Recall accents
How do you recall when to use an accent in spelling a spanish word?
6 Answers
Guess? I don't think guessing is necessary. (except for diacritical accents).
If you know how to pronounce the word (which syllable receives the stress) you can figure out if the word needs an accent mark or not. (except for a diacritical accent mark where the pronunciation of the word is not effected). If you don't know how to pronounce the word then you need to look it up in a dictionary.
example:
el árbol
If you know how to pronounce the word (that the 1st syllable is stressed), then the rules for accentuation (stress) tell you that the first syllable must have an accent mark to place the stress there.
If you want to write the word for incredible and don't know how to pronounce the word, then you would have to look it up. Without knowing that the stress should be on the i (increíble) you would see an ei diphthong and most likely mispronounce the word.
You need to listen a lot in order to be able to guess if the word has an accent or not when you see it.
Are you serious? You don't need to do any listening whatsoever. You just need to learn the rules, which work 100% of the time, and then simply apply them.
As far as i know, a word that ends in an n has the natural stress on the next to the last syllable. So when you have a word that ends in an n, but when you speak it you stress the next to the last syllable, an accent mark is written on the last vowel. por ejemplo: Nación
I'm not sure how to tell on other words like el él
Whenever I have a question about an accent, I Google the word and see what comes up. I know this sounds bad, but it really helps out when Microsoft Word is disagreeing with you over something (especially when Word's squizzly lines are wrong).
Pronouncing the word is hard if Spanish is not your L1 (native language) because you could be mispronouncing the word which would lead you to misplace an accent. The best way that I have found is to make the accent apart of the spelling of the word. It is true that estes and estés are not the same thing, and a missing accent is a grammatical error as well as a contextual error.
The more you see the words, the more you will become familiar with where the accents should/do go.
I hope this helps, at least somewhat.
Kerri
Hey EV,
All accents do is say "We're breaking the rules now". They are a way of communicating this to whoever is reading it. If you keep this in mind and look for difference it may be less overwhelming.
Okay, so this is how I do it, which seems to be entirely different from how anybody else does it... I look at the word, and the first thing which I do is I focus on anything which is different from how I'd try to write it. This is because if you would normally write something the correct way, you're probably not going to spell it differently. Initially, for me, this included any diacritical marks or silent letters. If you just remember that it's different, that's very helpful in itself. Then you know if it's like an n but different it's a ñ, if it's like a u but different it's a ú etc. This works for me because I'm very visual, but I'm you're not you may find the other methods easier. I don't know how I learnt to do this, and I haven't heard it before. I guess it just comes from primary school, when I was learning to write English!
If none of that made sense, hopefully this will...
In words like días the different i sounds like a y making the sound longer than a normal i in Spanish. (This is how you tell that there is an accent.) This is the same with tío (or tía). It also splits up the word, this is what people mean when they talk about diphthongs.
Generally though, accents merely indicate emphasis. Here are some examples (from http://wikitravel.org/en/Spanish there's a fair bit of good stuff in the Pronunciation section) With the sounds the Spanish Spanish is first, followed by everywhere else's spanish. círculo (THEER-koo-loh/SEER-koo-loh) ? circle circulo (theer-KOO-loh/seer-KOO-loh) ? I circulate circuló (theer-koo-LOH/seer-koo-LOH) ? he/she/it circulated estás (ehs-TAHS) ? you are estas (EHS-tahs) ? these
This is REALLY long, but I hope that it helps!
Rach
You need to get used to the words in Spanish. You need to listen a lot in order to be able to guess if the word has an accent or not when you see it. You need to learn very well the pronunciation of the language. 
