Studying Spanish: strong and weak points.

After years of teaching Spanish I have created a summary of the strong and weak points that students encounter. Weak points:



-Spanish differentiates between masculine and feminine genders. It is surprising for native speakers that only a quarter of the globe´s languages make this differentiation.



-The large variety of verb tenses and the use of the subjunctive at first confuse students studying Spanish.



-The difference between ser and estar is a small challenge that we must overcome. The nuances between these verbs are very subtle and students often cannot find an exact translation.



-Depending on where the student comes from, pronunciation can have concrete challenges. It is very difficult for Asian and French people to reproduce the “r” sound and the more guttural sounds for the Italians…but patience and practice are the solution.



-Spanish is a language spoken in more than 20 countries and this results in many variants in accents, dialects, pronunciations, seseos, yeísmos, voseos…etc.



Strong points:



-Negation in Spanish is very easy; you just have to add a NO to the phrase. Students may think that a double negation makes an affirmative phrase, or that this can be very rude; this isn´t true! Double negation gives more emphasis and is absolutely correct.



-At first, all students are overwhelmed by the amount of Spanish verb tenses. Afterwards, they realise that the auxiliary (always the same) facilitates conjugation.



-Pronunciation is very easy once the sounds of each letter have been understood and learnt. We pronounce what we read. The rules about accents on words makes the task easier and students understand the whys that torment them.



My recommendation is to learn from a good teacher like the ones that you can find on our accredited Spanish courses.