Why Can I Ask in Spanish but Not Understand the Answer?
By Angela Blanco, founder of Fluency Lab
Why Can I Ask a Question in Spanish but Struggle to Understand the Answer?
If you're here, maybe you've bought yourself a phrasebook, tried out a few sentences and even memorized some to impress native speakers. Then, once you've finally used one, the person answers excited that you speak Spanish with some stuff you don't understand while you can only manage saying “Lo siento, estoy aprendiendo español. No entiendo” while smiling back, hoping they won't ask you anything else.
Or you've spent months (why not years?) on Duolingo, promising yourself you'll use all those sentences while abroad, only to feel completely lost when someone answers your first question.
Why is it so difficult to understand Spanish answers when you managed to ask the question perfectly well? When you prepare a question, you choose words you know and have plenty of time to put them together. All good so far, but then the other person chooses their own words, speaks at their own pace and might ask you something you hadn't considered!
Your preparation has helped you start, but there is still the rest of the conversation to manage.
“Spanish speakers speak too fast,” you might tell yourself to get some relief. As an English learner, I've had that experience too.
Just try this: walk into a busy pub and listen to the conversations as someone who is still learning English, and tell me you guys don't speak quickly.
Speed can make things difficult, yes. But “they speak too fast” doesn't tell us enough about what you need to practice.
Let's look at what happens after that first sentence and how to overcome this struggle.
A table for two. How complicated could that be?
If life gave us conversations as perfect as the ones in phrasebooks, you could say what you need and the person on the other side would tell you exactly what you were expecting:
You: Buenas tardes, señor. Una mesa para dos, por favor.
Waiter: Por aquí, por favor.
You: Gracias.
How lovely would that be!
But the waiter could also ask “¿Tienen reserva?” or say “Ahora mismo no hay mesas. Hay que esperar unos... veinte minutos.” And now you need to answer another question or decide whether to wait or run away to the self-service.
Preparing your opening is useful, of course. But if the practice always ends with the expectation of an easy “Por aquí, por favor”, you haven't had much opportunity to work out what to do when there's no table.
Your teacher, my mother and everyone else you might speak to
“But I understand my teacher, why I can't get what other people tell me ouside the lessons.”
You understand very specific people, maybe and yes, and that matters a lot. You've become familiar with a voice, a pace and expressions you hear regularly. Your teacher may also notice when you've lost the thread and adjust the explanation or play charades to help (we have developed a talent for that!).
But someone you've just met doesn't necessarily know what you can understand and can't yet.
And I'm not only talking about differences between Spanish from Spain, Mexico or Argentina. I'm talking about the differences that exist in the speed, tone and word decisiones between a little girl in Tenerife and her dad.
Word choices and the way we speak can be different between from our relatives or work colleagues, right?
My pace and word choices are definitely different from my mother's. My partner, who is learning Spanish, can swear to that.
This is why we gradually introduce different voices in our classes, including men, women, older people and children. We start with the variety of Spanish the student is most likely to encounter, then broaden the practice as they can manage more.
You know “buenas noches”. So why did you miss “noches” in a different context?
When a student tells me they didn't understand, my next question is what they did manage to hear. “I didn't understand” can mean several things, and each gives us something different to work on.
Sometimes the word is new. That's normal, especially in our beginner classes, where students often hear words during the listening part of an activity before seeing them written down. We might work out the meaning from the situation, notice a simmilarity to an English word, or simply take time to explain it because it will be useful again in the near future.
Other times, the student knows the word but doesn't recognize it in the sentence. And that has a different approach.
For example, a student may know “buenas noches” but miss “noches” in “Tiene una reserva por cinco noches.”
If I've noticed during our sessions that the “ch” sound causes you difficulty, that gives me something specific to work on. Hearing the phrase again, looking at it and working with the sounds can help us see what needs attention.
Pronunciation practice can support this work, alongside listening to how words sound together in a sentence. Learning another list of vocabulary wouldn't necessarily resolve that particular difficulty.
Learn to take control of the conversation too!
Sometimes the student understands the answer but doesn't know what to say next. Then we need to give them practice responding. Asking them to memorise more words or listen to the same sentence five more times would miss what's actually causing the problem.
Let's have a look at what I mean by taking control of the conversation with this little example:
Back at the restaurant, they've run out of soup
Let me show you what this looks like in one of our lessons.
You're looking at the menu and ask for soup. The waiter says:
“Disculpe, pero hoy no tenemos sopa. Tenemos ensalada.”
You catch “no” and “sopa”, but lose the rest.
When a student freezes here, I first ask whether they understood even one word.
What could that word mean in this situation? Depending on the word, we might have one, two or a thousand possibilities (well, hopefully fewer). Sometimes we listen again.
“No” and “sopa” give us something to work with. Perhaps the soup isn't available, right?
We have a possible interpretation now, and now we need to check it:
You: Entonces, ¿no hay sopa?
Waiter: No, hoy no. Tenemos ensalada.
You: Ah, vale. Una ensalada, por favor.
You haven't understood every word the waiter said the first time, but you've checked the information you need and ordered something else. You can carry on with dinner.
