SPANISH: Which form of communication is easiest for you?

[celebritea]

The majority of my Spanish education came from school, which focused on literacy (reading/writing) as opposed to socially. So in MY experience, reading has been the easiest then writing. Next is speaking and understanding/hearing is probably the most difficult for ME. Sometimes it's difficult for me to process hearing the words.

What about you?

[gmckee1985]

It can all be a bit difficult at times. I'm not as good as I want to be yet. The easiest form of communication for me is writing as well. It's just easier to understand the information. Most difficult is having a full blown conversation. Sometimes my brain doesn't pick up on what the person I am talking with is saying quite quick enough. It takes me a moment to process the information and respond. So there are some awkward lulls in the conversation. I'm working on getting better at it though. I think it's the hardest part for most people.

[sillylucy]

I think reading and writing Spanish is easier for me. If I can read the words then I can kind of guess what they mean. Hearing it out loud makes me a little flustered because some speakers speak so fast.

[NikkiDesrosiers]

I actually have a much harder time hearing and comprehending than I do reading and speaking. I think this is because natives of this language tend to speak really fast -- and with me not being as familiar with the language it does not allow me enough time to absorb everything that is being said.

[AureliaeLacrimae]

For me, speaking is the most difficult one, writing the easiest. I'd always preferred writing to speaking. I guess that's just the way I function. One reason is definitely the lack of time when you speak. If you're writing something down, you always have enough time to, if nothing else, organise your thoughts and come up with a perfect solution. You even have enough time to fix something, if you believe it should be fixed. With speaking, it's different. Once you say something, it's difficult to correct it. You can, true, but it's not the same. Though, lately, I have a different problem - once I start writing I can't stop. When you have only about five minutes per question on an exam and you can't stop writing, this definitely starts to worry you. I'm still working on shortening my sentences and paragraphs.

[RedRose]

For me, reading in Spanish is the easiest for me, but listening and speaking is the most difficult. My Spanish teacher put a good emphasis on speaking skills, but I don't have strong communication skills, which made learning how to speak in Spanish more difficult for me than it was for the average student. When I took the AP Spanish test earlier this year, I had no problem with reading the passages. I worked through those sections fairly quickly. Writing the persuasive essay went okay, too. However, I know I didn't do well with the speaking/listening section. I still passed the test, but I know now that in order to achieve fluency in Spanish, I need to work on my communication skills more.

[picklefingers]

Definitely reading and writing. I am pretty bad at speaking. Mostly, its my accent. I can never really pronounce the harder words without making other people chuckle a bit. But still, besides the accent, everything just flows out much more naturally in Spanish when I am reading and writing.

[Verba]

It is reading for me because I can easily pronounce a lot of Spanish words since our language has been greatly influenced by the Spanish language. In fact, our alphabet used to have some of their letters. Speaking the language is next in line as we have borrowed words from them. But listening to them talk is quite difficult because they talk really fast. If they talk slowly just like how my Uni Spanish teacher spoke, even though she spoke Spanish all throughout the course, I would somehow understand. However, their spellings for some words are different from ours so writing is a bit difficult for me.

[Dora M]

When I started learning Spanish, I was able to read and pronounce the language rather quickly, but until I could speak it fluently, it took me quite a while. Even now, I often try to translate from English or German into Spanish, which simply doesn't work. So, my way of getting better and improving my Spanish skills is by listening and talking with Spanish natives as much as possible.

[elenamarie]

Reading is easiest for me. We have no Spanish class. We do have it many decades ago but it was abolished. I learn the language by reading, watching movies and listening to Spanish songs. I can comprehend basic Spanish but not in a deeper sense at least not yet. Perhaps I will learn more by mixing a little bit of every possible way I can learn.

[Rosa]

I find that reading and writing Spanish is much easier for me. My problem is always with listening and interpretting what I heard. I think it is mainly because Spanish natives speak so fast it is difficult to understand everything they say.