The Dialogue Deconstruction Method is a study technique designed to dramatically improve your ability to recognize and understand oral Spanish. If you are planning to travel to Spanish speaking country or need to improve your practical Spanish speaking skills in a hurry, this is the fastest technique we know improving your Spanish as quickly as possible.
To use the Dialogue Deconstruction Method, you will need access to Spanish dialogues like the example above. If you recently started our One Month Spanish course these dialogues are included in every lesson (if not, we have included a list of websites where you can find suitable audio files below). When selecting your audio, stick to short dialogues no more than 1-3 minutes in length and make sure that you have access to a complete Spanish transcript of the dialogue, along with an English translation.
Once you have your audio, complete the following steps:
Step 1 - In the first step, simply to listen to the full dialogue all the way through at full speed. Try to understand as much as you can, without stopping or pausing.
Step 2 - Re-listen to dialogue again and attempt to write down what you heard in Spanish. Pause and rewind the audio as many times as needed until you have transcribed the entire dialogue.
Step 3 - Read through the official Spanish transcript and make any needed corrections to what you transcribed. Circle any words that you do not know, and use a Spanish dictionary to look them up. Make sure you understand the passage fully before proceeding.
Step 4 – Re-listen to the full dialogue from start to finish one or more times.
You may feel that the speakers are talking "too fast" the first time you listen to the audio, but this is mostly because your brain is not used to processing oral speech at full speed. If you complete all four steps above, you should find the passage much easier to understand when you re-listen to the material at full speed in Step 4. The difference is that by then your brain has already done most of the "processing" work and can simply focus on recognizing words that it already knows.