If the waiter corrected you instead, that would also be useful. Your question gives the other person a chance to help you understand:
But imagine the original answer was longer, and you missed entirely what soup they were talking about. Your question could also lead to a correction:
Waiter: No señor, sí tenemos sopa, sopa de pollo, no tenemos sopa de tomate.
Ahhh, now we're talking! (literally).
In class, we help the student notice words, consider their meaning and make a decision.
Working out meaning from context is one of a language learner’s biggest superpowers. And yes, we can help you build it during our Spanish lessons.
As we practice, the aim is for those decisions to become easier and quicker, with less help from us each time until you can handle those conversations on your own.
There's something for your to use from today: “Can you repeat?” is useful. You can also ask for the bit you missed.
“¿Puede repetir, por favor?” is a perfectly good place to start. Sometimes hearing something again is all you need. When you know which part you've missed, you can make the request more specific.
How to ask for clarification without losing your cool
What you need | What you could say | Meaning |
Hear the answer again | ¿Puede repetir, por favor? | Could you repeat that, please? |
Recover one detail | Perdón, ¿a las nueve o a las diez? | Sorry, at nine or ten? |
Check your interpretation | Entonces, ¿no hay sopa? | So, there's no soup? |
Understand an unfamiliar word | ¿Qué significa “festivo”? | What does “festivo” mean? |
Hear a different explanation | ¿Me lo puede decir de otra forma? | Could you say it another way? |
Choose the question that fits what you need. If you understood everything except the time, you can ask about the time. If you heard the words but don't understand the expression, another explanation may help more than the same sentence repeated.
Then use the clarification to continue: choose another dish, confirm the booking, the departure time or ask your next question. That's the part we also need to practice.
When you're ready, the waiter has more to say
Seeing students struggle with replies is what led me to carefully plan how we introduce basic Spanish for complete beginners at Fluency Lab.
We start with short, slower audio and follow a character through everyday conversations while traveling in a small pueblito. From those exchanges, we explore the language and patterns the student will need. Then, little by little, we give the student more responsibility.
They listen to the other person and have to give a response that makes sense in the situation, with the teacher there to help when needed.
They might have the restaurant menu in front of them while the waiter explains that there's no soup, like in our previous example. They have support from the teacher, but they still need to decide what to do.
When a student can get the main idea and respond to a short message, we introduce something longer. Now they need to hold on to more information and connect it. We vary the voices and make the replies less predictable as they become ready for that challenge.
Which conversations should I practise first?
The conversations need to have to do with the life you want to have in Spanish.
If you want to manage hotels, restaurants and shops, start there. If you want to make friends or spend time with a friend's family, we'll also need to work towards following personal stories, asking questions and understanding conversational expressions and cultural references. You can imagine how different those conversations might be from ordering a coffee.
Do I need a teacher, or can I work on this myself?
You can make progress independently, and we do encourage students to have contact with Spanish outside our lessons.
If you have a short recording with a transcript, you can listen, work out what you think it means and consider what you'd say back before checking the text. That can help you notice what you understood and what you missed.
But finding suitable material, identifying why you missed something and deciding what to practise next all take lots of time and some guesswork on your part
You might spend an evening finding an audio, discover it's far too difficult, try another one and end up exhausted and questioning your life choices. Meanwhile, you're still not sure what would help with the conversations you actually want to have.
A professional teacher can take responsibility for organizing that progression. In our lessons, we're paying attention to the sounds that cause confusion, the words you've already used and how much information you can manage at once. That helps us decide when to repeat, when to explain and when to give you something more demanding.
A transcript can show you what was said. During a lesson, your teacher can also respond to your clarification question, notice a misunderstanding and help you work through the conversation as it unfolds.
That's why we combine listening with interaction. You get to practice what happens when it's your turn again, with someone paying attention to how you're managing it.
You still do the work of listening and responding, but you have help choosing what to work on and understanding why.
What happens after your next questions?
Keep using your apps and phrasebooks, but give yourself opportunities to practise what happens after your opening sentence. What else might the person say? What could you ask if you only understood part of the answer?
You don't need to learn all of Spanish before you can begin using it. Start with the conversations you're likely to have and build from there.
Finally, remember you don't need to learn all of Spanish before you can begin using it. It helps to identify the conversations you're likely to have first and build from there.
Ordering dinner, getting to know a friend's family and giving a toast involve different demands. A useful plan should take your goal and your availability seriously.
In a free Spanish Roadmap Planning session with me, Angela Blanco, we'll discuss your previous experience and what you'd like to do in Spanish.
We'll identify priorities, discuss a realistic estimate of the time involved when working with one of our teachers, and go through lesson frequency based on your availability and program costs.
If you'd like recommendations for content to use independently, you can ask for those too.
Our Spanish Roadmap Planning is a conversation about your goals and the program that could fit them.
If you'd like to work out which conversations to prepare for first and make Spanish fluency a reachable milestone, book your free Roadmap Planning session here:
EXTRA SOURCES:
ACTFL, Design Communicative Tasks, https://www.actfl.org/educator-resources/guiding-principles-for-language-learning/design-communicative-tasks
ACTFL, Performance Descriptors for Language Learners (Interpersonal), https://www.actfl.org/uploads/files/general/ACTFLPerformance_Descriptors-Interpersonal.pdf .
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