5 Ways Language Podcasts Will Prepare You For Solo Travel

How I used podcasts to learn conversational Spanish and Portuguese before travelling to Colombia and Brazil.

Illustration: Katherine Wong

Shakira was my first crush.

I blushed every time I saw the “Whenever, Whenever” music video. I never imagined you could move like that.

Thanks to Shakira, visiting South America was my childhood dream.

Colombia seemed so far away. I lived in Asia for 18 years, wondering what sort of magical place South America might be.

The Call to Adventure

Fast forward to 2018 — I’m an English teacher in Toronto, with students from all around the world.

My classes were always a unique mix, but I’ve never had a class without a Colombian or Brazilian student.

From my attendance lists, I became familiar with the long names of my Hispanic American students that never fit in my tiny box. I learned that if the first letter was an “R” in Brazilian Portuguese, it sounded like an English “H” — I mispronounced “Renata” for an embarrassingly long time.

English only in class.

But during breaks, I would overhear my students chattering away in Spanish and Portuguese. At lunchtime, I’d eat with my students, and they’d share stories about where they were from.

Through my students, I travelled the world every day. Mexico in the morning, Japan at lunch, and Turkey before the end of class.

Fridays were heart-breaking.

Students would graduate and return home from their brief Canadian adventure. They’d be full of joy, grateful at achieving their dreams of journeying abroad in a new language.

“Come visit our country someday! You’re always welcome.” My students said.

“I promise I will.” I suck at goodbyes.

When the lights went out, a part of me was missing.

Being a teacher is to give your heart and soul and watch it waltz out of the classroom every other week. It comes with the territory. My students left my world as quickly as they entered it.

I’d open Google Flights.

“What if I just…?”

I’d never travelled alone before. I’d never been somewhere where I couldn’t communicate with the local people.

Adventure was out there — But I was too scared to go.

Balancing Language Learning with Real Life

“Shakira went to my school when she was a kid!”

“What?” my ears perked up. No way.

“Yes, teacher, Shakira and I are both from Barranquilla.”

Life comes full circle.

“I know nothing about Barranquilla, tell me more,”

“Really? Have you heard of the Carnaval de Barranquilla? It’s one of the largest parties in the world! Great music and dancing like Champeta, Mapalé, Cumbia, Salsa… You have to go!”

I booked my flights to Colombia the very next day — I was sick of being afraid.

The only problem was I didn’t speak any Spanish.

My trip was in four months, and I didn’t want to rely on English. After seeing how hard my students tried to learn English in Canada, I wanted to experience their language struggles and become a more empathetic teacher.

I didn’t have much time, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money.

I worked full time, and I’m lazy. After work, all I wanted to do was chill and relax.

I hated the way I learned foreign languages back in high school — memorizing vocabulary lists and churning through grammar. I was terrible at learning Mandarin because it bored me out of my mind. Nothing I learned seemed connected to my life.

I’m not in high school anymore.

As a language teacher, I get to see day-in-day-out what works and what doesn’t.

There’s no perfect language-learning method.

Every learner is unique.

But I found that all of my best students did something similar — they didn’t treat “Learning English” as a boring school subject. They weren’t afraid to make mistakes.

They made language learning a part of their lives.

Outside of class, these students loved to watch movies, TV shows, read books, and listen to music, all in English.

They spent a lot of time exploring Toronto with friends who didn’t share their native language — they could only communicate with English.

English became a part of their identity. They connected learning English with their daily lives in Canada. It was necessary for their survival.

So they learned fast.

I copied them and did the same thing for Spanish.

A year later, I’d repeat the process with Brazilian Portuguese.

My goal was to have an amazing trip. I wanted to converse with locals, make new friends, and have a great time. I didn’t need a Ph.D. in Spanish or Portuguese — I just needed to understand native speakers and communicate without scaring them away.

Specifically, I needed to hear and comprehend all the sounds of the language, hear distinct words and phrases, and be able to produce those sounds during a conversation.

