speaking spanish quickly

December 21, 2005 2:26 PM

Spanish conversation: Ive spent some time abroad living in Spanish-speaking countries, and have been taking Spanish classes, but I still find it difficult to speak quickly in Spanish on command. Speaking after a few minutes is easy, though.

A few minutes of speaking in Spanish gets me up to a very fast clip where i'm thinking in Spanish again, but i can't respond to a question or short bursts of conversation without ramping up. Any recommendations on how to improve my ability to slip back into "Spanish mode" more quickly?

posted by jare2003 to education (5 comments total)

Practice.

My Spanish is good, but rusty, and like you, I also need a warm up period. I've found that listening to Spanish language music in the background helps me ease in reading/speaking the language.

However, right now, I'm in a situation where speaking Spanish is completely at my convenience. I have to go out of my way to speak/read Spanish.

One of my language teachers said that language learning involves developing new neural networks, and the only way to develop them is to need to use them.

No doubt other MeFites can chime in with more comprehensive analysis of the neural physiology of learning languages (stavros, where are you?).
posted by luneray at 2:41 PM on December 21, 2005

Think in the language, so when you need to speak you have already been speaking it to yourself for a while.
posted by kindall at 3:39 PM on December 21, 2005

I do the same thing just shifting between different types of English. I'd say you're doing fine.
posted by Ken McE at 5:53 PM on December 21, 2005

There's a lot of spanish-language TV out there. Start watching the evening news in spanish. Just a half-hour a day to keep those parts of your brain lubricated. And it can't hurt to throw some Lente Loco reruns in there once in a while for kicks.
posted by popechunk at 7:05 PM on December 21, 2005

one thing i used to do was have a little conversation (in spanish) in my head (yay!) as i walked around town, discussing things i saw. translating adverts (often tricky, since the joke goes away), making up sentences using the letters from car number plates to start words, etc etc.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:32 AM on December 22, 2005