Build Spanish Vocabulary Fast – Speak Spanish with Confidence

Hola y bienvenidos. Hello and welcome. My name is Evelyn and I will be your instructor for this course. So first of all, I want to start by saying thank you. I know it must be hard to choose a class when there is an ocean of courses and teachers on Udemy. So the fact that you're here right now with me is a huge honor and for that I have to say muchas gracias. I really appreciate that. I hope that together I can help you become the best Spanish speaker you can be and I hope that with the help of my course you can excel in the Spanish language. So good luck and I hope you enjoy my course. Let's dive into the course and how it will be broken down. So first of all, this course is all about building your vocabulary. Memorizing vocab is something every language learner has to deal with. It may not be the most fun or exciting part of learning a language, but it's something we all have to do. Hopefully I can make that change and make it a process that is enjoyable and easy because throughout this course you will learn how to optimize your memorization and effectively train your brain to learn, memorize, and recall large amounts of vocabulary words using polyglot techniques. Now a polyglot, if you don't know, is a speaker of multiple languages. They learn up to six languages or more. So as you might have guessed, these people have to memorize lots and lots of vocabulary. They've developed various techniques and strategies to do just that. I've tried these with my students and can tell you that they work amazingly well. So these techniques are tried, true, and effective. And the great thing about these is that they work with your brain instead of against it, like most traditional methods do. And hey, if you feel that by the end of this course you have not gained useful knowledge and skills, then you can have a full refund. No questions asked. Udemy offers a 30-day money back guarantee on all of its courses. So if you haven't already joined this course, there's this guarantee to reassure you. However, I am confident that you will need to use this because I've worked really hard to deliver this quality course and content just for you. And speaking of content, let's go over my three-step formula for helping you succeed. This course is divided into three simple parts. The first covers the neuroscience behind memory. Here I will cover the topics of the memory process, nerve connections, and why and how our brain forgets. By understanding your brain, you can understand how memory works and how to best optimize your brain to learn. Part two is the bulk of my course. This will cover the various techniques that polyglots use, showing the science behind why they work, and how to implement them into your learning. And finally, number three. I will show you the top vocabulary words in Spanish. This will cover a variety of topics such as school, work, food, and more. For each of these, I will provide you with the word, translation, image, and audio. So you can take these vocabulary words and apply the techniques you've just learned to memorize them. And that is my three-step formula for your success. The number one benefit of this course. What you will learn in this course will not only benefit your Spanish learning, will help you well beyond the scope of this course, and continue to impact you in other parts of your life. You will learn how to enhance your learning and memory. A skill that will help you in your career, schooling, and more. So for example, if one day at work, you're faced with the daunting task of memorizing and learning a subject for a speech or pitch. Instead of feeling stressed or anxious, you will be able to proceed with confidence. Because you will have the power of memorization at your fingertips. It's almost like a superpower. The ability to learn anything you want with ease. You will be able to learn in a way that works with your brain, not against it. And as a result, you will harness the power of your mind and realize your learning potential. So this course will not only help you in learning Spanish, but can also help you if you want to learn anything else that requires terminology. Are you ready to begin? Now we are going to learn about the science of memory. Just click continue, and I will see you on the other side. It's all about that brain. So first and foremost, I want to say this. This section is very important to cover in depth. As tempting as it may be to skip ahead and go right to the techniques, I implore you to stay. Even if you don't like science or not that interested in the following topics, learning about this is really helpful. What you gain from going to these lectures is an insight into how your brain works. Now this section will not only show you how your brain learns and memorizes, but will also give you helpful tricks and tips to work with your brain instead of against it. So even if you're not a science person, please go through this part. It's not dry or boring. It's actually quite interesting, and it will be well worth it in the end. Trust me. Okay, so let's begin our journey into our brain. Now we are going to start off with a quick exercise. I want you to remember a vivid memory in your past. This can be anything. Your first kiss, your wedding day, your first day of college. Got it? Great. Now try to remember what you ate last week for lunch. Any luck? Didn't think so. Now isn't that interesting? How some memories we can vividly recall, while others we forget the next