Jon1991 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5365 days ago 98 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French, Russian
| Message 1 of 25 25 March 2010 at 11:44am | IP Logged |
Did you -
Learn at school?
Learn at University?
Study by yourself? (Can you give me some advice on good study techniques please)
Move to a foreign country?
Meet speakers of the language you are studying?
Cheers,
Jon.
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 2 of 25 25 March 2010 at 3:41pm | IP Logged |
For me, the golden combination is self-study and meeting native speakers (language exchange). I can't stand classes and every time I give it another chance, I'm disappointed.
Moving to the country is unfortunately not an option for me, but since I've met people who have moved to, say, Japan and yet didn't learn anything even after years of living there, I'd have to say that living in the country does not guarantee linguistic success.
Edited by Arekkusu on 26 March 2010 at 4:14pm
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datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French
| Message 3 of 25 25 March 2010 at 4:13pm | IP Logged |
I learned Spanish in high school... and TONS of self study. Classes by themselves were not enough for me. Native speakers help more than you could ever imagine too :)
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Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5403 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese
| Message 4 of 25 25 March 2010 at 4:19pm | IP Logged |
I learned English by watching TV and playing video games. What I learned in school was mostly just clarification on some grammar and vocabulary. I have also practised my writing by spending hours every day on forums. I learned to speak fluently by talking to an imagined companion or crowd. It's a good advice I got from a book on rhetorics. Of course in order to speak properly I memorized conversations from my favourite TV shows and video games and then added and expanded on the story. Like, what would happen if the world of Star Trek, Star Wars, StarCraft and Halo were merged together? I could talk about it for hours. And I did actually. :-D
Edited by Delodephius on 26 March 2010 at 6:33pm
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Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5422 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 5 of 25 26 March 2010 at 4:23am | IP Logged |
I haven't "learned" it yet, but here goes.
I had some Spanish in elementary school (then I started going to a school closer to me and started learning French. omlete du fromage) and then didn't take any language in middle school, and I'm taking Latin in high school (planning on dropping it). I'm studying Spanish on my own (I like self-study) but I also know about 10000000 native speakers.
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boon Diglot Groupie Ireland Joined 6159 days ago 91 posts - 177 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin
| Message 6 of 25 26 March 2010 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
For Spanish, I'm currently listening to a lot of Notes In Spanish, mostly while doing housework!
http://www.notesinspanish.com/
It's improved my Spanish a lot. Other useful stuff: Assimil, Michel Thomas, parallel texts (e.g. a novel in English and a novel in Spanish), reading material you're interested in (e.g. martial arts).
www.lingq.com is a nice idea but I can't really get into it just yet.
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zoba Newbie United States Joined 5357 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German
| Message 7 of 25 26 March 2010 at 5:47pm | IP Logged |
I'm using FSI German and watching movies. It seems to be a good method so far, but I'm
still a beginner. Also, I plan on listening to audio books in German soon.
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krzys85 Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5942 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Spanish
| Message 8 of 25 26 March 2010 at 9:06pm | IP Logged |
self-study came to UK in 2005 and start living here so my English (became a second language) picked up very quickly now trying to learn another one, Spanish
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