A lot of Spanish learners feel like they need more corrections.
They worry they’ll never learn without them:
“How will I know what I’m doing wrong?”
“Won’t the mistake fossilize?”
“I don’t want to keep saying something wrong over and over”.
I can very much relate to the desire to nip mistakes in the bud.
And there IS merit to feedback.
But it’s hard to get the timing right.
When someone corrects you mid-sentence, it rarely sticks. Instead, it kills your flow and makes you more prone to second-guessing yourself.
It reminds me of why I stopped playing the guitar in 2021:
Each time I started, my dog would bark at me.
Maybe she needs more training, or maybe I just really suck at guitar.
Either way, my motivation to play was already low, so it was easy enough to just put the guitar in a closet for a while (now 4 years).
When someone corrects your Spanish, sometimes the timing is right and you manage to make a mental note.
But usually, it’s more of an interruption than a favor.
That’s because it’s not as simple as just “knowing” something.
So if mid-convo corrections aren’t the answer… how can we learn to speak correct Spanish?
Here are three tips.
Exposure
I live near the beach, where we have lots of wind.
That wind pushes sand into the dunes, making them bigger and better barriers to erosion.
The Spanish you hear and read is like the wind, smoothing out the sand and pushing it where it needs to go.
Mistakes take time to iron out, because they need to be internalized through lots of exposure to Spanish.
So step one is to focus on the “wind” — giving your brain the chance to absorb as much Spanish as possible.
But the dunes here only collect sand because of small fences under the sand that give somewhere for the sand to collect.

That’s where an important next step comes in:
Target Practice
If the place to correct your grammar isn’t usually mid-conversation, what’s the alternative?
Solo practice — both speaking and writing.
Say I’m struggling with talking about the past because of all the different conjugations.
I can recognize them, but using them myself is like roulette.
An effective challenge is to pose myself a question that elicits that grammar, then answer it.
First, in writing.
Once you’re done, you read over what you wrote and see if you can spot any errors.
Then, stick your writing into your favorite AI tool and ask for corrections.
Finally, answer the same question aloud (without reading your answer), focusing on one or two things you want to make sure you say correctly.
I sent an email the other day with an alternative exercise, you can read that here if you’d like.
Communication >
When you focus most of your learning on exposure to Spanish, with targeted practice built in, you can trust that you’re improving.
Which means that your conversations don’t need to be “correction sessions”.
Instead, focus your conversations on just getting the message across.
Communication > correctness.
Ask your partner not to correct your grammar mid-sentence, unless they don’t understand you.
Instead, ask them to make a note of it in a shared document.
You can review those together at the end of the session, or you can review it on your own later.
Usually, there is too much going on in a conversation for us to process corrections simultaneously.
This lets you take in a helpful dose of feedback without feeling like I do when my dog barks at my guitar.
It takes practice to shift your focus from correctness to communication.
When we’re face-to-face with someone else, ego creeps in and we want to get everything right.
That’s why I value solo speaking so much.
It’s easier to focus on conveying an idea without fixating on correctness or the potential of making a mistake.
Gracias por leer, eso es todo por hoy.
Saludos,
Connor
P.S. In the 30 Day Speaking Challenge, you’ll have the chance to get this kind of practice every day.
The focus is on using what you’ve working so hard to learn and turn it into practical skills that make your conversations more fluid and fun.
Enrollment ends tomorrow (Sunday) at 10pm EST. If you’re interested, you can check out the info here: https://breakthroughspanish.com/speak
I like what you said and I’ll try to learn from you.