If you have made your way past the travel phrases and greetings to an intermediate language level, well done! Maybe you’re wondering how to keep the momentum going – if so, this post is for you.

The intermediate stage of a language is pretty fabulous, because you can have a conversation and month on month you can improve very quickly. Later on, there’s a bit more pressure. I use German daily for my job, and the word fluent still seems very loaded, and I can feel guilty if I come across words I don’t know. (Side note, when reading about Aretha Franklin after her death I learned the word Urgewalt, which means an ‘elemental force’ – how perfect is that?).

The intermediate stage is still all about discovery and you should enjoy being free of that nebulous term ‘fluency’ and just enjoy building on your comprehension. If it’s an option for you, group classes are the most effective way to improve at this stage. (I did it for German, and after a year of solo Spanish I am in the classroom again).

That being said, classes alone are nothing if not accompanied by reading, listening and speaking in your spare time (Exhibit A: mes quatres ans de francais en l’ecole).

Here are some great habits to develop which will maintain and propel you towards advanced learning!

1. Read! You can try simple novels or children’s books (here some German suggestions), but the news will be most helpful. It will connect you with what’s going on, and the language will be a mixture of conversation starters (politics, culture, scandals) and every day vocabulary. Spanish: El País, German: Deutsche Welle, Die Zeit. Some papers have ‘easy language’ versions of the news, such as Taz (German).
2. Listen! I follow a bunch of Spanish-language podcasts, but the mistake I usually make is passive listening. It is still quite beneficial, but if you feel motivated, write down a few new words or phrases and look them up. Better still, write your own sentences with the new words. Links: Radio Ambulante (Latin American news from NPR), Coffee Break Spanish (see season 3+), Españolistas, TED Talks en Español. All in the usual podcast apps.
3. Speak! Make regular conversation in your language, if you can! Major cities will have meet up groups for exchanging languages. See also Conversation Exchange – it’s a super basic but widely used website for finding tandem partners, I found a Spanish friend in the city and we meet up fairly regularly so we can each practice our languages! You can correct each other, give tips and explain natural, native ways of speaking.
4. Be Active. Your new language is going to pop up in your head at random moments of the day. You might also find yourself wondering ‘how could I say that in Spanish? Do I know how to conjugate the verb?’ Here’s an old list of super useful apps which will allow you to consult a dictionary or a grammar tool on the go, so you can learn something at unexpected moments.

All of this has worked and continues to work for me – good luck! Let me know your own tips and tricks.