Overview
Writing sentences, passages, and pages is an amazingly effective language learning strategy to remember vocabulary. Of course, you don’t have to go the whole page route to improve your vocabulary comprehension. Even a few sentences a week can produce great progress towards your Spanish learning goals.
My Example
Currently, one of my goals is to have deeper conversations about food, the food industry, cooking, etc. To reach this goal, I have been consuming a lot of content related this topic. I watch MasterChef Mexico, cooks on YouTube, and read a variety of recipes online. In doing so, I get accustomed to the words, phrases, and sentence structures that are used in this topic. For this exercise, to measure how well I am retaining my new words and phrases related to my topic, I decided to write the recipe for a dish that I like to cook (see example at bottom of post).
Recipe Example
Les voy a compartir como yo hago esta rica receta.
Primer que necesitamos para los ingredientes?
– 2 libres de Pollo troceado
– una cucharada de ajo molido
– una cucharada de pimienta negra
– una cucharada de sal
– una lata de pollo de caldo
– una paquete de zanahorias
– 6 pedazos de apio
– un paquete de pan crudo
Primero, precalentaremos una olla de agua media al fuego alto. Mientras va hirviendo preparamos los vegetales y pollo. Sazonamos 4 pedazos de pollo por ambos lados.
Cortamos el apio y zanahorias en pedazos pequeñitos para que sea mas fácil hervir y ser suave. Cuando el agua esta listo vamos a echar el pollo primero en el agua hervido desde que se tarda mas ser cocido bien por adentro. Además, dar sabor al agua con los sazones ya preparados.
No deja que el pollo dore completamente antes de que añadir los vegetales o será demasiado cocido y seco. Nos ponemos los vegetales con la olla y echamos la lata de pollo de caldo también. Deja hierve por unos 20 minutas hasta que los vegetales sean blandos. Ahora, añadimos el pan a todos nuestros ingredientes y se deja cocinar por unos 10 minutos mas.
Ya estas con este rico plato!
Writing Exercise Directions:
1. Have your goals and/or desires to learn Spanish list handy
2. From this list choose one topic in which you want to increase your vocabulary
3. Write a story or process that is related to this topic
4. Read through it and analyze if you are including new vocabulary that you have studied
5. Have a friend, tutor, a fellow language learner, or Spanish speaker online correct your written work
6. Revise your writing again and then try to improve for the next time you do this exercise
7. Continue to make these writings throughout your time learning the particular topic
8. Wash, rinse, and repeat