Improving and maintaining a good accent and speaking sentences well accent

What I think I’ve learnt about getting back or developing a good accent in Spanish and maintaining it (all written from experience of what has worked):

When you aren’t happy with your accent or it feels out of practice:

  • Focus on the vowel sounds by warming up this can be done with different words, like “hoy”, “casa”, and “importante”, and don’t be afraid to exaggerate or draw out parts of words as it can help.

  • What’s additionally just as (if not more) helpful and important, is focusing on vowel placement, basically where you’re making the sounds come from in your mouth, and stop thinking with an English mouth.

English: Sounds are generally produced more towards the front of the mouth. ⬅👄

Spanish: Sounds are produced in the middle/towards the back of the mouth. ➡👄

You should feel the difference when you warm up. You might get excited, lol. Like me.

Helpful activities

  • Listen to natives and sometimes repeat after them, real life is best but through content works (with content, subtitles can help after hearing in some cases).

  • Read aloud in Spanish

- A tip is to not overthink reading each word.

- Speak sentences together like you would in English.

- Try different speeds and stressing different sounds, have fun.

  • Read tongue twisters

Also some random observations I’ve made include (some may be obvious or personal):

  • Listening to or watching a lot of Spanish will not mean your accent improves unless you’ve done some type of effective warming up somewhat recently (maybe this can vary from person to person) - BUT if you really absorb a lot or surround yourself with native Spanish even without warming up, weirdly it becomes a part of u for a little (can be hard to keep up the effect).

  • If your accent is bad and u really wanna boost it quick and notice a difference, I recommend 2-2 ½ days of high quality input of 4 hours, or more if you want/if possible. You can split this up but probably not too much. I used to watch/listen to a twitch streamer called Quackity’s Spanish streams practically every day for a while, like 2-3 (one maybe being a recorded twitter space, and I would listen before I slept) and my accent was crazy but for a teeny while that I wish I recorded myself. :( (tbh I think I did but deleted it)