day. Why does that happen? Well, you see, throughout the day and throughout our lives, our brain is constantly scanning our environment and processing information. What our brain chooses to save is information that it deems as important and it scraps useless details. If our brains remembered every detail of every day in our lives, it would become overwhelmed with information. Our brain is just not capable of remembering so many details at once. So in order to avoid burnout and overexertion, it filters information through a lens and focuses on the vital information. So this is why little details, just phone numbers, names, and Spanish vocabulary can easily slip the mind. Now our brain forgets information based on a model known as the forgetting curve. If you were to learn something on day one, after a few days of not using this information, your brain will quickly forget it. After all, since you're not using it, then why take up space with it anyways? So the main reasons why you easily forget vocab is because your brain eliminates information that is not important. And since you are not likely to be using all of your vocab every day, it naturally assumes you don't need them. And this, my friends, is why I keep forgetting all of your vocabulary. But don't worry, there is a way to combat this. To defeat the forgetting curve, you must periodically review information and use it frequently throughout the week and the month. This reinforces information and keeps material in your brain. The creation of a memory follows a simple three-step process. It all begins with encoding. To put it simply, this is where your brain packages information into memories so that it can be stored in the brain. It does this in two ways. The first is through the senses. Central encoding. This can be done in three ways. Structural, which is the visual input, what you see. Phonetic, the sound, what you hear. And thematic, touch, how something feels to the touch. Now the second way your brain encodes, it's through meaning or semantic encoding. Now this step is a little harder to achieve since it requires a deeper level of processing, meaning that you have to really think about it and analyze your information. While this may take a bit more work, the results are well worth it because this type of encoding leads to a much stronger memory than encoding to the senses. The second step in the memory process is storage. Once your brain believes that a particular piece of data is important, it is then stored. There are two main ways your brain can store this information. First, through short-term memory. This can only hold a limited amount of information for a very short period of time. And then there is long-term memory. Now this is where you want your brain to store your vocabulary words. If stored in this memory, information has a capacity to stay for the rest of your life. The final stage is retrieval. This is where you remember information that you've stored. Now this can be either sequential, meaning in an order or pattern like your ABCs, or they can be through association. Now this is using environmental cues. For example, when you visit your old home, memories tend to rush to you. And that, my friends, is the memorization process. Now let's cover the second aspect of learning. Neural networks. Now let's take a look at how the brain learns information on the physiological level. This is a neuron. There are literally billions of these little guys in your brain right now. They produce electrical impulses, which carry messages around the brain. These guys love it when you learn. When you do, they light up and form connections with each other. Each time one of these connections fires, that pattern is etched into the brain, causing it to form a groove. This is why our brains look the way they do, because of neural networks. Now what do these have to do with learning and memory? Every time you learn something new, the neurons in your brain light up with new information and form a new set of connections. Learning about a specific subject creates neural connections and bundles. It grows more and more with each new piece of information that you learn. So the more connections you build and the more you use them, the deeper ingrained this information becomes. And as a result, your skills will greatly improve. Decay. Now when you don't use them, neural networks tend to become weaker with time. So for example, you stop playing the piano for three months. If you try it again, you wouldn't play as well as you did before stopping. So take care of your networks. Once you've planted a seed, you have to continually water it in order to avoid drying it out. Same goes for your neural networks. Use it or lose it. Let's look at a new way of learning information. Contextual learning. Now this kind of learning is a bit different than the traditional method of learning, but it's a lot more effective. Now the old way uses repetition all the time. Word, repeat, word, repeat. All you do is regurgitate information. It is boring, dull, and it's incredibly difficult for your brain to remember all of this information, especially in long-term memory. And do any of us remember anything we learned in school anyways? Probably not. The way we grew up learning is probably not the best way to learn. Now learning with context, on the other hand, is a lot more effective. Context is simply using the word in various environments and using cues to help you recall information. Once you see the techniques and once you apply the techniques, you will