My past 3 years learning about Mexico, Spanish and how people learn languages quickly
In the summer of 2020, I went to Mexico and never returned.
I went down with a friend to Sayulita, thinking we would go surf and travel for a month until work resumed. Long story short, I stayed in Mexico after starting my business teaching online.
We traveled around Mexico for a month as planned, after which I returned to sayulita. I lived there for over a month, before going on to Baja California Sur, Chiapas and Oaxaca, living in each place for a month at a time. I lived in Guadalajara, in Puerto Escondido, in San Cristobal, in Mexico City.
And not just stayed for a few days. Lived, for months at a time. Immersing myself in Spanish and watching as others learned, both students and friends. Offering tips on how to learn and figuring there had to be a better way.
Because it is frustrating, after so much study, to not be able to actually use the language. To have perfect grammar, but not be able to speak.
I watched lots of kids like this.
100’s on papers, A+ on all the tests. Their Spanish was perfect, by all accounts.
Now, if you called on them in class, they were unable to respond.
That isn’t useful, I thought. Language is meant for communication, and that for me is speaking. Of the 4 things, speaking is the most important reason to learn a language, to connect with another person. Not to read books and write papers.
Not to say reading or writing are bad. They are great. But, speaking, to me, is the point. To communicate and connect, as little of the language as we might know.
And it was a thought that did not leave me. I watched as friends learned, and noticed something about the ones who learned the quickest. Firstly, they were all ok with making mistakes. Like me, they thought communication is more important than perfection, and they learned much quicker. They spoke more often, used the language more, and had their mistakes corrected more, therefore learning more in the process.
And they had way more fun doing so. Being ok with making errors, knowing that people will understand you because they WANT to understand you, is great to know. Remember our quote from above.
It was with this goal in mind that I started this brand, of Anthony Mullis Language Coach. And it has 3 goals.
Help people speak with confidence
Help people learn how to learn a language
Make it fun, by approaching learning through being put in real life situations you might find in real life.
Why that last point? Because that is the secret to learning a language quickly, by learning how to master situations you see in daily life and knowing how to talk about your hobbies.
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Survival Spanish Course
Think about it. How much do you do in a day? What do you talk about? Where do you go?
If you are like me, you go to the same handful of places, you buy the same things at the store each week, we talk about our past times. By learning language through this lens, of facing the situations you are most likely to encounter in real life, we learn the most important vocabulary. And it also allows us to practice using our language, even if everyone around you only speaks English. This will be a future email, dont worry.
Oh, and it also makes the complicated grammar points easier to understand, by placing it in a context you are familiar with. You get to actually learn what everything does without hating your life, reading grammar rule after grammar rule.
And so in September, I left Mexico for a few months. I love Mexico, but I still had an itch to travel that I couldn’t fulfill. So I left, to travel Europe and Africa. I went to Norway, Poland and Belgium before arriving to my first stop.
Morocco.
I used the week in Europe to study Darija Arabic, to put to test my theory and method of learning a language, to see what I could learn.
And I learned a lot. It was tougher than expected, but successful. In the two weeks I stayed, I went from nothing to being able to handle my daily interactions with ease. It started simply, with nothing more than a hello and a thank. Then being able to say I want, do you have, I need. Simple phrases that I knew would pop up often.
And after two weeks, I could do a lot. Asking directions, going to the market, buying things, getting cafe. Small interactions, but I was ecstatic with the rate I was learning.
After this I went to Romania, and did the same experiment, and got the same result. In the two weeks I was there, I was able to ask directions, get coffee, and go to the store with no problem. With Romanian, being a Romance language, I got a chance to read a lot, as I understood the alphabet, and Spanish gave me a good ability to guess at what words meant.
After these two weeks, I spent a week in Istanbul and went to Thessaloniki, Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest and Berlin before heading home.
I was exhausted, and it felt good to be back in Mexico. I arrived back in December of 2022 to Mexico City, and with the year coming to a close, decided that this was the year, 2023, where I would share my methods with others, so that they can begin to learn how to learn a language and to speak with confidence.
Armed with my results and proof of the speed you can learn a language with, I spent what I had left of that year coming up with a plan. And in the New Year, I redid the course, applying the lessons learned in Romania and Morocco, to build a program which satisfies those three points:
Help people speak with confidence
Help people learn how to learn a language
Make it fun, by approaching learning through being put in real life situations you might find in real life.
Which is the purpose of this newsletter, to help you learn how to learn a language, while making it fun.
Be sure to check out my social media below for more free language learning tips.
And if you want more info about the course, with a breakdown of each unit, hit the big blue button above. And be sure to sign up to get the course breakdown of what we will learn and why it is important.
Hasta pronto,
Anthony “Learn to Learn a Language” Mullis