My biggest problem was that when native speakers spoke, they spoke so goddamn fast. It was nothing like the slow, repeatable phrases and sentences I’d get from apps like Duolingo.

Native speakers didn’t always use “proper” textbook grammar.

I don’t think anybody does.

My hypothesis was simple. To understand native speakers, I would have to have lots of listening input. Ideally, listening input which was “real” speech. Not the dumbed-down speech you’d encounter in a textbook.

How often do people speak like textbooks, anyway?

I’m lucky. I have students from all over the world. So sometimes I’d have opportunities to practice my Spanish with my Colombian students, and Portuguese with my Brazilian students.

But before I started conversing, I needed something to say. I needed to build a vocabulary base. At the very least, I needed to understand the key ideas and basic context of a conversation.

I started off with apps like Mango languages to learn some basic introductory phrases and understand cultural dos and don’ts.

I also watched YouTube pronunciation videos to ensure that I could hear how the sounds of the language were pronounced.

Podcasts were my secret weapon.

#1- Podcasts Mimic Real Life. No Subtitles. No Pauses.

When I’m talking to an actual human being, I don’t see any subtitles.

I have to pay attention to their words, their accent, their articulation — all of it. While I love using YouTube and Netflix videos to learn languages, it’s sometimes too easy to turn on subtitles and end up relying on those subtitles.

Especially in Romance languages with the same Latin alphabet as English… my eyes are faster than my ears. As a result, I end up understanding things with Spanish or Portuguese subtitles (because I’m reading and guessing word cognates), but when I talk to people on the street — I have no clue.

I love the fact that podcasts just keep going. I could pause them, sure, but then I’d lose the flow of the episode. Instead, I get to experience the thrill and challenge of figuring things out through context.

Often, I’ll miss a word or phrase, only to understand its meaning when I get to the next few sentences.

Learning language in context is the most effective way to become conversational.

Podcasts also have the added advantage that they are often not as “dumbed- down” as a vocabulary or grammar video on YouTube.

To keep the listener engaged, podcasts often involve a narrative arc that allows you to get lost in the story. As Linguist Dr. Stephen Krashen says, the goal of comprehensible input is to get so interested in the story you forget that it’s in a different language.

#2 — Podcasts Develop Your Ability to Understand Native Speakers (It’s Ok if You Don’t Understand Everything!)

Understanding native speakers is my biggest challenge when I’m learning a new language.

Unlike textbooks and classes, real-life doesn’t follow the rules. People have their own ways of speaking, their own tics, their own unique style…

By listening to podcasts by native speakers of the language I’m learning, I get to hear how speakers actually use the language.

True, some podcasts are more scripted than others — but a good podcast won’t be as “perfect” as the supplementary listening material in a textbook. The benefit of this is that I’ll be exposed to common phrases, expressions, and idioms that won’t be in a textbook.

I’ll get to learn language that may be specific to a city, or to certain cultural contexts.

In Spanish, one of my favourite podcasts is the Duolingo Spanish Podcast. Each episode is in intermediate Spanish and features a native speaker who represents their own unique accent(s) and culture(s).

They’re real stories spanning from Alejandro Méndez, El Salvador’s unlikely coffee world champion, to Cirle Tatis Arzuza, an Afro-Colombian woman who was bullied as a child for her curly hair. She learned to love her hair, and her experiences helped her start a business that now empowers over 130,000 subscribers.

One of the best things about the Duolingo Podcast is the additional English context. Stories are told in Spanish, but there’s context in English to help you follow along. When I miss an idea in Spanish, the English context allows me to piece together what the Spanish sections probably meant.

I don’t understand everything, and that’s ok. With every podcast episode, I become more familiar with the rhythm and music of Spanish.

The more I listen, the more interested I get in the culture and people of Spanish speakers from all around the world.

We always learn better when we’re interested.

For Portuguese, one of my favourite podcasts is Carioca Connection. It’s a conversational podcast that covers typical Brazilian topics and topics that may interest foreigners. Alexa is a Brazilian Carioca (a person from Rio de Janeiro) while Foster is an American who learned Portuguese.