understand what this means. Now by putting new information in context, you are helping your brain understand and process new information a lot more effectively. So if you're ready for some techniques, click continue and get started with the techniques. So if you're ready for the techniques, we have various very quick, interesting, and fun techniques that I will present to you in the following lectures. Let's begin. Let's take a at the first technique you can use when learning with context. Sentencing. Sentencing works by putting your vocabulary word in a sentence. This can be either in English or Spanish. The choice is yours. Let's try this using the Spanish word verdura. This translates to the word vegetable in English. Now using this technique, I will create a sentence that uses this word in action. That way, I can understand not only the translation, but how this word works in a sentence and a conversation. So here are a few sentences I came up with. Carrots are my favorite type of verdura. My bunny loves verduras. One verdura that I dislike is kale. You see? Easy. Now the word can be in any order, either at the beginning, middle, or end. It does not matter what matters is how you use this word in a sentence. Now as long as this word is actively engaging in the sentence, it should work fine. This way of learning is a lot better than just repeating the word vegetable, verdura, vegetable, verdura, over and over. This will make the word stick much better in your mind since you are actively engaging your brain to create a sentence. This allows us to understand not only the translation of the word, but what it means and how it acts. Now it's your turn. Make your own sentence. So here are a few vocabulary words that I collected so that you can practice making sentences. Avión, plane, zapatos, shoes, and miércoles, Wednesday. So go ahead and put this technique into practice. A few tips to help you. Write it on paper. Don't just type it or say it in your mind or say it out loud. Your brain learns a lot better when you write rather than when you're typing or when you're just saying a word out loud. So writing it down really really helps. Make it meaningful and relevant to your personal life. For example, I used my bunny in the example. So now every time I see my bunny, I will remember the word verdura. Or when I eat carrots, my favorite vegetable, I will remember the word verdura. You can also try creating a paragraph or a short story. Take a list of relevant vocab words and bring them to life. Create a paragraph, a story, and input Spanish vocabulary words into your story. Okay, so try it out and let me know how it goes. Another way you can use context in your technique is through the art of storytelling. Crafting a story and creating an image behind a word. It's pretty similar to the concept of sentencing, but there is one key difference. This time we're going to create a short vivid story that utilizes visuals and creative thinking. Now the reason why this works is it engages your brain and the more you think deeply about a word, the more rooted it becomes in your memory. So the key here is to create a visual. Use your creativity and imagination. Árbol, tree. The words árbol and tree are quite different. They are spelled differently and it's hard to look at the word árbol and think tree. So how do you learn to link them together? Well, here's my story. One day my cousins came over to play soccer. We bought a new shiny black and white ball. We kicked it around and scored goals with it. Then my cousin kicked the ball high up in the air and it landed on her tree. I said, oh no, árbol's in the tree. We tried and tried, but we could not get it down. And so, árbol never got out of the tree. The phrase árbol is in the tree. That is key. Árbol is pretty much the same as árbol. Árbol, árbol. Now I've just created a link between my story and the Spanish word. Now every time I look at a tree, the image of my soccer ball in the tree shows up and I think árbol. Isn't that amazing? Now it's your turn. Go ahead and create a short, vivid story about these vocabulary words. Perro, dog. Agua, water. Cuchara, spoon. Now here are a few helpful tips to help you with this. Visualize a story. Don't just think of a story. It's very important to actually see the images in your mind. That really helps solidify that word and ingrain it in your memory. Trust me, it works a lot better if you visualize. Add humor, sadness, or happiness because by engaging emotions, you can actually make memories a lot stronger. Craft a phrase or a visual. Árbol or a visual of a ball stuck on a tree. And here we have another technique using context. Incorporating words into your routine. Now this may sound a little strange. How are you going to incorporate Spanish words into your routine? It's actually a lot easier than you think. Let's look at why this works. Using vocabulary throughout your day reinforces information and if the information is constantly popping up in your brain, then it decides that this information is important and conserves it, creating links and connections. Now here's how to do this. When you encounter a word throughout your day, say it while engaging in the action. Sneak it into your sentences or say it out loud or in your mind. Here are a few examples. Perro, dog. Now I can do this when I'm reaching out to pet my dog. I can say perro. That reinforces the definition of the word and provides visuals and sensory stimulation, which is really important for memory. Now the word jugar, play. Now