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My name is María Fernández. I'm an experienced native Spanish teacher and in this video I'm going to show you how you can improve your Spanish in just five minutes.

Let me assume that you're familiar with the following situation: you've learned some Spanish. You can use some everyday words and you know how to put together some sentences, but when you actually say them to native Spanish speakers, they stare at you blankly and don't understand what you're saying. The second or third time this happens your confidence starts to fade and you lose interest in the language.

Why is this happening? You're using the correct words and other English speakers understand you alright. What's wrong then?

Often the main problem is that you're saying the vowels wrong. Native Spanish speakers find it very difficult to understand words where the vowels are mispronounced. Most other pronunciation mistakes don't tend to make communication impossible, but the vowels do.

Let's hear what the vowels should sound like in Spanish: a e i o u - The Spanish vowels always have these five pure, unchangeable sounds.

It's particularly difficult to get the vowels right when a word sounds similar in both languages like, for instance: autobús, aeropuerto, itinerario, pasaporte.

Notice how I've said the vowels a-u in autobús. The 'a' should sound like in the English word 'father' and the 'u' like in the word 'put'.

Now listen to the word 'aeropuerto' and notice the a-e. The 'e' should sound like in the English word 'egg', and the 'o' like in the word 'lots'.

Moving on to 'itinerario', notice how I say the first 'i'. Itinerario, itinerario. It sounds like the 'i' in the English word 'machine'.

Finally, let's hear the word 'pasaporte'. 'Pasaporte'. Here it's tempting to drop the 'e', but doing so makes it really difficult to understand this word. Make sure your say: pasaporte, with a clear 'e' at the end, 'pasaporte'.

Saying the vowels right in Spanish will dramatically improve the odds of people understanding what you're saying. Here's a trick to get the five vowels always right. Remember the sentence: Father put lots of eggs in the machine.

This article was written by Maria Fernandez, an experienced native Spanish teacher and author of Learn Spanish At Your Own Pace, Spanish for Kids - interactive multimedia lessons, Spanish Podcasts for Beginners, and other publications that you can find on this site.