Improving Your Spanish by Watching Movies

Many Spanish students experience learning process that begins with the pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Hearing skills usually come later. If you've got to a point in his studio, where you are looking for ways to improve your aural skills, a good method is to watch movies in Spanish.

I think that films that were originally in Spanish have a greater challenge. Films that were originally in English were better to begin with because they are easier.

The first thing to do is watch a movie in English and meet the land. If you choose a movie that you're already familiar with, select the Spanish audio and English subtitles. Do not even bother with Spanish subtitles. They never match the audio for some reason. It's as if producers hired two completely different translators, one for audio and subtitles.

Once you've seen the film several times with English subtitles, try watching it without them. I found that after every time I watch a movie, I hear more Spanish.

Be sure to choose the movies that you would not mind seeing more than once. I love Harry Potter films, as well as Idiocracy, The Princess Bride, Along Came Polly and Blazing Saddles .

This is definitely a good way to develop sound skills. But recently I discovered a better way. This includes working with short videos of about 30 seconds to a minute in length. After I worked with some video that I found for some time. And then I went back to watch movies and was excited that I could understand Spanish better than ever!

I do not know why this method is much more effective than watching movies, but I have a theory. It has to do with the nature of short videos. Listening to each video three times in a row. And on 5 different days. So I'm at the end of each video trial 15 times. I think there is something about the focus on short statement many times to train your ear better than watching full-length film, where you hear everything at once.

As my ear training continues to improve, I will gradually start to watch more movies that were originally in Spanish and those are the biggest challenge. But it takes some time to build their skills to the point where it's worth the effort. I believe that if you jump ahead too fast, you do not make as much of the effort.