One of the steps to communicating well in Spanish is learning how to handle fast Spanish.

I’ve found the best way to use Spanish quickly is by practicing with a mixture of slow and fast Spanish.

A sport that requires super fast reflex actions is martial arts. Yet, when I used to study karate, we spent a lot of time taking things slowly.

Every time we learned a new move we used to practice it very slowly, with a lot of attention to the finer details of the movements.

We practiced slowly until we could do the move correctly without thinking about how to do it.

You know, one of my favorite sayings related to learning Spanish is…

”You can’t think and hit at the same time” – Yogi Berra

Just in case you’re wondering, Yogi was talking about hitting a baseball not people.

So what do karate and baseball have to do with Spanish?

Actually a lot!

To defend yourself using karate, the moves have to be instinctive or they won’t work.

In fact, Spanish speakers often talk about their ability in English by saying – puedo defenderme en ingles. Which is something like saying, I can get by or I can handle myself in English.

If you want to be able to handle yourself in Spanish, to paraphrase Yogi, you can’t have a conversation and think about grammar rules at the same time.

Here’s how I start my students practicing slowly to build up their speaking and listening abilities… This audio is the very first audio lesson from Bola de Nieve, and here’s an action guide for that lesson.

Here’s another lesson from Module 9 of Bola de Nieve.

Notice how the audio is faster later in the course.

Also notice how we slow down the Spanish every time we introduce something new. Then, after a few practices we get back into the conversation at a very natural and authentic speed.

The later lesson may be beyond your ability right now. However, I included it to demonstrate to you that by starting slowly you can learn to defenderse y hablar naturalmente.

Plus, perhaps even more importantly you start to handle the speed of Spanish.

Besides using audio, another great way to have time to build your understanding, knowledge and skills is to read in Spanish everyday.

In fact, if you’ll just do two things everyday you can take your Spanish so far people will be amazed how well you speak. All you need to do is mix a little interactive audio each day with 15-30 minutes of reading and your improvement will be better than taking years of formal classes.

I know it’s true because my students have made wonderful progress in less than a year.

Let me know your thoughts by posting a comment here on the blog.