How I improved my Spanish

Hi. My name’s Elizabeth and I’d like to tell you how I got the idea for Real Spanish.

When I came to live in Barcelona a few years ago, I had already taken quite a few Spanish courses. I had quite a good vocabulary and an intermediate-advanced level of grammar…
Although I have to confess that my pronunciation was terrible, and still leaves a lot to be desired.

Anyway, I was very disappointed when it came to talking with native speakers. They spoke so fast, and used so many expressions that I didn’t know! And I lacked confidence and fluency.

But one day I caught an episode of a TV series, and I was hooked. The series was really funny and used loads of colloquial language. I began to choose interesting scenes to analyse and study in depth. I watched the scene several times. This helped with my listening comprehension. Then, with the help of an online dictionary, I made a list of new words and phrases. I learned so many colloquial expressions! I also learned a lot about the history and culture of Spain.

I realised that the same approach could be used to develop engaging online Spanish courses to help other people who, like me, wanted to improve their ability to use everyday, colloquial language. And that’s how Real Spanish began.

For almost three years I’ve been working with a team of Spanish speakers, choosing short clips from films and TV, and developing learning materials and interactive activities based on the content of the clips. We also have some interactive pronunciation lessons to improve listening comprehension and fluency