For that reason, they avoid any Spanish listening or speaking situations. In fact, we would go as far as to say that making a mistake in Spanish is, for many sensitive students, a cardinal sin. When we are speaking off the cuff, we either say what we want to say correctly, or we cock it up.Īnd that is frightening to us. When we listen in a live situation, for example, we either catch the idea or we don’t. There is little chance for us to repeat and repeat our sentences until we get them right. Why? Because these two mediums of communication are the least forgiving.

What most learners are afraid of, however, is having to listen or to speak Spanish. Don’t you agree? Listening and Speaking makes no allowances.

It’s all just so very comfortable for us as learners. What is more, when you read and write you can repeat the same sentence over and over again until you get it to what you perceive to be a good level. We have time, we can ponder at our leisure about the meaning of something or how we should structure a particular sentence. Reading and writing is a very safe part of learning a language. Of course, we know fine well why this is. In our experience, the vast majority of students only want to read and write most of the time. There really is something very strange about what happens to people when they embark on the task of learning Spanish.

Spanish listening practice