before I take my kids to play outside, I can tell them let's go and jugar outside. I replace the word play with the word jugar. And by replacing this word, my brain learns to understand that jugar means play. It's a great way to engage new vocabulary words and really put them to use throughout your day. So now it's your turn. When you are going on with your daily routine, make a list of words that you want to learn for that day. Here are some that you can try. Manzana, plátano, zanahoria. Just make sure to make an effort to use them throughout the day. A few tips. Make lists categorical. Fruits, numbers, household items, etc. For example, when you're going grocery shopping, make a list in Spanish. Remember to engage your senses as much as possible. Touch, feel, look at it, taste it if it's possible. Just try to engage your senses because that really helps cement information in your brain. Also, create sentences in your mind about your word as you see them throughout the day. For example, I wonder how my niños are doing. I wonder how my boys are doing. There's also another great way to do this without really putting in any effort and that is through a Chrome language immersion. Now, if you're like me and you use Google Chrome pretty much daily and religiously, then you can go ahead and download this extension. What this extension does is it translates some of the words in your Facebook feed and your articles into your target language. So wherever you go online, whether it's Reddit, whether it's Facebook, social media, or just articles that you're looking up, what this does is it translates like about every other five words or you can adjust the settings to make it more or less difficult to translate more words or translate less words. It's up to you and what you're comfortable with, but this is a really great way to use this technique and not really have to worry about it. Okay, now let's summarize everything I've learned in this section. Dealing with contextual learning. To summarize, context has been proven to enhance and speed up your learning. It forces you to use the word in various contexts and environments, leading to a much better and deeper understanding of the word. By linking vocabulary words to images and existing knowledge, this creates shortcuts for new information to be stored into your memory. Let's review the techniques. Sentencing. Use a vocabulary word in a sentence. Storytelling. Imagining story with a visual or a phrase, and incorporate into your routine. Use the word throughout the day to keep it relevant and fresh in your mind. Now in the next session, we will cover a technique that builds upon context, relies on repetition and the senses, and will help you keep note of vocabulary words, literally. So I hope you enjoyed this section and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. Now let's take a look at the second technique, using sticky notes. Now this method is super fun and easy to It is a personal favorite of both myself and my students, and the reason why is because it allows you to really enjoy yourself and enjoy the learning process by unleashing your inner child and putting sticky notes on everything and anything imaginable. Your only limit is your creativity. It's an excellent technique because, again, it falls back on the concept of using context, which we've all learned is key to learning, and it provides a great amount of visual stimulation, which aids the encoding process. Here are just a few things that you will need before you begin. Obviously, a large amount of sticky notes would be very, very beneficial. This can be either bought in bulk or in dollar stores. Clear tape. This is optional for items that are a little bit harder to stick. A writing utensil. It's going to be Sharpie, pencil, or pen. And last but not least, your creativity. So if you're ready, let's go ahead and get started. Let's talk about how you can apply the sticky note technique to objects. Now this one is probably the easiest because it's pretty straightforward. Here's how. Take your list of vocabulary words and find something in your home that represents it. Make sure to write this in Spanish and stick it to the object that you desire. And don't be shy. Use extra tape if you need to. And don't forget about accent marks because those are often forgotten, yet they are very important. Now here are a few categories that you can write on. Shapes. Colors. Food. This can be either on the actual food or in the containers. Household items. And pretty much anything else you can think of. If it sticks, then go ahead and apply it. Now here are some examples using words that you probably are a little confused about or don't know how to stick. Mariposa. Butterfly. Now obviously you're not going to go outside and find a live butterfly to stick this on. But what you can do is find a painting or decoration that has a butterfly on it and then put a sticky note on it. Primero. First. How are you going to apply this to first? Well, a first place trophy or award will work just fine. It's all about using your creativity and trying to find out what works and what doesn't. It takes a bit of thought, but that thought in the first place is what's going to help you remember these words later in your learning. Now here's another way to do this. If you're not a big fan of sticky notes, you can go ahead and using clear tape, print and cut out a set list of vocabulary words, just like the ones shown here. And they can be either colored or black and white. It's up to you. It's