Reasons why NOT stop studying Spanish

People think of a lot of reasons before they start studying a language. How useful is it to be able to speak the language? (in the case of Spanish; VERY!) Is it possible for me to use it in the near future? (in the case of Spanish; probably, yes) Can I get enough materials to learn the language? (Spanish; YES!) Do I really want to learn this language? (that depends on you, hehe) Etc. Etc.

But when they eventually start studying a language and stop after a while, they don't even consider why they should stop. Has the language suddenly become less useful (this is possible, depends on your situation) or has your source of material suddenly dried up (don't give this as a reason regarding Spanish, because there's ALWAYS material for Spanish)? It doesn't matter actually, because most 'reasons' are no actual reasons, most people simply don't have a reason to stop studying Spanish (or any other language). It's simply lazyness. So here are a few reasons why you shouldn't stop studying Spanish.

1. Think about your reason to start studying Spanish
Is it because that cute Spanish girl you met last summer? Do you love the mentality of people in Bolivia? Do you like Mexican food and want to move to Mexico because of this (yes, Mexican food is good, so it's not that weird to move for this)? Whatever your reason is/was, it still counts in most cases. Just think about it every day to motivate yourself. Personally, my first reason to start studying Spanish was because I liked the sound of the language. It still like the sound, but also got some great Spanish friends who only speak Spanish and no other languages. Currently that's even a bigger reason to become better.

2. The time you've invested so far
How many hours have you spent studying Spanish? 10 hours? 100 hours? 200 hours? Again, it doesn't matter. Every 10 minutes well-spent counts. You don't want to be that person that invested a lot of effort in something to forget everything later on, don't you? Why would you start running 10 km to quit after 4 km and return? It's a waste of energy, even if just started studying. Every minute learning (and then I mean learning in a correct way) is spent well, no doubt about it.

3. Look back
This connects with the point above. You look back and see what you've achieved so far. What were your successes? How did you feel when you achieved these things? When I look a year back, I see this bilingual guy, who couldn't roll his R's and could only say hola ¿cómo estás?. Now, I see this guy who has several Spanish(-speaking) friends, can roll his R's, can fake accents and can simply have fun going out with Spanish friends and speaking nothing else than Spanish. I couldn't imagine what I know now, and I'm still not even near where I want to be (at times, I still suck. Actually, most of the time. But that doesn't matter). But I'm happy what I've reached so far, and eager to continue.

4. Think of the joy
Image yourself being in a Spanish-speaking country, hanging out with cool people, going to cool clubs and bars, and meeting cool new people. That's what can happen if you succeed in being fluent in Spanish. You just made it possible for you to get connected with over 400 milion people, on the same level of communication. IF you succeed. Don't be the person dreaming about being in a Spanish-speaking country and doing cool things with natives. Be the person who DOES these things.

5. Money
Although money shouldn't be your first reason to study Spanish, it's perfectly possible to make a nice amount of money every month if you're good at it. Moving to a Spanish-speaking country might get you a well-paid job (for that country, most likely) and living like a god in France (Dutch saying, hehe). Even if you don't move to a Spanish-speaking country, Spanish might get you the job you truly enjoy (teacher? translator?).

6. Integrate in other cultures
Although going to clubs and bars is fun, learning another language also involves learning another culture and customs. When I was studying Russian I was able to integrate in a completely other culture. Studying Spanish involves learning a slightly less extreme way of integrating, but it's still different to what you're used to in most ways. Especially in Latin-America there are countries with some cool, pre-Hispanic, customs. Getting to know these opens a totally different world for you.

7. ...
I can mention a lot of other reasons why NOT top stop studying Spanish, but I think the point is clear and that you should convince yourself. Just don't quit when you're having a hard time getting the hang of the language, just continue.

Building and maintaining your accent

When it comes to learning a language, it's a pity that a lot of people neglect the custom to use a proper accent. Ok, in the very beginning it can be difficult to have a proper accent, but you shouldn't worry too much about output in the beginning anyway. Using a proper accent from the beginning is the only way to fluency. It doesn't matter if you choose to use a Mexican, Argentinan or Spain-Spanish accent, as long as you stick with the accent you choose to use. This will be easier for you in the end, and will boost your learning progress because you'll be confident speaking Spanish.

In once met a woman who has been living in Spain for over 20 years. Her Spanish was just perfect, vocabluary and grammar wise. Her pronounciation, however, was just terrible. You could clearly hear she was from England as her r was exactly the same as an English r. Her rolling r was simpy non-existent. Of course people were able to understand her, but they would often make fun of her accent or just wouldn't listen because it was such a drag to do so.

This shows how important an accent can be. You want to be taken seriously, don't you? "Ahhh, as long as they understand me it's ok. It's just impossible to sound like a native". WRONG! I've had some serious 'rolling r' problems myself. I just couldn't roll my r with the tip of my tongue. So what did I do? I've been practicing like a madman for weeks. My roommates got crazy because I was trying to produce rolling sounds all day, but I didn't care. Eventually I was able to produce a rolling sound, but wasn't able to put it into words. So I've been practicing again, for weeks and weeks. Now I can finally put a nice, smooth, rolling r into every word I want. With ease. Why? Simply because I want to have a perfect accent and I don't want to give up this beautiful language just because I can't roll my r.

I liked reading Barry Farber's book "How To Learn Any Language". He said something like: Why would you invest a lot of time and energy in gaining a proper accent afterwards if you can get a proper accent from the beginning with juuuuuuuust a little bit of extra energy? I think is right on this one. I've been practicing a lot of Spanish speaking with a bad accent, and it cost me quite some energy and time to abandon this accent and get myself a proper one. It even set me back a little bit. First, because I was spending so much time practicing my accent. Second, because I felt bad because of my accent and 'why I couldn't do that r sound'. This shouldn't happen to you, if you take up the challenge to make your accent perfect.

I like to visit the How-to-learn-any-language forum, as a lot of great people with great ideas regarding language learning visit it every day. There I've read something about shadowing (another link, with some useful threads). It's quite difficult to exactly explain, but it works like this: you listen-read a text, or a part of a text (for this you need a piece of text - better take a long book you REALLY like - with the matching audio, obviously), and then COPY the spoken text yourself. That's not the trickiest part, but it will get tricky as you need to speak out every word at the same time as the audio. I know, it's hard to do, but it will get easier. I've done it myself, and I actually like it. It enables me to copy the proper accent of the speaker of the audiobook, which will stick and will be there outside the shadowing exercises.

To put it together; acquiring a correct accent isn't hard and won't take much time, if you begin acquiring it at an early stage. However, it can be a pain in the *** if you start too late with it, so you better start early (preferably in the first month of your studies, maybe even the first two weeks). I might take a bilingual book/text to shadow with, so you can pick up some new vocabulary aswell.