Shadowing Practice: how I would study Spanish (if I could start over) ⊹ resources & tips - Learn English Speaking with Video

So I have been studying Spanish for about eight years now

and I've been fluent in Spanish for about six of those years

and if I had to start learning Spanish again from scratch I would do it completely differently.

So this video is for past me.

Also before we get into it I know that I pronounce Spanish weirdly.

I know it's supposed to be Spanish but I grew up in Ireland.

That is just how we pronounce it.

We are not from the U .S.

But anyway moving on.

First point is to stop buying point for me because when I first started studying Spanish,

I think I literally bought five or six grammar books because I was like, this is the only way to learn a language.

To be fair, that was the first language I was ever learning at that point.

So I understand where the excitement was coming from.

But if you are still kind of a beginner in Spanish and you need to learn some grammar, all the grammar points you need are on studiespanish .com, which is free.

I'm not in any way affiliated with them or anything, but they have like over a hundred different units of grammar you can do little exams,

like everything you need is online for free.

And that specific resource, like if you don't know where to go, if you don't know where to start, studiespanish .com, all the grammar you need for a beginner.

Obviously, if you're going to go into like super advanced grammar, you might have to find another resource, but that is more than enough to get you started with talking.

And I really wish I had gone to

that website rather than buying all these books that I just didn't end up using anyway.

The second thing that I would tell myself, which I only learned basic vocabulary flashcards.

So there are so many different ways of studying vocabulary

and everyone has their own preferences but for me personally Anki was always the way to go.

I love their SRS algorithm so I always make my flashcards on there

but the problem is before anytime I would make flashcards I would get a list of like 50 words

and I would just make like back -to -back flashcards like English to Spanish, Spanish to English and that way I was not learning the words in any

able to use them in a sentence like almost ever sentence mining is basically getting a sentence

and just finding one word that you don't know

and making a flash card where only that word is missing

so you see the whole sentence and then it's just

that one word that you don't know and that you learn

that word through context obviously you need to have a certain level of spanish to be able to do this

but honestly i think even a1 is more than enough to make sentence mining flash cards right any more normal flashcards.

Like all of my flashcards are sentence mining flashcards.

Because again, you're learning that word through context.

And sometimes one word can have five different meanings depending on the context.

So you can make five different flashcards depending on the context

that it's in rather than just like put one word and like put all the five different meanings, because that way you're just not going to remember all of it.

So this was a very big one for me.

The next thing that I would tell myself would be to not wait to start immersion and speaking.

You

one

when i started learning i always thought there was basically no

point to practice speaking on my own like record myself

or to watch like spanish vlogs

and stuff until i was at least a little bit conversational

because i was like what's the point i'm not gonna understand anything anyway

and what's the point of speaking because i don't have enough vocabulary to say anything

but even on day one you will have enough vocabulary to like even speak for 10 seconds like

if it's just hola me llamo however long it's been you

are definitely capable of speaking for at least 10 seconds 15 seconds and work your way up.

Like nobody's asking you to start with five minutes straight of speaking.

And the thing about immersion, and I think the reason why so many people want to leave it until later, is that they think that immersion is only forgetting vocabulary.

But immersion is a lot to do with getting the rhythm and the tone of the language.

And that does not come in one day.

That builds and you understand that rhythm and tone over time.

So if you start listening to Spanish from the beginning, even when you don't really understand what they're saying, like maybe

words you're starting to listen and acknowledge

and recognize patterns in the way they speak so

if you're not really prioritizing immersion until you're at like a b1 conversational level you are not going to learn that rhythm

and tone in a day not even in a month it

takes time my personal recommendation for immersion would be lingopi i have talked about them in

so many videos so you guys must have heard of them already

but they're actually the sponsor of today's video lingopi is a game changer for language learners like it's a platform

that allows you to dive into your language through movies, tv shows, short stories, music, and it's kind of like learning and entertainment rolled into one.

So how it works is if you're watching a tv show for example

and you have your subtitles on you have the choice to either just have your target language

or target language and english or just english like it's fully customizable

and up to you but if you're watching a show in spanish

and you hear a word that you don't know you just click on

that word on the subtitles and it will automatically show you the meaning it will show you the context of

save into a flashcard deck so you don't have to go on Anki or Quizlet and make extra flashcards.

It will automatically do that for you

and after you finish watching the tv show there's like different games

that you can play to learn all those different flashcards

so it kind of rolls all that process into one

and it cuts out the middleman of having to like sit down

and pause and write down and make flashcards

and it just makes everything super super smooth

and one of my favorite features is that you can actually see where

that tv show or that movie comes from

which is especially useful for anyone learning spanish because there are

so many different accents and dialects with Spanish so for example

if you're learning Spanish to speak it with your husband's family

in Mexico then I'm sure you're gonna want to learn Mexican

Spanish you want to know their slang you want to know their way of speaking their tone

so you're gonna want to watch Mexican TV shows

and Mexican movies usually it's kind of hard to know where a movie comes from

or a TV show comes from on Lingopie you see the little flag you see where it comes from

so like for me personally I'm what I should actually watch and learn from.

So yeah, if you want to make your language learning journey a lot more enjoyable and a lot more fun, then I would really recommend to check out LingoPy.

There's going to be a link in my description where you can check it out.

Moving on to our next point is I never realized the power of comments until recently.

