everything, and so I am interested in the language learning process.  That is what drew me to your Synergy approach.

I have been taking lessons for over 2 years now from a wonderful lady from Columbia, but from the very first I thought that grammar was not the way to go.  I believe like you that students ought to be given a limited vocabulary sheet and then they should make all kinds of sentences from the words in order to become comfortable with speaking.  By the way, every student that started with me and joined later classes has dropped because it was too hard.

Besides taking the lessons with La Senora, I have also finished the Pimsleur course.  I wish that I had found you first, however, it would have been a lot less expensive.  I do feel, though, that I learned a lot from the Pimsleur course.

I listen to Spanish radio and TV almost every day.  So, as you can see, I am determined to become as fluent as is possible at this stage of my life.  Synergy is one part of the puzzle.  Another part would be to be able to understand Spanish in the media.  I think that the key is to know numbers cold (because they are used so often) and to not even think about helper verbs like “tenemos” etc.  Whenever I hear “tenemos” now, I don’t translate it, I just know it.  But, there are a lot of other helper verbs, that I still translate.  The less translating one has to do, the easier it is to understand Spanish spoken quickly because in that split second that you are translating a verb like “tenemos” you are missing the infinitive verb after it and the content of the sentence is lost.  So, you might think about a way of getting students to acquire this “knowing” skill.  I think that hearing it over and over again from different speakers is a possibility.

By the way, I feel that if I can understand Spanish media, then I will pick up patterns and improve my spoken Spanish as well.  One of my “fears” in speaking is to say something and then have the native speaker come back rapidly with something that I do not understand.  I know that I can say “repita por favor” pero I would rather not have to do that.  Listening and understanding a lot of Spanish, even if I can’t speak it, would be the key for me.

Saludos,

Dave
 

Hola Dave

Thanks for taking the time to write me, I appreciate your comments.

I would recommend you include in your daily practice reading in Spanish. Reading gives you more time to decipher the language and this will help with understanding Spanish spoken very quickly.

You will find that over time reading gives you the ability to understand Spanish words in a split second. After you have read and understood a word several times, you start to recognize it instantly on paper. Then you find the next time you hear it you also recognize it. After you hear it a few times you start to recognize it instantly.

So, even though reading is not a listing skill it will play a big part in building you listening skills and understanding Spanish at the fast speed that native speakers often use.

I am actually working on some material to also help understand Spanish spoken quickly. I have been researching the project for almost 2 years. I’ll let you know when I have material.

For more tips on understanding Spanish spoken  quickly go to this page of tips

Saludos

Marcus Santamaria