Today I had another long car journey after a busy day spent delivering another seminar to a client.  Of course I used the opportunity in the car to listen to podcasts galore - new ones and old ones.

Whilst I was listening something struck me that I hadn't really noticed before.

 As I was listening to the dialogues from the podcasts, there were some words that I seemed to "just know", there were others that I had to think about before remembering what they meant and a third group of words that I just did not know.  These last words were either new to me or I had just let them slip through the net and had yet to condition what they meant so I could recall them.

Once I realised this I started taking notice of just how I came to understand to words I was hearing.  The first group was quite simple.  I heard the word and knew exactly what it meant.  Words like agua, limon, leche, con, sin, si , no, entiendo and vivo fell in this group. 

The next group, those I had to think about, included siempre, trabajo, el hijo and caliente.  I recognised them, knew that I knew them and just had to think for a second to recall what they meant.  Interestingly enough some of the words in the first group used to be like that.

And then the words I didn't know - well there is not much I can do about that other than learn tham and get them into the second group.

So during this observation I realised that there is a line from completely not knowing what a word means to completely understanding what a word means.  Every word in Spanish is on this line somewhere (and at the moment it feels that 99.999% of them are at the first end

What was interesting to note was that the words do move along this line.

What was more interesting to note was that this transition from knowing to not knowing appears to be under my control and that I can quite quickly get a word into my psyche so that I "just know" what it means.

The best way I have found to do this is a combination of using great accelerated learning principles and memory techniques to memorise the word effectively, activation activities so that I use the word as often as I can (ideally with a native Spanish speaker) and then continuous and ongoing exposure to the Spanish language by listening to podcasts, internet radio and watching Spanish TV.

I know it takes time but it does appear that the process can be accelerated with the right approach, attitude and work rate.

Let me know what you think.