Why is motivation a crucial element of your Spanish learning process?

Preserve and make use of your motivation to skyrocket your Spanish level

You have taken up Spanish. Great! Are you brimming with enthusiasm and yearning for your upcoming Spanish lessons?  Is your zeal for learning Spanish akin to the feeling of butterflies in your stomach?

You got it!  That is called motivation and that’s one of the most essential prerequisites to learn a language.

However, motivation can sometimes be fickle and fragile and eventually abandon you, leading to demotivation. Whether at work, at university or even in love, all of us have experienced bitter bouts of demotivation and its destructive effects.

The best way to preserve motivation is to imagine the fruits of your goals and keep going at them. Patience and perseverance always pay.

So, how can you persistently stay motivated and continue learning Spanish?

 

Did you start with a bang and end with a whimper? Take a moment to think why you decided to learn Spanish.

Was it a flamenco show that dazzled you?  Was it the famous Netflix series “La casa de papel”? Is it because you found the perfect place to live in Spain? Do you have a super business idea for Latin America? Have you have desperately fallen in love with a Spanish-speaking person? Or do you simply find the language fascinating? A mix of all?

You know the source of your motivation better than anyone else does. All you need to do is nurture and preserve your motivation to continue learning and improving your Spanish.

So, do you want to preserve and capitalize on your motivation? Then, here are six simple and useful tips that will help you for sure!

 

• Visualize yourself in the future: motivation requires self-projection

Project yourself into the future, sitting at a tapas bar enjoying a conversation with your Spanish friends. Imagine that moment when you can understand a hilarious TV show in Spanish. Plan the trip of your life across Latin America. Think how you will finally be able to approach that special someone you never dared before. We all have challenges and dreams and they keep us alive and therefore motivated.

• Make Spanish an integral part of your daily life

What’s your favourite hobby? Series and movies? Super easy, why don’t you enable original subtitled versions, why don’t you watch Pulp Fiction again in its Spanish version? Cooking? Good, next time you follow a recipe on YouTube, follow it in Spanish.  You have no time for fun and entertainment? Go to the configuration of your LinkedIn account and turn Spanish as the default language.  Are you a social media addict? Fine, join Spanish-speaking Facebook groups. (After changing the configuration of your Facebook account by the way) Are you a voracious consumer of news? Start reading Spanish newspapers, which by the way, will improve your vocabulary and comprehension manifold. We all have a tendency to think in our mother tongue or in the language we most frequently use. Start thinking in Spanish now. Think about it, there are dozens of ways of incorporating Spanish into your daily life. For those who use it, there is a Spanish version of Tinder!

• Don’t be afraid! Speak! Speak! Speak! Speak Spanish with reckless abandon

Many of us tend to be too demanding of ourselves and want to be perfect in grammar or pronunciation before expressing ourselves in a foreign language.  We have a tremendous fear of being ridiculed. We set unrealistic expectations of being able to speak Spanish fluently in a short period. Wrong! Go ahead: make mistakes, don’t be afraid of Spanish speakers correcting you and making you repeat 4 times. Express yourself as much as you can and when you feel blocked, use your hands, your face, a drawing! Practice leads to perfection. How could you reach perfection if you adopt a self-protective attitude toward risks?

• Play! Playing is one of our best motivation boosters

Games are one of the best boosters for your brain. Playing increases the level of endorphins and therefore well-being. All you have to do is do it in Spanish. Do you like chess? Find yourself a Spanish chess player now that you have joined Spanish Speaking Facebook groups!  Are you more into video games?  Join the Spanish Nintendo fan page!

• Watch-out: exams or diplomas may be double-edged weapons for your motivation

Of course, diplomas are a wonderful reward and an excellent way to nourish motivation and help to continue learning a language. However, there may often be an adverse effect when the diploma becomes a goal per se.  If you set DELE or any other official Spanish exam as a primary goal, the pressure will hamper your progress. You will not enjoy the journey of learning Spanish and may end up loathing your Spanish classes and consider them as a chore since learning Spanish in this case becomes a means to an end. This could certainly kill your motivation. Learn the language for the love of it, proficiency will soon follow.

    . Spanish language immersion program in a Spanish speaking country

For a true language lover, learning a language is not confined to just classrooms/screens. If you learn a language, you must live the language too. Enrol yourself in a short Spanish immersion program in a Spanish speaking country and it would be a life-changing experience for you. You will be completely immersed in the language and experience the culture. You will meet like-minded language lovers like you with whom you can talk in Spanish. Imagine an Indian talking to a German or a Russian or even a British in Spanish.  Even if it is as short as one week, it will not only amplify your current level of Spanish but also broaden your perspective of the world.

 

In the end, motivation is the driving force behind most of our achievements. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

You surely have your own tips to fuel your motivation. Why don’t you just share them?