Learning Spanish involves more than memorizing new vocabulary words, or learning to pronounce new words like native speakers do.

And although vocabulary is important and fluid pronunciation streamlines communication in your target language, developing an “ear” for the language is crucial for your language learning success.

Besides improving your pronunciation, you need to develop a sensitivity to the language that you are learning. In the case of Spanish, this means listening for specific things that you are not accustomed to pay attention to as a native English speaker.

The things that you need to sensitize yourself to are:

• Stressed vowels and stressed syllables
• Slurred and blended vowels
• Slurred and blended words (Spanish blends words together when vowels and consonants meet, even if these sounds are in different words)
• Context clues in the communication that advise you of the correct gender or case of you response

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Learning Spanish involves more than memorizing new vocabulary words.

And although vocabulary is important, other factors influence your language learning success. One of those factors is the ability to produce the sounds of Spanish in a way that communicates. This can be called, “Training your Tongue.”

Training your tongue means learning to produce the sounds of Spanish in the correct way. This means producing the sounds in a way other than the way that you normally do. This skill will decrease the “accent” that you have when you talk to a native Spanish speaker.
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A little effort goes a long way in learning to pronounce Spanish.

For one thing, the Spanish Vowels are uniform (mostly), so just getting those five sounds right improves your Spanish pronunciation by a huge percentage.

Clase Chevere Pronunciation instuctions show the basic Spanish sounds. Mind maps summarize these sounds at a glance.

So, exert a bit of effort in pronouncing Spanish correctly, otherwise you will sound “terrible, stupid and ignorant.”
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