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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| couchtr26 Newbie United States Joined 5234 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 1 of 8 29 July 2010 at 4:20am | IP Logged |
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I'm looking for advice on materials to aid in learning Spanish. Any advice on particular programs or materials that would be helpful would be appreciated. Would like to be able to carry on a conversation in Spanish in a year. Not looking for perfect, just enough that I can express myself, some ideas, and understand a native well enough to not need a dictionary all the time. Think it is highly possible with motivation and time. Again, any help would be appreciated.
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 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6381 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 8 29 July 2010 at 4:38am | IP Logged |
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Are you starting from scratch? If you are, you can try Michel Thomas, which is a relatively short audio course that introduces a lot of the grammar painlessly. You can also work through the Assimil Spanish With Ease course, which consists of short, witty dialogs plus audio. Assimil focuses a lot less on grammar but introduces a lot more vocabulary than MT so they are nice complements. There is also FSI Spanish course which is free to download. It is supposed to very effective but it tends to be dry with a lot of drills.
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| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5329 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 3 of 8 29 July 2010 at 5:05am | IP Logged |
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I second everything newyorkeric said. See if you can get a copy of Pimsleur from a school/local library, it's a decent course but it's pricey. Some people like it better than Michel Thomas, I personally don't, but try both. Definitely work through Assimil.
Get Colloquial Spanish, Teach Yourself Spanish, or Hugo's Spanish in 3 months. See if you can get Spanishpod101 or Destinos (video series available online) Last but not least, search this forum. There have been dozens of threads on Spanish materials. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| couchtr26 Newbie United States Joined 5234 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 4 of 8 29 July 2010 at 5:15am | IP Logged |
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Thanks, I'll have to check all that out. I had seen a few threads but I must have missed the more relevant ones to what I was wanting to discover.
I would say completely from scratch but I did take a little years and years ago. I can remember some grammar but not much. Mostly, conjugations (present tense -er verbs stuck with me) and agreement. I had started looking but have had trouble with some online sources. Mainly, native English speakers pronouncing and it doesn't sound right. It has a dry quality to it. I have a college text book which helps with grammar but of course it doesn't have audio. Speaking of which, is there a large turn over in these materials? Would it be possible to find in a used book store or something similar? Edited by couchtr26 on 29 July 2010 at 5:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6381 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 8 29 July 2010 at 5:19am | IP Logged |
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You won't find them in brick and mortar used bookstores in the US. Probably the easiest and cheapest place to get them is from Amazon.
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| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5329 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 6 of 8 29 July 2010 at 5:21am | IP Logged |
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Yes , or use Amazon (you won't find much in brick and mortar stores, but you can get lucky sometimes). The general consensus on here is that older courses are better, so used bookstores are great. Assimil is fairly cheap too. The older courses are "X without toil" where the newer ones are "X with ease" or "New X with ease" with X being the target language. I don't know about the quality of the older Spanish ones, however. I've heard good things about older Linguaphone courses too.
Here is the youtube channel of a polyglot and professor who posts here (ProfArguelles is his username). He has videos that talk about languages courses, languages, and techniques. Edited by johntm93 on 29 July 2010 at 5:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jezrul Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5234 days ago 27 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 8 29 July 2010 at 6:37am | IP Logged |
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I'm starting Spanish as well. I studied it a bit in high school, but I spent more time
sleeping in my Spanish class than paying attention to the board. There are times when I have flash backs to high school while studying, but I'm basically starting from scratch too. I've decided to start by using the course Platiguemos. I've read a lot of positive feedback about it on the forums, and am so far enjoying it. The drills are repetitive, but I doubt there's a more entertaining way to learn at this point. I'll just wait for the day when I can read native texts for enjoyment. :) In addition, here are some sites I've found that you may find useful as well; http://forodeespanol.com/ - Forums based around practicing Spanish http://www.spanishdict.com/ - The dictionary I'm using http://mundodisney.net/letras/ - Disney songs in Spanish! http://www.dgemu.com/ - Roms in other languages. Useful and fun in the future. =) http://sites.google.com/site/links4languages/spanish - Site with links to useful sites 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5264 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 8 of 8 29 July 2010 at 5:22pm | IP Logged |
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You might want to have a look at "Hola Qué Tal". This is a joint production of TVE (Spain) and the Instituto Cervantes. It is multi-media rich and exposes you to Spanish in all the Spanish speaking world. It consists of 3 levels and has 3 levels of access- two of which are paid. The best deal seems to be the "Premium" account which costs 24 euros a month. The free level offers less but still looks useful. http://www.holaquetal.com/web/hqt/home
¡Buena suerte con sus estudios! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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