Have you heard of copywriting?
It’s basically business writing. Well, it’s not that simple, it’s about persuasion through writing, and although it’s mainly used in a business context, it can also be applied to other areas.
Well, I joined a membership to learn about it.
I received a new lesson every Saturday. I had to take notes and then apply whatever I thought would be useful.
I learned a lot about sales, and even more interesting, I learned a lot about how we all make decisions.
I would say that it was one of the best courses I have ever enrolled in, but I canceled my subscription after the fourth month.
Why?
Well. The course had so much interesting information that I didn’t have enough time to apply everything I was learning.
Basically, I was paying for training that I didn’t even have time to read/listen to.
My current plan is simple: I will take a couple of months to actually apply what I learned in my personal projects, and then, if I still feel like it’s necessary, re-enroll in the course.
And I’m telling you this because you probably also have the same problem. I mean, probably not with a copywriting membership, but with Spanish.
Do you try to learn something new everyday?
That’s great. So do I.
A new phrase, a new word, a new saying… That’s definitely helpful, and I recommend it to my students.
But I know students who want to take it one step further and learn a completely new grammatical concept every week.
- This week I will learn the simple present.
- Next week I will learn the preterit.
- Next week I will learn the imperfect.
- And so on.
Of course, I admire their determination. I couldn’t even begin to try to learn that amount of information in such a short time. I’ve been learning Hungarian for almost a year and I’m still a beginner.
But the important thing here is, that’s too much information and too little time to truly learn it.
They are trying to do exactly what I was doing with the copywriting course. They are just accumulating files and notes, but they are not applying it, they are not using it to talk to other Spanish-speaking people, and therefore they are not really improving their Spanish.
Do you want a piece of advice from a Spanish teacher?
Learn fewer new structures, and practice more conversations with native speakers.
And just to make sure, I’m not telling you NOT to learn the structure of the language, just do it little by little, making sure you actually know how to use it in real-life situations.
In the meantime, you can also learn some expressions that we Ecuadorians use in our everyday conversations, they will help you sound more natural when speaking with us.
