Learning Strategies to Practice Spanish at Home

All throughout your time as a young student, your teachers used different learning strategies in the classroom. Different strategies work for different people, which is why your teachers may have used lots of different things! Do you remember any learning strategies that you liked? If not, don’t worry, because we’ll show you a few that you can try out.

As you know, learning at home is different than learning in a classroom for a lot of reasons, and some students may struggle more than others. If you’ve noticed that you aren’t retaining vocabulary or grammar lessons, it’s a sign that you might need to try a different approach.

1. Visual- You need to see it to believe it

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Some people have a hard time learning unless they’re able to visualize it. This learning strategy includes lots of colors, maps, charts, images, and seeing words spelled out. To put this strategy into practice, you could:

• Write a vocabulary word or a sentence and draw a picture that goes with it.
• Play games like memory where you are matching a word to an image.
• Watch videos with subtitles to follow along.

2. Kinesthetic- Learning strategies in motion

“Kinesthetic” might remind you of exercise, but don’t worry, you don’t need to run circles in order to do this one! This strategy involves using tangible items to help make connections. Some activities you could do are:

• Playing charades with vocabulary words
• Making sentences with printed out cards that you can move around
• Role playing with a friend that’s also learning

3. Auditory- Listening closely

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Auditory activities are ones that focus on what you hear. For some, this is the preferred method to learn because your brain absorbs information the best from hearing it! Some ways you can learn this way are:

• Reading out loud to hear the words you’re reading
• Listening to podcasts in Spanish
• Make up songs to help you remember vocabulary or grammar

Although you might feel like you learn best with certain strategies, be sure to try out different ones. You’ll strengthen different linguistic skills, and you might even realize you like other methods better!