5 Ways to Stay Motivated When Learning a Language!
When you start learning a language as a complete beginner it is easy to feel focused and motivated as it is fairly easy to grasp the basics, learn key words and start to make yourself understood in the language. Even asking for a coffee in the target language on your holiday can feel amazing once you realise that people really do understand you. As you progress in the language you come across more difficult things to understand and as you try to have a real conversation you realise how hard this can be. It is then easy to feel de-motivated and as if you will never be fluent in the language. This is normal! The key is not to give up and try the following tips to help you stay focused and motivated to keep learning: Continue reading
How to Talk about Illness in Spanish
Whenever you go on holiday the last thing you want is to fall ill or have an accident and end up at the doctor’s surgery, chemist or even the hospital! However this has sometimes happened to some of the people that I have taught Spanish to, so they were very thankful that we had covered this topic in Spanish – just in case!
Don’t let an illness spoil your holiday. If you learn just a few key phrases and learn to understand the questions that the doctor or pharmacist is likely to ask you, you will have a much more stress-free holiday.
In this blog post we will teach you a few of the key words and phrases to express feeling ill or being in pain. Continue reading
How to Say You are Scared in Spanish
Expresiones en español para expresar el miedo
With Halloween this week, here are some popular Spanish phrases to express fear:
Tener miedo: To be scared. [Literally: To have fear.]
“Ella tiene miedo a las alturas.” She is scared of heights.
Asustarse: To get frightened.
“Me asusté tanto que me temblaban las piernas.” I got so scared that my legs were shaking. Continue reading
How to Think in Spanish – 6 Tips!
Being able to think in Spanish is an important step to becoming fluent. To get to this stage takes a lot of time, work and effort.
Even though you may have learnt the verb endings for all the key tenses, you can write and understand Spanish, when it comes to thinking in Spanish this is a whole different level.
The good news is there are a few simple tricks you can use to train your brain to think in Spanish. This is the aim of this blog post – to teach you the techniques to help you think in Spanish. Continue reading
9 ways to overcome the language learning plateau
Why do we reach a plateau?
Problem areas
One reason people learning languages lose motivation and feel they aren’t progressing is because they come across parts of the language they find difficult to understand. For example, tricky parts of grammar such as the subjunctive in Spanish, how pronouns or commands work. Continue reading
How to Use Negative Words in Spanish
Negative words in Spanish do not work in the same way as in English. If you try to translate a negative sentence from Spanish directly into English it will not sound right.
For example, in English we do not use double negatives whereas in Spanish they do.
e.g. No tiene nada que hacer. – Literal translation: He doesn’t have nothing to do.
(This is incorrect English and anyway, this would mean that he does have something to do, so is not negative.)
You will also find that you do not hear plural nouns used in negative sentences. You always use the noun in the singular form.
e.g. No hay problema. – There are no problems.
In this blog post we will teach you everything you need to be able to make up your own negative sentences. Continue reading
Funny mistakes you don’t want to make in Spanish!
When you learn a new language it is obvious you are going to be making a few mistakes to begin with. The best way to not get disheartened is to embrace your mistakes, laugh at them and make sure you don’t make them again!
In this blog post I will go through some of the most common mistakes that beginners make that can cause a few laughs. Continue reading
Top tips & useful resources for reading in a foreign language
Being able to read in a foreign language is a great achievement and something which most people enjoy.
It is an activity that you can fit into your busy schedule whether you have 10 minutes to spare, half an hour or a 3-hour train journey!
Apart from books here we will look at many more useful foreign language reading resources available today. Continue reading
6 Reasons why private language tuition is worth the investment
Last academic year 2018-2019 we were so pleased to have a record year of results for the students that we tutored in foreign languages. All students achieved levels 8 or 9 at GCSE with one achieving nearly 100% on her papers and another receiving the award at the presentation for best attainment in Spanish.
September is a busy time when students go back to school and especially those in GCSE and A-level year groups start to panic about the exams in the summer. Often parents want to help their children by booking private tutoring sessions to help them prepare in time and to reduce the stress nearer exam time.
Private language tuition is a particularly good idea due to the reasons we will go through in today’s blog post: Continue reading
When Do You Need to Use Subject Pronouns in Spanish
When should you use “yo”, “tú”, “él”, “ella” in front of verbs in Spanish?
What are Subject Pronouns?
The subject pronouns in Spanish are:
yo – I
tú – you
él / ella – he / she
usted – you (formal)
nosotros / nosotras – we
vosotros / vosotras – you (plural)
ellos / ellas – they
ustedes – you (formal, plural)
For people just starting to learn Spanish they often want to keep using these every time they say a verb, however this is often unnecessary as the ending of the verb tells you the subject of the verb. In this blog post, we will tell you when you should include the subject pronoun and when you shouldn’t. Continue reading
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