With Carioca Connection, I enjoy learning about the culture of Brazil (especially that of Rio), while listening to the Carioca accent, and following Foster’s journey as he learns more about Brazil through Portuguese.

Though I couldn’t understand everything during my trips to Colombia or Brazil, it was easy for me to understand the general gist of conversations — because it was the same practice that I’d been doing with my podcasts.

No accents I heard in Colombia or Brazil sounded foreign to me, since I’d been listening to native speakers of both Spanish and Portuguese for the months leading up to my trips!

#3 — Podcasts Create Instant Immersion (Turn “Dead” Time into “Alive” Time)

We waste so much of our lives doing things we don’t want to do — dead time.

Commuting, buying groceries, doing household chores… I’m lucky that I get to work from home, so commuting is out of the question now. But before, I would listen to podcasts while walking or taking the subway to work.

There’s no better way to forget you’re in a crowd than listening to stories in a new language.

I feel most alive when I’m learning.

I hate vacuuming and washing the dishes. So I always listen to podcasts when I’m doing those activities. I don’t always catch most of the content (but I can always listen again) — the key is that I get to mimic an environment where Spanish and Portuguese are no longer “foreign languages”, but a part of my everyday life.

Think about it, when you were a baby, you never treated your native language as a foreign language, even though it was foreign to you.

It was just a language. It was just something you heard all the time and interacted with all the time.

No over-thinking.

No Google Translate.

No dictionaries.

Podcasts help me create an environment where foreign languages are no longer foreign to me. I listen to Spanish and Portuguese every day. Though they’re not my native language and I’m not fluent in either — both Spanish and Portuguese are just part of my life now, the same way that teaching English, washing dishes, cooking food, and buying groceries is a part of my life.

Learning languages is human. It’s nothing special. It’s not magic.

That’s why I can communicate in foreign languages when I travel to new countries — I may be in a new place, but I’m just doing what I practiced every day.

Language isn’t foreign to me.

#4 — Podcasts Are a Great Way to Get Some Exercise

The Zoom life sucks.

Every day I’m at my make-shift home desk. It’s a kitchen table.

I’m sedentary. And everything aches. After a while, my hips get tight, my calves cramp up. My neck cracks.

I can feel my body ageing at super speed.

Listening to podcasts while out on a walk is a great way to kill two birds with one stone. Language learning and exercise. Being mindful of the COVID-19 conditions where you live is vital. If possible, walking can really elevate your mood and re-introduce some movement to your Zoom-body.

I live near a park that’s not filled with people. Whenever I have a break, I’ll go for a walk. I’ll pop in a podcast that lasts around 20 to 30 minutes. Perfect length.

I can enjoy nature and get some exercise, all while learning a new language.

The best part is that podcasts don’t require looking at digital screens.

After staring at my computer all day, the last thing I want to do is play around on a tiny phone app.

My eyes burn.

I’ll go for a walk instead.

#5- Podcasts Are the Best Bang for Your Buck (They’re Free)

The best thing about podcasts is their value. Many great podcasts out there are free, and the educational ones often come with free (or fair-priced) transcripts.

I love the fact that I can instantly download a podcast and have it ready to go without paying a cent.

I spent most of the 12-hour flight from Toronto to Bogota listening to podcasts.

Any time I was bored, I would open my podcasts and boom.

Instant immersion.

Recap

1. Podcasts mimic real life. No subtitles. No pauses.
2. Podcasts develop your ability to understand native speakers. It’s ok if you don’t understand everything.
3. Podcasts create instant immersion. They turn “dead” time into “alive” time.
4. Podcasts are a great way to get some exercise.
5. Podcasts are the best bang for your buck. They’re free.

Spoiler alert — My solo trips to Colombia and Brazil were the best trips of my life.

Language scared me from going.

Language gave me the confidence to go.

“Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value.

Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people.”

― Kató Lomb, “Polyglot: How I Learn Languages”

Good luck!