The Real Fast Spanish Tips Podcast

Sometimes mastery of a foreign language is less about how many words you know and more about how many words you know well.

Your job as a language student is not to cram as much into your memory bank …

Learning Spanish vocabulary or the vocabulary of any language is a big task. Put simply—it takes focused effort overtime.

But there are ways to increase the effectiveness of your vocabulary learning …

One long term ongoing test for english students learning Spanish is the difference between ‘ser’ and ‘estar’. For me these two words remind me of studying physics—as you move up the levels they keep …

A complaint I often hear is “I feel dumb in Spanish”. I don’t just hear this complaint from other students. I hear it in my own head as well.

It’s not a huge surprise we feel this way. But why does …

I don’t know how many times I have walked into a Spanish restaurant and said the wrong thing. It could be at the start of the meal, during or even after I have paid.

The idea seems simple enough. But…

You may have heard the expression “time is money”. I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe it is. What I do know is that time has one thing in common with money and that is it can be poorly spent.

It is …

How adventurous are you when it comes to food? Are you the kind of person that tries anything once?

Even if you are, you might still want to know what you are getting into. Just in case.

Walking into…

Have you ever felt like there are hundreds of things competing to distract you and limiting your focus?

Or have you ever thought that for one problem resolved there are additional five others that ar…

Imagine that it is 7 o’clock. A Thursday night. You are in the main street of one of the biggest cities in Spain and everything is closed. Nobody around. All the bars are empty. You think to yourself…

I sometimes find it difficult to focus. I also feel this lack of focus is holding me back from achieving my goals.

But is focus something that is only reserved for a certain type of person? Or can w…

‘Dar’ is one of a small list of common spanish verbs that will have a big impact on your Spanish.

It is another verb that means a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. Due to this v…

How many times have you heard that you should stop making excuses?

It’s good advice. Don’t make excuses. But, there is a way to change how you make excuses. You can make your excuses powerful. 

We le…

Knowing how ask and tell the time in Spanish should be in every student’s repertoire.

I would also label ‘telling the time’ as essential Spanish vocabulary for travel. If you are making bookings or c…

Overwhelm sneaks up on us. Sometimes we see it coming. Sometimes we don’t.

There are actually 6 different types of overwhelm. And the annoying thing, if you are experiencing any of them, your langua…

After New Year’s Celebrations have finished, it is usually time to start thinking about the future.

If you want to talk about your future goals, resolutions or plans in Spanish, the Spanish future te…

Should you bother setting a new year’s resolution?

Maybe you have set one in the past and thought “what’s the point?” It’s just something we do on New Year’s Eve as part of tradition, right? Or is t…

Christmas in Spain is quite different to Christmas in Australia.

In today’s podcast episode we discuss some of the differences between Christmas in our two countries. We will also cover some importan…

The ‘minimum effective dose’ is a term borrowed from the medical world. It seeks to answer the question: what is the minimum amount of input I need to achieve a desired result?

Or in other words, how…

Barcelona is a fascinating city. It’s full of life, interesting architecture and culture.

In today’s podcast episode we are going to do an interview with Maria to learn about her famous city. I ask M…

The San Fermín festival is infamous. Outside of Spain, well at least here in Australia, it is known as ‘The Running Of The Bulls Festival.’

Every year there is a thirty second slot reserved on the n…