So before, I would always try to find content to watch in Spanish, and a lot of the times you find YouTube videos that don't have subtitles or, I don't know, they have those automated subtitles,

but usually they're not that good, and

sometimes you just want to watch a vlog

but there's like nothing with subtitles you can't find something

that you're interested in but there are comments

if you think about it comments are probably the most conversational written form of text

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that you will ever find because for example

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if you're learning with a news article or a podcast or something

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that language is usually a little bit fancier than how people

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talk day to day whereas comments are literally coming from the

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proper grammar or they misspell things or there's a lot of slang

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but if you are aiming to learn that language

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and speak it fluently you're gonna have to pick up on those little things anyway

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so i would really recommend to learn with comments find a video

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that you want to watch and even if it doesn't have subtitles

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or it doesn't have a transcription or whatever you need go into the comments

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and copy the comments and paste them into chat gbt

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if you want

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and you can ask is this all correct is there any like incorrect spellings is the grammar all correct

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and then after that you can use that The next thing that I would tell myself is please, please, please focus more on learning slang.

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This would only apply to you if you're learning a certain dialect or a certain accent.

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For me personally, I moved to Spain after studying Spanish for a long time and honestly, I feel like I did not understand 20 % of what was being spoken.

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I guess it depends on each country, but in Spain, there are so many variations of saying the same thing

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and so many of those variations you are not going to find in a textbook.

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So what I would recommend for my past self is look up slang videos on YouTube, watch slang videos on TikTok, like pick up anything you can,

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even if it's outdated slang that people are not really using anymore, it will still form some sort of context.

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So for example, people day to day are not really using lol as much in English.

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I don't know if that's considered a slang.

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I know some people still say lol, but before it was like very, very widely used, whereas now it's kind of like sarcastic if you use it.

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People still might kind of bring it up in conversation, or maybe there's new slang that builds on top of the old slang.

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Any slang you learn, honestly, is going to be useful for you, even if it's not really used anymore.

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The point is not necessarily to use it.

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The point is to understand it.

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You can use it once you feel comfortable.

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But first of all, we just want to understand all of it.

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So watch as many videos as possible.

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Personally, I would say go to TikTok if you want to find slang.

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I feel like there's a lot more updated videos.

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I think YouTube would be a little bit more outdated slang, but I could be wrong.

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My next point is you need to start reading out loud more often, even if you don't understand whatever you're reading, just to get used to hearing yourself speak in Spanish.

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So the thing that I realized for me is

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that most of my fear of speaking in front of other Spanish people was not necessarily

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that I'm not gonna know a specific word.

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It was more not wanting to get my words all tangled up because sometimes if I try to speak Spanish quickly,

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I almost start getting like a stutter because my Russian speaking brain and my English speaking brain, they're just not

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the way that spanish moves like it's so quick

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so sometimes i feel like i'm gonna get a stutter

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so i get kind of nervous of speaking

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and reading out loud helps prevent

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that from happening i'm not saying it's gonna completely get rid of it

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but it's gonna give you a lot more confidence you're gonna know what your voice actually sounds like

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and when you're speaking to people it's not these random words

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that you're saying for the first time in front of someone else you have probably already said

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that word in the past when you were reading so again the point is not to necessarily understand reading.

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If you're at that level where you can read a book and understand everything, then great.

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But if you're not, find a free Spanish book online and just read out loud.

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You don't have to understand.

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Even like a little 10 -minute practice per week is better than nothing.

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My next tip is actually a resource, but I fell in love with doing Spanish crosswords on Linguno.

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They also have little conjugation drills that I do sometimes, but their crosswords are so freaking good.

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They have crosswords for every single level of Spanish.

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They also have monolingual crosswords.

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So for example, reading the description in Spanish and then answering in Spanish.

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They also have like theme crosswords and you get these every single day.

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So every single day they are coming out with like 50 crosswords in Spanish specifically for learning.

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So this is just a resource that I would tell myself to use

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because it is so nice to just do a quick little daily crossword.

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It takes five minutes and even if you just learn two words per day, amazing, beautiful.

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Like I feel like that is such a good rate of learning a language

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if you feel like you're not in that phase where you want to studying but you still want to pick something up, crosswords on Linguno is like chef's kiss.

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And last but not least, what I would tell myself is please don't get too hung up on making the perfect detailed study plan.

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I think this is the biggest takeaway for me

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because in the past I've always tried to make this like

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super intricate detailed study plan where like on Monday I'm doing listening,

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on Tuesday I'm doing grammar and like super super organized in that way but honestly if you try to in the beginning,

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you're watching some Spanish videos on Lingopie, you're following some Spanish YouTubers,

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you are learning vocabulary that is applicable to you in your life specifically, not just like fork, knife,

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spoon, but specifically things that can help you talk about your own life.

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You are going to be fluent in time, like just give it time, you don't need some crazy complex study plan.

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I'm currently studying another language called Bisaya Sabuano and I feel like I am

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other language and

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that is the first time where i'm just not making myself

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a study plan i'm just going along my little grammar lessons i'm watching a couple videos

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if i can and i'm not making a huge deal out of it

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and i'm just showing up rather than trying to make this perfect plan

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but then never actually doing it because it's so complicated you know

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but yeah those are all the things that i would tell my younger self

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and i hope they helped you let me know if you have any other little tips

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Please let me know if you like this video, and I will see you guys in my next one.

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Peace out.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: how I would study Spanish (if I could start over) ⊹ resources & tips - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?