Stop guessing your Spanish!

"¡Deja de adivinar tu español!"
Spanish C1 writing exercise

Carla tells us what she discovered to improve her confidence in Spanish and stop guessing, applying grammar rules more confidently.

Pay attention to the hints!

Some vocabulary you may want to look up before or during this exercise: "to guess", "intuition", "listener", "to waste", "to write down" and "to justify".

I’ll give you some sentences to translate into Spanish

  • I’ll show you where you make mistakes
  • I’ll keep track of what you need to practise
  • Change my choices if you want
Start the exercise

Here's a preview of the text for the writing challenge, when you're ready click the start button above:

For years, I believed that learning Spanish meant guessing what sounded right. If someone had told me earlier that intuition was not enough, I would have studied differently. My old teacher used to insist that I write down every doubt I had. But I was so afraid of making mistakes that I never asked anything. I would invent words and hope that the listener understood me. It was not until I moved to Madrid that I realised how superficial my Spanish was. My flatmates corrected me whenever I confused ser and estar. I felt frustrated, as if I had wasted years studying the wrong way. A friend recommended that I stop guessing and start checking everything. From that day on, I have written down every word whose meaning I am not sure of. I no longer accept any sentence that I cannot justify grammatically. It is essential that students understand the rules before improvising with them. If I had known this from the beginning, I would speak with much more confidence today.

Clever stuff happening!