Your Guide to Cultural Fluency

Does the mention of Spanish grammar make your heart beat faster and sweat drip down your forehead? Let’s get one thing straight, learning Spanish grammar isn’t the easiest thing, and you won’t learn it overnight. 

Grammar can be a terrifying topic to some and it can feel particularly difficult for English-speaking natives. Spanish Grammar can often break people’s motivation to learn Spanish.

Fear no more! Here’s how you can conquer Spanish grammar once and for all. 

 

1. Understand the grammar rules, but apply them step by step.

When you speak your native language (English, Dutch, German, etc.) do you really think about the grammar rules? NO! It should be the same when you learn Spanish. Just keep practicing and the rules will gradually stick with you.

You can start by practicing only the present tense first, it will give you the proper training to prepare for the various complexities of other tenses in Spanish. Once you’ve mastered it you can continue to the past and future tenses. In the beginning, if you want to express or share information from the past you can use the present tense alongside words such as ayer (yesterday) at the beginning of the sentence. Similarly, when talking about future events, you can use words like mañana (tomorrow) or la próxima semana (next week) to keep things clear.

The more you read, speak, or listen to Spanish, the more you will notice a pattern. You will get used to the rules without over-thinking whether you have made a grammatical error or not.

 

2. Get someone to correct your Spanish grammar.

Ask colleagues, friends, or Spanish natives you interact with on a regular basis to correct you. If you let them know what you’re struggling with they would be more than glad to help you better your Spanish, just like your parents did when you were young. Do you remember when you were first learning your native language? Getting corrected is particularly useful when you must use tenses and choose the right gender of Spanish words. Look for that someone to do this for you.

Invest in a series of private conversation classes to practice conjugating in the past and future tenses. The conversation classes can give you the special attention you might need to make progress in this area.

 

3. Keep a notebook only for your notes in Spanish.

Yikes… Masculine, feminine, and conjugations are a bit more complex in Spanish. English nouns don’t have a gender, which makes the application of gender in Spanish much more complex for the native English speaker. The notebook can provide order and clarity in your learning process.

In general, nouns that end in “a” are feminine nouns, but the Spanish language is full of exceptions to the rules. For example, el clima (the weather) ends in “a” but it’s a masculine noun. As time goes on you will know all the nuances.

 

4. Learn which connectives match which grammar constructions.

Desde (since/from), pero (but), sin embargo (however), mientras (while), de todas maneras (anyway) and por lo tanto (therefore) are popular connectives that can be used to help you construct longer sentences and have longer conversations.

By learning which connectives could be matched with the present, the past, the future, the conditional, and the subjunctive tenses, you’ll be able to remember the grammatical order of a variety of sentence structures in Spanish.

 

5. Write in Spanish every day.

The only way to perfect Spanish grammar is to put your skills into practice and find out what other doubts you have. Whether you’re filling in exercises from a Spanish grammar book or keeping a daily diary in Spanish, you must make a point of writing in Spanish every day. You might come up with a list of Spanish grammar doubts every day, but in these moments, you’ll have the time to research and find out how to express yourself correctly before continuing.

 

And one more thing…

Don’t Don’t beat yourself up over grammar.

Instead, try to be aware of your progress.
Can you use more accurate sentences in Spanish than you previously could?
Focus on your progress instead of pressuring yourself.