7 Tips for Improving Spanish Reading Skills

    Nowadays, it’s hard to find people who read. I’m not talking about reading headlines or tweets. I’m talking about actually opening a book and having the patience and endurance to finish. Reading is a fantastic way to stimulate your brain, expand your vocabulary, help your memory, and especially help you relax!

    So, if reading in one language is good for you, imagine what throwing in a second one could do! I understand how daunting it sounds to read in a new language. But once you start, you won’t want to stop! To help ease people into reading in a different language, I have compiled a list of the top seven tips I could think of (I’m sure there are more!!) to share with the blog-o-sphere.

1. Let nostalgia lead your reading choices!
   Instead of reading some excerpt from a textbook, find a book that you read as a child or a book you know and love and read it in Spanish! When I was first learning Spanish, I started reading the Harry Potter series in Spanish. It was slow going at first, but once I got through a few pages, I started reading and understanding quite quickly. What you read is important. It needs to be interesting to you, or you will eventually stop reading.
   
   

   
   
   

2. Become a reading detective!
   As you read, it is inevitable that unknown words will arise. This is a great opportunity to use context clues to figure out what a word or phrase means. Give an educated guess and then use an online reference like www.wordreference.com to look it up. Jot down the Spanish and English meanings in a notebook or you can start a digital set of flashcards with www.quizlet.com. Go through your homemade flashcards a little bit each day to help with your vocabulary retention!
   
   

   
   
   

3. Walk before you run!
   Remember to read a few paragraphs at a time at first! You don’t want to overwhelm yourself and try to read too much. This is supposed to be a fun and enjoyable experience! Take it slow and steady, paragraph by paragraph, then move up to pages, and then whole chapters.
   
   

   
   
   

4. See what the natives are up to!
   If a book seems a bit too daunting, you can hop onto any authentic Spanish website and try reading a few news articles. Not only do you get practice reading in Spanish, but you also get an insight into what it is currently happening in those countries. Try checking out www.elpais.com/america, www.elmundo.es, or www.univision.com to get started. 
   
   

5. Kill two birds with one stone!
   Practice your fluency and pronunciation by reading out loud. Spanish is great in that everything sounds like it looks. Just sound it out as you go! Or if you’d rather listen to somebody else read it, try to find an audio version. You could find a podcast that has been transcribed and read along as you listen. Coffee Break Academy has plenty of resources for a small fee!
   

   

6. Just the facts, ma’am!
   Don’t get too hung up on specific words. Try to read for the general ideas and move along. If you are having to look up too many words to understand the gist, it might be necessary to read something a bit easier. You can always work your way back up. Watch out for figurative language (regional slang, idioms). As I mentioned above, www.wordreference.com is a great resource to help clarify these tricky linguistic nuggets. It might be a good idea to summarize each thing you read, and you could even do it in Spanish to help build up your writing skills at the same time.

7. Get digital with it!
   Use different apps to help with vocabulary retention and reading/writing practice! Everyone knows about Duolingo and they have a new feature called Stories. It is better than their individual lessons in my opinion, because the stories put the language into context. TinyCards is an extension of Duolingo specifically catered to vocabulary. Check out the app store for your phone to see what other language apps are available to you and try them out!
   

   

And there you have it! My top 7 tips for improving your reading skills in another language. Remember that reading should be fun and interesting! Take breaks when you need to, but always keep on challenging yourself and you’ll be fluent in no time!

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