How I am Improving my Spanish in 2022
Not only is Spanish the second most spoken language in the world, 41 million Americans speak this language at home every day! This year, one of my goals is to immensely improve my Spanish. I have been around the Spanish language for all of my life, and I only started focusing on it in 2019. Nowadays, I have been immersed via one-to-one interactions in my workplace, and I believe that it is time I reach a higher proficiency. Better now than never, I suppose. I have come up with three methods for reaching a C1 level in Spanish.
1. The DELE Exam
The Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera, or DELE, is a certification that demonstrates to employers that you have a certain level of Spanish knowledge to work in that language. There are different levels of exams from A1 to C2 using the Common European Framework of Reference, or CEFR, certified by the Instituto Cervantes. Most companies hire B2 and above candidates, and a professional goal of mine is to take and pass the DELE C1 exam so that I may add it to my résumé. Most language learners do not have to pay the costs just to take the exam because a certification doesn’t necessarily prove that a learner is fluent or not. However, this will be a great motivator for me because I want to make this my tangible goal.
2. iTalki
There is an amazing platform called iTalki, where clients hire community tutors and professional teachers for their time and expertise. I am going to find a tutor where they can help me pass the DELE and further reach near-native fluency. The purpose of having a native speaker as a mentor is for them to correct and practice the target language. I want to be able to speak to anyone about anything and learn from them as they learn from me. As the year goes on, an iTalki tutor will help test my knowledge and better hold myself accountable than I could on my own. Furthermore, native speakers are great resources to learn current internet lingo or idioms that are not familiar in English. This will help me connect better with future clients once I become a Speech Language Pathologist!
3. Digital Spanish Immersion
Just as my Learning German by Playing Pokémon article explains, I am playing through the Pokémon games in Spanish! They use Español Castellano, but it is still Spanish nonetheless. I have been watching YouTube videos and listening to the news in Spanish. I changed the language on my phone to Spanish, and practice conversations daily with other people or with myself if I have no one to speak to. The cool thing about this is that I do not have to know everything I am reading or hearing because I ask a ton of questions. I think that this type of inquiry process allows me to involve myself more in language learning so that I am able to make more connections to phrases, ideas, and situations. Of course, if I need to do anything that requires higher comprehension like go over documents, then I will do it in English as it is my native language. I just want to use as many resources as I can to better immerse myself in the Spanish language without having to live in a Latinx country or community.
I hope these methods that I have shared are helpful to you as they will be to me because I have been thinking about what I should do to improve my Spanish for a while now. There are so many other methods such as Pimsleur or shadow-repetition, which I can explain in a later article, that might be helpful to speak more fluently at a faster rate. For now, I am going to stick with these three strategies and see how it goes by the end of the year. Hopefully, I can be mistaken for a native speaker and understand the chisme that goes on around me.