No se como entender mas de lo que escucho
He estudiado mucho de espanol para unos anos y he visitado paises de donde se hablan espanol. Puedo leer y escribir mucho en espanol; y puedo hablar poco con personas que se conocen buenas, pero nunca puedo entender mucho de lo que muchas personas dicen. Debo preguntar que hablen muy despacio, y repetir mucho.
Quiero aprender para entender que se dicen pero no se como hacerlo.
4 Answers
Hi ian-hill
I wish I could come up with an instant, take-this-pill-and-all-will-be-fine remedy but I can't.
What I can do is to encourage you by saying that you are not alone and that aural understanding will almost certainly come in time. Continuous exposure is certainly the best answer. 25 years ago or so, I used to visit Brazil five or seven times a year and it was very, very frustrating. Earlier I had picked up Spanish in what felt like weeks but Portuguese was a whole new can of worms. I would spend a few days in Sao Paulo and then move on to RIo (or vice versa) where it could have been another language. Then I'd fly back home to England. So I never really learnt Portuguese.
The message is that you need continuous exposure, for several months ideally, to a bunch of Spanish speakers who are consistent with each other and who don't add the confusion factor of differing dialects.
Obviously this isn't easy to do but without it you will simply have to go on trying, practice with Spanish tv and lesson material and find as many local Spanish speakers as you can.
Good luck
This is exactly the problem I have.
Sorry this is in English but I am beginning to think that either there is something wrong with my ears or my brain or that spoken Spanish has "something" about it that makes it difficult to understand.
Someone here on SpanishDict suggested that one should watch TV and write down what was said and then work out what it meant.
Just watching TV does not seem to help me. If I could write it down it would mean that almost for sure I would understand it.
That just does not solve the problem I seem to have.
I paid for some lessons from a most respected teacher of Spanish here in Bolivia . It was no help at all for me.
I am simply not "hearing" the words most of the time.
I had a very similar problem. Other than exposure I can't think of what would make a major difference. Of course, vocabulary is a large factor. It's likely that after you ask someone to repeat themselves they will repeat themselves using different and more carefully chosen words. Hand in hand with vocabulary comes verb study and comprehension. It's essential to be able to identify the subjects, their actions and the temporal frame of those actions. This will help a lot.
When I get lost in a conversation I start asking questions in order to get my footing again. The more you engage someone with questions the more you will direct the conversation. Thusly, you'll know at least the context of what people are saying.
I would highly recommend visiting a Spanish speaking country for a few months-other than being and incredible catalyst to your language study it will doubtlessly be a rewarding learning experience.
The way I became more accustomed to spanish was to watch T.V. shows dubbed in youtube like pokemon (lol) and it was very childish spanish but it helped me hear the words much more clearly. This is my favorite method other than actually hearing people talk and talking back to them because this is how native children learn.
