I have a Spanish final in six days

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. My hints as a former language teacher

1. Don't be afraid. That's the number one inhibitor. My best students ever were Malaysians, because all of them are at minimum bilingual (English and Malay are required in school) and often trilingual or quadrilingual (especially if they're from the Chinese or Tamil minorities). Their attitude toward Japanese was, "Meh, it's just another language," and they actively tried to use it whenever possible. They were the only students who would try to speak Japanese to me outside of class.

2. Watch Spanish TV with the closed captioning on. I did that before going to Cuba, and it was a great review. (Very few people in Cuba speak English, and even those who speak it don't speak very well.)

3. Read something that you're interested in: something about a hobby or interest of yours, a novel of the type you like, a magazine

4. Try speaking Spanish when you run into Latino people.

5. Yes, listen to music. When I was studying German and couldn't remember what case something was supposed to be in, I'd sometimes remember a fragment of a song that had exactly the right phrase in it to tell me, "Oh yes, that preoposition takes the dative case..."