3 Ways Singing Can Help Improve Your Spanish
On more than one occasion you’ve probably enjoyed belting out your favorite songs while in the shower or dancing around using a hair brush as a microphone. And with good reason: singing is a lot of fun. If you’re learning Spanish you’ve probably delved into some of the great Spanish language music out there in order to help you with your listening skills. But have you ever considered how singing the music can help you improve your speaking? If not, check out these three ways in which this fun activity can make for some serious language progress:
1. Lose your fear.
One of the greatest fears that plagues people learning a new language is to have to actually speak it. You may be scared of sounding silly, or perhaps you worry that native speakers won’t understand what you’re trying to say. If this is the case, singing can be the perfect way to loosen up and lose your fear! Spanish is a language highly dependent upon accents and pronunciation, meaning that if you don’t have these down pat you may indeed run the risk of being misunderstood. Using games or singing to practice your pronunciation not only makes your speaking much more concise and correct, but is fun at the same time!
2. Conquer your rolling ‘r’.
The rolling ‘r’ is one of the most difficult aspects of learning Spanish, especially for English speakers. Less flexibility of the tongue is required to speak English than Spanish, which can make that ‘r’ a true challenge. The trill of the ‘r’ is easier to achieve when singing as opposed to speaking, so practicing singing songs in Spanish can serve as a sort of trilling boot camp for your tongue. While you’re busy crooning along to Mexican hits you are also increasing your tongue’s flexibility and improving your speaking abilities!
Image via PhotoPin
3. Discover your second nature.
Learning a foreign language is tough and it takes a lot of brain power to successfully do so. Sometimes, however, your brain can be your greatest enemy because you’ll overthink your language learning. The result is that speaking Spanish will be less natural and more of a thought process which is exactly what you don’t want. When you sing the same song over and over in Spanish, the chanting, lyrical process causes your brain starts to memorize the sounds apart from their meanings. When you switch to speaking Spanish, these sound patterns are second nature and come easily, helping you to speak more fluently and smoothly.
Of course, even if you spend your entire day singing in Spanish, you won’t be able to pick up the language unless you have a firm learning foundation in place first. A great way to do this is by setting yourself up with some stellar language lessons and, since keeping your skills sharp is a must, try out a free Spanish online placement test and do just that! With these tools firmly in hand you’ll be ready to add singing as a major asset to your language learning and start bopping away to those great Spanish tunes!