How to increase vocabulary and make sense of grammar

What should you do when you came across new words in Spanish? How can you apply grammar theory when reading Spanish?

When you are reading something in Spanish, don’t look up for every single word or expression. Only look up something that is really important for understanding the text. Similarly when you listen Spanish don’t panic when you hear some words of expressions that you don’t understand. Try to get the overall meaning. Understanding every word takes time.

When reading a text sometimes is possible to guess the meaning of a word. Decide first what part of the speech the word is (here is when grammar terms are important to remember and understand!) and then have a look at the context. Take a short paragraph from any text and classify words and organised them. Have a look at this short paragraph:

Ricky Martin: "Que pare la discriminación"

(AP).-Ricky Martin sorprendió al público de los Premios Billboard a la Música Latina cuando aprovechó su momento ante el micrófono para criticar una nueva ley del estado de Arizona, Estados Unidos, que busca combatir la inmigración ilegal.

Sorprendió: Even if at first sight you don’t understand the meaning you can say that “sorprendió” is a regular verb (second group ER) and is in preterit. So, you know that the article is about something that was totally completed in the past. After reading the whole paragraph you can go back and look up the word at the dictionary if couldn’t understand it. Focus on verbs and nouns for grasping the idea of a sentence. You can go further and find related words (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc). Such us:

Sorprendentemente: adverbio 
Sorprender: verbo
Sorpresa: sustantivo
Sorprendente: adjetivo  

     Write a sentence using each of these single words in context.

Ejemplo: ¡Qué sorpresa nos has dado! Fue sorprendente tu desempeño en la obra.

                       

Premios: You can recognise “premios” as a masculine and singular noun. You might guess the meaning thinking what means for you “Billboard” in English and what kind of event is related to. That’s right; it’s the Billboard Latin Music Awards.  Premios=Awards. Some other terms to associate and remember:

Premiar: verbo
Premio/s: sustantivo     

Premiado: adjetivo

You can work on synonyms (sinónimos): Recompensar-galardonar-condecorar-laurear-remunerar-gratificar

Or antonyms (antónimos): Castigar-penalizar

 

Para criticar:  “para”+ infinitive. Tells why one does something; “in order to” (before infinitive): When giving the reason for doing something, you use “para” ”+ the appropriate infinitive. In this case, “para”+ infinitive means “to” or “in order to”. Here we can see how grammar is not something abstract in fact it helps us to clarify the meaning.

(Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions. Practice Makes Perfect. Dorothy Richmond. McGraw-Hill. Printed 1998. Pg. 126)

Why don’t challenge yourself and find out the part of the speech and meaning of the following words: aprovechó, ley and combatir?