For seven years, I lived in a small Spanish city just an hour or two from the Portugal border. While Spain and Portugal share the Iberian Peninsula (and both are lovely countries!), there are some differences between the two.
One oddity is that the Portuguese people are, in general, much better English-speakers than the Spanish people. Between you and me, the Spanish people typically have horrible English, despite the effort they put into teaching it and learning it. 🙂
However, the Portuguese have a reputation for being more proficient in English – something you may notice if you ever visit Portugal. What gives? What’s the difference between these two small countries that share the peninsula?
I don’t know exactly, but there’s one theory that is often mentioned: the Portuguese English proficiency is thanks to a lack of dubbed movies (movies where the original audio is replaced with audio translated into the local language).
The idea is that since Spanish is such a common language, there are lots of movies available in Spanish, so the Spaniards rarely have to watch a movie with English audio (and Spanish subtitles). On the other hand, Portuguese is not as common of a language, so there are fewer movies available with audio in Portuguese. This means the people of Portugal are more likely to watch movies with English audio (and turn on Portuguese subtitles). Their ears (and brains) are simply more tuned to hearing English.
Who knows if this is the main reason that the Spaniards struggle to learn English while it comes more naturally to the Portuguese people, but it’s a compelling thought. Language really is more caught than taught and being exposed to a language (even if you aren’t actively studying at that moment) can make a difference!
This is something I tell my high school students all the time! Listen to Spanish any chance you get. I constantly reassure them that it’s okay and quite normal for them not to understand everything that they hear when they listen to Spanish. In fact, that’s kind of the point. It’s helpful to have exposure to the language and just let your brain do its thing!
Two things I recommend to them:
Watch their favorite movies dubbed in Spanish (with English subtitles if they want)
Listen to a Spanish podcast while cleaning their room (it doesn’t matter if they don’t understand it!)
Speaking of which, here’s a podcast episode I recently found that tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood in Spanish.
Happy learning!