Here is the solution! Three tips, that make the secret to understanding this super fast spoken language is this:
Learning the “melody” of the language.
Listen to Spanish and listen a lot! Over time you’ll be able to recognize that there is a way of construction sentences, a certain way of putting them together. The more you listen Spanish, the more you brain will recognize this “melody” and is able to construct to what is being say.
TIP: Watch the Spanish news for 10 minutes every day. For example: RTVE has a “Las noticias en 10 minutos. Click here for the youtube playlist. And here is an example of on of those episodes. It is really good listening practice. Especially because you most likely already know what the news subjects will be.
Learn conjugations endings
Once you got to the point where you might know about 30 to 50 Spanish verbs you probably know how to conjugate in maybe 3 or 4 tenses as well. This intermediate level is great, because it means that you can make yourself perfectly understandable. However, understanding Spanish when people don’t slow down can still be quite tricky. Here is the trick to catch up and actually understand.
All tenses have a regular ending. Learn the common used endings and you’ll quickly know if a present, future, past or potential tense is being used.
Use the Spanish conjugation chart here to easily see all the ending of verbs in 7 different tenses. It’s not necessary to learn this by heart, but try to recognize the build up of endings in the different tenses. The better you now what type of ending a verb has, the better you’ll recognize them in conversation.
Learn words: grow vocabulary
As soon as you learn more words, expand your vocabulary and you start to repeatedly hear them in conversation, you will be able to use them in no time. Learning new words and hear them in conversation is a great way to make sure you don’t forget the meaning. Tips for remembering new learned words:
- Duolingo. That app will make sure every word you learn will be repeated untill the end of days.
- Write down the words that you learn. Some people learn better by hearing, some better by seeing. If you are with the last category writing down your new words will help you remember them.
- Watch movies and series with subtitles.