Beginners: If you can do this, you will learn Spanish

Life is kind of difficult for people who want to learn Spanish: there are tons of apps and courses out there that all claim to make it "easy" or to help you learn Spanish "fast".

Many of them suck.

(You've likely noticed.)

The truth is that learning Spanish really boils down to just one thing, called input, and that if your resource of choice is doing something other than encouraging you to spend a lot of time in Spanish, it's probably not doing much for you.

That's an opinion—I know—but bear with me:

What every successful Spanish learner has in common

I'm a marketer, but I'll be honest: people have learned Spanish in a lot of different ways.

This act of "spending time in Spanish" is called input. It means nothing more or less than simply getting real Spanish into your head.

It's also magical.

Why most beginners fail to learn Spanish

Most beginning Spanish learners fail to make it to the intermediate level (let alone to become an advanced learner) because they spend a lot of time learning about Spanish but virtually zero time in Spanish.

And then they stumble into a conversation at the local Mexican restaurant or hear Despacito on the radio... and all that knowledge seems to just disappear.

The rest of this post is a roadmap to doing just that.

Step 1 → Find some basic Spanish comprehensible input on YouTube

Comprehensible input is a special type of content aimed at language learners. It is entirely in Spanish... but the speakers speak clearly and intentionally use simple words and gestures or photos to help you follow what is being said.

The idea is that if you can follow the general message, then eventually the words will come to have meaning, too.

Here are a few sample channels, sorted roughly by difficulty:

Step 2 → Use Migaku to look up unknown vocabulary words and make flashcards

The fact that this content is for beginners, unfortunately, doesn't mean that it's easy. If you're just starting out, it'll be hard. You'll likely find new words in every single sentence.

Migaku solves that problem for you. We'll:

If you decide that a word is useful, you can just click that orange button in the top-right corner of the dictionary entry to make a flashcard. It contains your word, the sentence it appears in, a snippet of the video audio, and a screenshot of the video.

Your brain is an incredible thing. If you give it enough input, you'll pick up on things like pronunciation and how adjectives change their endings to follow nouns naturally.

Migaku simply enables you to begin getting that input earlier than would normally be possible.

Step 3 → Gradually work up to more difficult content and follow your interests

To move from beginner to intermediate, you need to understand two things about how vocabulary works:

And this brings us to a very important point:

TL;DR → If your app or course doesn't focus on input, it won't contribute to your language learning journey

Learning Spanish isn't easy, but it is pretty simple.

To succeed, you only need to remember one thing:

Conversely—if the approach you are following isn't having you spend the majority of your time in Spanish, it's probably not going to take you very far.