your choice. Just remember to tape each of the words onto its item. Now let's talk about working with adjectives. Once you're done with objects and you've moved past all of those vocabulary words, you can now go on to the next level. Now these are non-visual words, so they're a little bit more difficult to work with, but it's not impossible. All you need to do is describe your environment. Just take a list of words and place these vocabulary words with the object that best suits them. Now here are a few examples to show you what I mean. Apestoso. Stinky. Now you can place this vocabulary word on your garbage can because for obvious reason, your garbage can is mostly going to be stinky. Feliz. You can place this on a picture frame of you and your family smiling. And bella or bello, which means beautiful, you can place a note of this on your mirror. Now let's talk about verbs and how to use them when using the sticky note technique. So first of all, the key thing is that you want to focus on capturing action. You can take a list of verbs. Open, close, run, eat, play up or down. And notice where you can place words for certain actions. Go around your house and see where you can place certain verbs. Here are a few examples. Entrar. Enter. And salir. Exit. You can put these notes on your doors. One on each side. One when you enter and one when you exit. Arriba. Up. And abajo. Down. Now you can put these in a lever in your home or wherever you need to push something up and then down. Trabajar. To work. You can put this on your work computer or inside your briefcase. The key of course is to look for action anywhere in your home and to use your common sense and your imagination to place these where they belong. Let's summarize what we've learned in this section. In summary, sticky notes are a great learning technique. They are a very fun and interactive way to learn vocabulary. They rely on the visual cues that help you remember a word much easier. They can be applied to almost any word. A verb, object, adjective, etc. The only limits are your imagination. If you can make it work, then by all means go for it. Remember to not forget to include the accent marks. It's very important to learn a word with their intended accent marks and as well as to learn the correct gender for each word. La or el. But most importantly, remember to have fun and enjoy the process. Learning vocabulary does not have to be stressful or a pain. As long as you make it fun and enjoyable, you will have a great time and learn words a lot easier and a lot faster. So let's continue to our third technique, space repetition. Let's start this section by asking the question, what is space repetition? Space repetition is a learning technique developed in the early 1970s by the German science journalist Sebastian Leitner. His work was mostly focused on memory and he studied how memory worked and how he could best optimize it. Through his study, he found that the ability to recall information greatly improved through space reviews. Through this type of review, people were able to retain more and more information after each session. He therefore concluded that reviewing material at spaced intervals led to an increase in retention rates and so the technique of spaced repetition was born. Here's a look at why this technique works so well. Back in section two, we covered the forgetting curve and learned that the best way to defeat it was through periodic review. Here you can see that trying to remember material without repetitions eventually leads to mere 10% retainment. Through each reminder, you are pushing that curve higher and higher until you can successfully recall up to 90% of the material. So this method actually works really well with your brain and works against that forgetting curve. There are two main methods used in space repetition. The first is the traditional paper card method. This method was composed by Leitner. It is called the Leitner system and it uses a manual system of rotation where you rotate physical flash cards into boxes based on how well you've correctly answered or incorrectly answered the cards. The second method used in space repetition is through software. This method is a little bit easier. It automatically schedules words based on their difficulty so it's up to you to use which method you feel most comfortable with. Let's go ahead and cover those two methods in depth. Let's begin with the Leitner system. Now this system is the first ever to be created. It's a little bit old but this technique still gets used today and it's still relevant even in the 21st century. So if you're more of a traditional person who likes to use paper and physical tangible learning, then this is for you. For this system, you will need flash cards and three to five small boxes. Now these boxes can be plastic, they can be cardboard, it doesn't really matter what they're made of and you don't especially need flash cards. It can be any piece of paper. So if you're on a budget and you can't afford any of these materials, anything else that's similar will work just as fine. To begin, take a pile of your vocabulary words and write them onto the flash cards. Now I would do this by sorting them categorically, for example by animals, by colors, etc. Remember it's best if you learn vocabulary in terms of categories because your brain tends to categorize items naturally so I would recommend doing that. Now once you have your flash cards ready, go ahead and test yourself on each of them. For each flash card that