Spanish language advice for learning it?
I am in 10th grade in new york. I took french and now regret it because I have learned to love the spanish language. I work at a restaurant with many spanish and peruvian people. They speak spanish all the time and I feel left out and curious. I love the sound of spanish and I know a little bit. I don't know where to start. I would love to learn the language and be fluent. I would study hard, I'm not looking for a quick fix. How do I find resources outside of school to learn spanish?
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Filed under: Spanish Lessons
Watch spanish tv stations (if you have them), listen to the Spanish radio, listen to spanish music (there is some awesome Spanish music out there). For me, listening to Spanish is the hardest. I can read it really easily, write it almost as easily as I can read it, speak it decently, but listen to it terribly. And listening to Spanish helps a LOT with the whole understanding how things are said issue. It especially helps if you watch spanish movies with English subtitles, or English movies with Spanish subtitles (though the subtitles are not 100% accurate all the time).
and on the brightside, there are 100s of sites to help with Spanish.
I like this site:
http://www.studyspanish.com/pronunciation/
for things like grammar and verbs help
http://www.gamequarium.com/spanishvocab.html
this site for basic spanish vocabulary
and http://www.google.com for any words I don’t know
just google things like "spanish vocabulary" "Spanish verbs" things like that to get you started. Also, the studyspanish site is really good for teaching verb conjugations and seriously anything grammar and sentence structure related. Be sure to go through that site a bit because its really good.
And seriously, "immerse yourself" in the language by listening to and watching things in Spanish, it will help soo much even if it doesn’t seem like it is.
Download the following or go to the following sites. Or you could buy these, whatever you prefer.
Pimsleur 1 2 3 Spanish. You would learn to listen and speak Spanish.
Livemocha.com It doesn’t really teach you the conversation art of Spanish, but it teaches you phrases and words.
Rosetta Stone (download don’t buy) good for learning words and phrases. It’s helpful because it has pictures, audio, some writing, etc. However you don’t know what you’re saying because there are no translations, and it’s 200 dollars per lesson which is a rip off. Just download if you want though you don’t really have to bother with it.
Spanish with Michel Thomas. His unique language learning technique teaches you languages (he has more than just Spanish) in an effortless, no memorizing or homework way. You learn the language naturally.
I have his French CD and it’s amazing. However, the Spanish doesn’t have him in it, but it has an associate of his, and I’m downloading it for my mom. I’ll tell you how that goes.
Be very careful of the learning method you use. Linguists, and people with vast experience in learning languages will almost always agree on the fact that most language learning methods out there are 50-70 percent fluff! It’s pretty easy to get away with telling you that you’ll be able to speak a language when for example, someone says "hello", they’re speaking English, and it doesn’t mean they can actually communicate. Being semi-fluent means you have a functional comprehension of at least 65% in the conventional range of that language, while fluent would be anything greater than 80%. If you don’t have the time to learn French properly, and you’re after something quick and easy, then you’re probably headed towards disappointment. The best method to getting as far as you can get in the shortest period of time is called the “3 step”. The first step is to complete a FULL Pimsleur (MUST BE PIMSLEUR) course. Listen to each lesson at least 2 times, taking notes the first time with new vocabulary and studying before listening the second time. The 2nd step is to form a list of the 2,000 most common/frequently used words/vocabulary in English, to also include the most common/frequently used eight parts of speech in English (verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections), which you can search the web for. Once you’ve formed the list, you need to find accurate generic-translations, which you can apply to most common case scenarios of French (definatley the most challenging part of all this). Once that’s done, make flash cards or whichever method works best for you in memorizing vocabulary, but try to include each word in a sentence, on top of just the new word and it’s meaning (basically, know how to use it as correctly as possible). In your sentence forming exercises try to use each word in 10 or more ways, and you’ll actually notice yourself incrementally advancing every 500 words. Repetition is the key here, so this would also be a good time to solidify your pronunciation. After you’ve memorized all that, the 3rd step is to locate 4 movies that are preferably some kind of Disney movie, or anything of a slower pace. Childrens movies seem to work best for this. Watch ONLY these same 4 movies in French, with good, quality English subtitles, continuously, to the point where you know what’s going to be said next. If you need extra assistance with the movies or sentence forming exercises, this is where you can use whatever you want to help yourself out (dictionary, phrasebooks, Rosetta Stone, internet, etc). Try to plan completing each step in this order, exactly as described within a time-frame of about 10-12 months. When you’re done, you should be somewhere in the range of “semi-fluency”, at the point where learning after the “3 step” is quick and easy, and being close to fluent after 2 years of using it everyday, and learning at least an additional 100 new vocabulary words a month during that time. The downside to the 3-step method, is that when you’re finished, you still may not be grammatically up to par, but will know more than enough to get there easily, which is what makes this the best and most efficient “fast” method, but not necessarily a good substitute for formal education. Either way, it can’t hurt to try! Good luck!