Improve Your Grade in Spanish
Spanish can be a hard class, and is easy to fail for some people. This page will help out those of you who really need to be quite "inteligente" in the Spanish room.
Steps
- Make sure you pay attention in class. Learning a foreign language is hard, so you really need to be engaged in the lesson and see how previous concepts are clicking into place.
- Take notes. This really helps some people. Try to take notes on meanings of words, word origins, verb conjugations, or whatever you need to hang the concept from!. Treasure your Spanish notebook; you'll be using it more than you think.
- Study for your tests and quizzes. Be very careful that you study well, because you may think you know it when you have your notebook in front of you, but on test day you may go blank. Write words a number of times until you know them by heart.
- With friends, go to a fast food restaurant and order soft drinks. Sit at a table and take out your class notes. Practice together. Say the words out loud. You can even design quizzes to check how you've mastered things.
- Do all homework, even some extra. Do activities out of the workbook or textbook. This will increase your knowledge on the subject and add creativity to your answers, something all teachers appreciate.
- Actively participate in class.Ask your teacher challenging questions that keep puzzling you: A saying you don't get, a song you can' make out the lyrics, a joke you don't get the fun line . This will show people how smart you are and allow you to improve with practice.
- In group activities, participate! you may think that your teacher won't notice it, but they will. If you happen to get an answer right, congratulate yourself. If you get it wrong, there's a good chance that you need to study some more. Write down the answer ten times, or until you memorize it.
- Study over the summer. Chances are, kids will blow off the summer. One hour a day of studying will prevent you from forgetting the important stuff.
Tips
- Speak Spanish when possible. If you can, say hola instead of hello or verde instead of green. Mira instead of look, etc. This will help make Spanish more natural for you.
- Make and use flashcards. On one side write in English and the other, in Spanish. Keep them small and handy, so you can use them whenever you have some spare time.
- Ask your teacher to help you after class or school if you need extra help.
- You may want to ask the teacher what your grade is every once in a while, just to see how much you are improving.
- Songs and stories help too. A jingle will help you. And writing stories helps you use your "filler" words like: el, con, de, etc.
- A great site for translation is www.babelfish.altavista.com.
- Get a booklet on Spanish Nursey Rhymes and Short Poems As they are generally very short, the moment you know some you' ll love saying them aloud, enjoying the meaning, rhythm and musicality. For instance the Old Poem that begins : " Que por mayo,/ era por mayo,/ cuando hace la calor,/ cuando canta la calandria / y responde el ruiseñor,...
- Four-Fold Study Guides- Four fold study guides are exactly what they say. Take a piece of lines paper, Fold it the "hot dog" what then fold it the "hot dog" way again! Write all the words in Spanish, then open the first fold and write them down, check them and fold over the Spanish. Do both sides of the paper.
- While this is an extra step, get a tutor after school.
- Draw a grid on a paper big enough two write two sentences in. Find your vocabulary and draw out each vocabulary word and write one or two words to help you remember (in English) cut them out and write Spanish on the back.
Warnings
- Do not expect learning Spanish to be quick and easy. Be patient and take it step by step. If you get stuck on something, just consider it as mastering a particular step. It will be a breakthrough to the next level.
- Never rely on free translation websites to get your work done. These websites will often perform literal translations that don't reflect the actual meaning behind the content. To see an example, try translating a complex English sentence into Spanish, and translate it back again.
Things You'll Need
- A Spanish teacher
- Notebook
- Pen/Pencil
- Highlighter
- Index Cards
- English/Spanish Dictionary