you get right, you will send it to the next group of boxes and for each one that you fail, you will move the card to the front box. It will look something like this. Each card that you get correct goes to the front, each card that you get wrong goes back one and so on and so forth. In terms of review, you want to review the items in box one at least once a day and box two about every three days and for box three about every five days. Now you don't have to be exact with these numbers, you can use whatever number works best for you, but this is how it was originally planned and how it originally is timed. Now the great advantage of using this technique is that this allows you to focus on the most difficult words and greatly reduces the time that you spend studying. So if you have any questions, let me know. For now, try out this technique and if it works for you, awesome. If not, then if you're more of a technology person and you like working with greens, then this next method will be better for you. Now the second method is using space repetition software. This is for those people that really like to use technology and that can really work well with it. If you feel comfortable using technology, then this is for you. So first of all, I'd like to introduce you to Anki. Anki is the most popular free software program out there right now and it's the one that's mostly used and mostly recommended. I've used it several times and I have to admit it's a pretty good program. It's free, it's simple, and it's easy to use. So you don't have to be a tech expert to use this program, super easy. And the great thing about this is that it organizes the cards for you. So it's virtual organization and you can also sync it to multiple platforms if you want. So what you need to do first is go and sign up. It's a free download. You go to their site, it's anki.com. This works on various platforms. I know it works on Windows as well as Macs. So no matter what computer you use, it must have a software program for you. I will include the link in the description. Now let's start by learning how to create flashcards on Anki. So once you've downloaded this program and it's on your computer, go ahead and double click and this little browser should show up. Now it is going to be a little small but that's okay. As long as you can see it well, it's fine. You want to start by clicking on create deck right here and then type in a name. You can create decks and I recommend doing it in categories. For example, for this one I will choose colors. Colors right there. Press okay and then you want to go ahead and click on colors. The deck right here in the middle between decks and browse. Click add. This will be your Spanish vocabulary word right here. Rojo which means red in English and for the text you want to put color so that it organizes into the colors deck. Now go ahead and click add. There you go. Now you can go ahead and keep adding more and more flashcards. You can add blue which is azul. Blue in English. So you want to make sure that you have the Spanish term in the front and English term in the back or you can also do it the opposite and put blue in the front and azul in the back depending on how you want to learn. Make sure the tag is colors and click add. Now I've added two flashcards to my deck. Click close and see how it says new two. These are the ones that you just added azul and rojo. Now go ahead and click on decks again. This is where you can see all of your decks that you've created all of your flashcards right here into one spot. To create multiple decks you just go ahead and go down here to create deck in between get shared and in between import file. Just click it. Create a name. Let's do animals next. There we go and remember to click on a deck first and then add the flashcards and you can add as many as you want and whichever order you want. English first. Spanish first. Whatever works best for you. Now let's look at how to review and study your flashcards. To review and study you click on whatever category you want to work on. Let's say colors for example and you go to study now. What you do is you look at the word and in your mind you are going to translate it. So you see the word rojo. That means red in Spanish. You go down here to show the answer. This shows the correct translation. Now based on this difficulty you're going to click down here. If you had a hard time with it you go ahead and click again. If you're okay like in the middle you kind of got it after a while then press good and if you got it right away press easy and it will review it based on a difficulty. So this is very easy. I'm going to go ahead and put four days and it will show me that word again in four days and now here's the next word that we created. Now as soon as we all know it means blue but let's say I had a hard time with this word. I would click again and if I click again it would show me this word in probably the next minute or so maybe even faster. So that's the overall basis of how you use this program. You can put as many texts as you want as many flashcards as you want. You can track your learning right here clicking on this graph and it shows you how how much you've reviewed and how good you're doing so far. If you need any help with this program just let me know. They also do have a help button up here if you never want to get creative and see what else you can do with this program. You can go to guides, you can go to support, anything you need to learn about you can learn about clicking help.