Delving into a new language can be immensely intimidating and challenging, but honestly, it doesn’t have to be. Let me explain.

I am a self-taught fluent Spanish speaker. Ironically, I failed Spanish in high school. Through motivation, consistency and a little creativity I was able to teach myself the conversational basics to fluency. Sometimes learning a skill or a task can be monotonous and difficult to keep the momentum going, so it’s important to have fun while you’re doing it.

There are a variety of factors that come into play as well as different approaches to maximize your memory retention when learning any task. To accomplish this goal, you have to set yourself up for success from the beginning.

I knew it was important to write down my goals and define how I would track my progress along the way. I recommend setting specific weekly or bi-weekly times dedicated to your learning. These don’t have to be huge blocks of time, rather merely used as guidelines to establish consistency. Twice a week for an hour each should do the trick. Utilizing the tools I listed below outside of your predetermined times will allow variability. For example listening to Spanish music or news during a commute to work or school aided the learning process as well.

Flash cards – To become familiar with just the basics, I made a conscious effort throughout the day to write down words and phrases (in either a little notebook or on my phone) I commonly used in English. With these words I created flash cards. One side written in English and the other side in Spanish, fairly simple. From there it was a function of repetition and quizzing myself at least once a day. This helped me establish the building blocks as I am a visual learner. For the most part we engage in conversations with the same 1000 words.

Dictionary – Either on your phone or a hardcover works. It’s cliché, but I still reference a dictionary from time to time.

Workbook – I used an amazing workbook with writing exercises that helped me with sentence formation, grammar and verb conjugation called Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses . The writing exercises forced me to think and write in Spanish. Such a great book.

Music – Listening to Spanish music with clear pronunciation such as Bachata and salsa music.

Word & Object association – I used tape and then labeled objects in Spanish around my house. I consciously and subconsciously with very little effort rewired my brain to associate those objects in the new language.

Role play – situations that I could find myself in such as doing a transaction at the bank. Write down the phrases that I would use in English and look up the translation. Of course, it always helps when you have a native language speaker to correct the translations.