How to Improve Your Spanish Speaking Skills

There are four main areas that you need to train when learning a language. They are reading, writing, listening, and speaking. All these areas are important to develop your language skills.

Spanish is a very fast language, faster than English in some ways. What you hear in your lessons versus what you hear on the streets is very different. You also need to consider that some Spanish speaking countries speak faster than others leaving out random consonant and vowel sounds. For example; "para que" turns into "pa'que".

The accents and the fast pace speech can be intimidating for Spanish newbies. The thing is that it's always better to start your language journey with speaking. In any language, speaking is how you will be using the language around 50 percent of the time.

You're reading this because you're learning Spanish. So, I'll pose a few questions to you:

• Do you struggle to keep up in a conversation with native speakers?
• Do you find yourself memorizing key phrases to communicate?

If you answered, "yes" to both of these questions, keep reading. I'll show you ways to improve your Spanish speaking skills.

Podcast and Music

Listening to podcasts is a weapon because it gives you two benefits in one. For now, you can focus on the speaking aspect. If you only listen to a podcast in Spanish, that is passive.

What you want to try instead is repeating the phrases in the dialogue out loud. You can also have a transcription of the podcast too. Pause it sentence by sentence if you have to. Another fun method is listening to music.

Search for some Spanish music that you might like, and sing along. Depending on your level, I would start out with slower songs then work your way up to fast-paced music such as Reggaeton.

Read Out Loud

If you don't have a local Spanish newspaper or a magazine on hand. The internet has a wealth of resources that you can use. Check out the Spanish language section of CNN to read the news articles out loud. You can also use a website called The Spanish Experiment that offers class fairy tales to users. To get the most out of your practice, listen to the narrator first, then repeat.

Online Lessons

Another awesome tool to put your Spanish speaking skills in motion is Justlearn. Here, you can watch videos and practice the dialogue. You can also choose online lessons with native speakers to help you with pronunciation. The teachers give you instant feedback to get your Spanish speaking in the right direction.

Failure isn't Fatal

The best method to improve your Spanish speaking skills is to practice. The ways that I mentioned are part of the exercise routine, like going for a run or lifting weights. You can't expect to lose weight if you don't start exercising, to begin with. If you are afraid of looking stupid because you mispronounced a word. You won't get very far. Messing up is part of the process because you have to start from somewhere.