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What is the best way to learn Spanish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| WarriorPrincess Newbie United States Joined 3844 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 1 of 19 23 December 2013 at 3:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello, basically I was born in the USA and went through 3 years of high school Spanish.
Later I took another semester of Spanish in University to fill in credit hours and learned nothing. All of these years were a waste of time. Now I'm interested in learning Spanish on my own for business purposes and for meeting new people. What is the best way to do this? And I don't want to sound like a standardized Spanish textbook. I want to be able to speak slang/natural. Please share your best methods for tackling the Spanish language. Thank you. Edited by WarriorPrincess on 23 December 2013 at 3:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5228 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 19 23 December 2013 at 3:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Do these programs in this order and you will learn Spanish:
Pimsleur 1 Michel Thomas Foundations Pimsleur 2 Michel Thomas Foundations again Assimil Michel Thomas Advanced two times Assimil Active wave FSI Then jump into native materials! 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4875 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 19 23 December 2013 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | ||
Seconded! What will no doubt happen is that someone will post in here saying to use native materials, GLOSS etc. My genuine opinion is that the best advice is that given by James29 above, and to worry about GLOSS, native materials etc. a little bit further down the road. Good Luck! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5115 days ago 2238 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 19 23 December 2013 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
First, welcome to the forum, Warrior Princess! You've already made one of your best language learning decisions by coming here. James29 has given good advice. It has worked well for him, he is a Spanish-speaker. Is it the "BEST way to learn Spanish"- well, no. There is no "best" way to learn Spanish or any other language for that matter. You have to find what works for you, as he himself did, successfully.
My response, keeping my caveats in mind, is this: 1) You don't have to do courses sequentially. You can do them simultaneously (one in the morning, one in the evening- for example) and gain the benefits of synergy. 2) Using native materials alongside a course doesn't mean that you have to start reading novels or watching Almodóvar films. You can start with a 140 character tweet or a paragraph. You can start with a song or a 45 second news item with a transcript or a short paragraph of bilingual text. Obviously, you still use your course too at the same time. It doesn't have to be either/or and it doesn't have to take more than 10 or 15 minutes additional time in your routine, and you don't have to do it every day either. Here's a link to a more detailed explanation with resource links that I wrote a few weeks ago. I will be writing a post after the first of the year to clarify the multi-track approach and its potential benefits to better explain how this method may be utilized by those who might be interested in alternative learning methods. I do not have THE answer. No one does. There is no best way to learn a language on your own. There's no way I can know if you're the type who enjoys a challenge and can work things out for yourself or whether you get easily discouraged and frustrated when you have to make your own connections and, instead, would prefer being led. Language-learning on your own is highly, highly individual. So much depends on your level of commitment, your persistence and your consistency. I present an alternative to just using courses, that's all. You don't have to take my advice. ¡Buena suerte con tus estudios! Edited by iguanamon on 23 December 2013 at 2:26pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4875 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 19 23 December 2013 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I should of course added, as iguanamon points out, that there is no best way to learn Spanish, or any other language. It is a highly individual endeavor and what works for one often wont work for another.
There are many ways of achieving your goals, although I happen to believe that the path pointed to by James29 is a particular trusty one, although it does require discipline. I should point out that I in no way meant any disrespect to Iguanamons views,but just wanted to contrast them with an alternative view which I believe to be helpful. Indeed, even if you are to follow James29's advice, once you began to hit the intermediate level will find Iguanamons advice invaluable. At that point I recommend you seek out some of his other excellent posts on the subject as he is not only a mine of information but also one of the forums must helpful and valued members. Edited by dbag on 23 December 2013 at 2:34pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5228 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 6 of 19 23 December 2013 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am the typical "dumb American" who never learned foreign languages in school and thought it would be simple to learn a language. I messed around with a lot of different programs and methods that did not work. Some worked well. The suggestions I made are based on my experiences and are made to give a real answer to what you are looking for rather than a vague and wishy-washy "it depends on a bazillion things" answer that is typical on this forum.
If you do what I suggested you will learn Spanish quite efficiently. You can do it on half an hour a day. You can finish all of the above (up to FSI) on a half hour a day in the first year. Then I'd suggest doing FSI basic for an hour a day. If you do each lesson three times that will be another 6 months at the most. After that you will be very comfortable with the language and will be able to figure out what you need to work on. There are, of course, other ways to do things. Synergy Spanish appears to be a great resourse, but I did not know about it so I never used it. Paul Noble also appears to be a good resource I never used. I think either of those could be substituted for Michel Thomas and/or Pimsleur. If you are a beginner with a limited amount of time I think you should really focus your time on using good courses like the above ones. If you have already learned several languages or have a ton of available time you may benefit from doing some other things. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6450 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 19 24 December 2013 at 1:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm that other member :-) Yes, use GLOSS when you get bored.
And lyricstraining.com. You can use it from the beginning. Here's a description of the site. In the beginning it's a fun way to learn the spelling and discover some music and get the language buzzing in your head. Later it will help you learn the vocabulary and notice the details (prepositions and other "little words"). While it's not a substitute for more proper learning, it's a great thing to do when you just don't feel like learning. Because what matters more is what you do when you don't want to study, not when you are eager and excited. Both sites are immensely useful for actually having fun while studying, rather than having to steal the time that you may (and will!) be tempted to spend having fun in your native language when you are supposed to be learning Spanish. Think of your goals too. These methods (MT, Assimil etc) will teach you to speak better than you understand, ie you'll know the grammar and some vocab but will be rather unprepared for the real world. How interested are you in the media content of said real world? Music, movies, computer games, is it an exciting thought to do these in Spanish? Or would you rather speak to people but continue doing the above in English? Also, are there a lot of native speakers in your area or would you need to arrange in order to meet them? Basically, if you don't have a pressing need to speak asap, it's beneficial to start consuming media earlier, and then when you start learning the grammar, it will make more sense and require less brute force. Same with vocabulary. There's also Destinos, a telenovela for learners. I enjoyed it a lot and I think it's worth a try. skip the "sneak peek" in the beginnning and at the end, if you feel confident you can skip the review too since there's a lot of repetition. It can be watched online legally for free. There are also workbooks but they're optional. (the url is in iguanamon's excellent old post that he linked to) PS I certainly won't call iguanamon dumb, but afaiu he learned Spanish as a monolingual English speaker with no background in linguistics or similar. PPS Especially FSI and the second half of Assimil are an overkill in the sense that you really don't need to wait until you finish them before you start using native materials extensively. The longer you wait, the more unprepared you'll feel. I think it's very beneficial to get at least some exposure from the beginning. See this thread too. Edited by Serpent on 24 December 2013 at 1:36am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5228 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 8 of 19 24 December 2013 at 2:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I find these threads interesting. I note that Destinos seems to be common ground. If you have the desire to "consume media" or use "native materials" from the beginning you should try Destinos. It is a telenovela designed for the beginning language learner. Because it is designed by experts for beginning Spanish it will be much more efficient for learning than other native materials will be.
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