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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4830 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 9 of 19 09 November 2012 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unless you want to become a translator or teacher of Spanish (or even if you want to
become a translator), I'd rather advice you to study something else at university (so that one day, you can be the valued engineer/lawyer/specialist at anything who knows and uses Spanish rather than a Spanish speaking guy who knows nothing else). I am taking the same path. I study medicine at university and I study languages on my own. Considering the languages are being heavily pushed aside by school, I still have good results even with the languages I self-study right from the beginnings and I have already found the languages very useful for my medicine studies :-) You can still have a well known and valued paper: pass a DELE exam. Unlike many degrees, this paper proves your qualities without any doubt. Learn anyhow you want. Benny has got some really nice ideas and he's got he best results with them. But every one of us is different and we learn differently. Feel free to combine methods of more succesfull learners. Widely admired on this forum are for example Iversen, prof.Arguelles, Teango and quite a lot of others. Look at logs of people who have learnt Spanish in particular. Spanish is an ideal language for self teaching. There are tons of material. Textbooks with audio, ready made flashcards in SRS, podcasts, a lot of people for language exchange, graded readers, tons of normal books, movies, music, internet content, everything. And getting them to your home in the UK should be no trouble. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SiHH Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4340 days ago 28 posts - 30 votes | Message 10 of 19 10 November 2012 at 10:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Firstly, a big 'Thank you' to everyone who has replied so far. You have given me some excellent responses and I
really appreciate it. I am going to re-read everything you have written so far and try to make sense of it all, and I will post back here with my thoughts. What a great bunch you are :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SiHH Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4340 days ago 28 posts - 30 votes | Message 11 of 19 20 November 2012 at 8:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Right..
I have decided for now that although getting degree in a language is something I might with to pursue, the Uni courses don't start until next September anyway so this gives me ample time to self study the language and get to a decent level before then. What I am now confused about it the array of options available to me to begin studying!! I have read so many different posts on this forums about different courses to follow, Anki, etc etc. What i'd like now is your suggestion for a plan, to get me going.. I aim to do an hour a day, a mixture between home or in the car and happy to spend money to get a good course. What do you suggest? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6418 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 12 of 19 20 November 2012 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
You don't have to give up on your family, you have to give up on your native language. Also, use all your hidden moments like queueing, doing stuff about the house and whatnot. We can't give you a specific plan but a very good idea would be to find a course that comes with audio (here's a free one, for example), do the written tasks when you have time and then listen to the audio throughout the day, especially while driving. Later on you can (and should) listen to podcasts and authentic materials when driving. also, here are my favourite Spanish resources: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/# http://www.learner.org/resources/series75.html a tv series for learners http://albalearning.com/ http://lyricstraining.com/ http://gloss.dliflc.edu/Default.aspx - free lessons with interesting content Try out the free stuff before deciding what is worth paying for:) My rec would be to play around with these for a few days, and then go to a physical bookstore and check out various books. You'll have a better idea of what structure of lessons will be good/useful/enjoyable for you:) This is not a must though, especially if you like the free proper course linked above. And of course as Benny preaches, look for opportinities to practise Spanish! Edited by Serpent on 20 November 2012 at 3:59pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5353 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 19 20 November 2012 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
The most important thing to realize is that almost any method will work, provided you stick with it consistently. The folks here at HTLAL learn languages in all sorts of different ways, and almost all of them seem to work (except maybe Rosetta Stone, which has yet to produce many noticeable successes around here). So pick something that feels agreeable, and that you'd be happy to do on a regular basis. And then think about how you're going to turn that hour a day into a serious habit—that's most of the challenge. Here are five possible approaches: Assimil. An Assimil course has about 100 lessons, and each lesson typically consists of a two-minute dialog or story. You get Spanish audio, Spanish text and English text, and you go through the various versions about 10 times, until you can listen to the audio and 90% of it makes sense. After 50 lessons, you start the "active wave", in which you go back to lesson 1 and translate from English to Spanish. This is great for people who want to learn through absorption, and 6 months will get you to the point where you can carry on basic conversations and read with a dictionary. Note that if you're learning Spanish, some of the lessons between 60 and 70 are often said to be a bit too hard, and you shouldn't let this stress you out. One of the nicest parts of Assimil is that you can just do a lesson a day and not worry about "what to do next" for the next 5 months. FSI. If you like to see everything laid out clearly, with lots of exercises, then download the FSI courses (it's free and legal). These are a bit on the boring side, but they're very well done, and you will definitely internalize the grammar! All Japanese All The Time. The idea here is that you spend every free moment listening to or reading your target language. Think "thousands and thousands of hours" and you'll get the idea. If you run into an interesting sentence during your day, add it to your Anki deck so you'll remember it a bit better. Many of us use various "light" versions of this approach, especially at the intermediate level. Benny Lewis's method. Basically, Benny rearranges his life so that he has to speak the language. Sometimes this involves actually living in the country. Other times it involves Skype tutors. Once he deliberately gets himself into this situation, he has no good choice but to learn. His standard approach is to choose his most pressing problem, and focus his efforts on that. He knows a few tricks for getting by with rudimentary language skills, mostly involving body language and a positive attitude. I'm not actually sure if this is really a method, or just a way to "burn your ships" and leave yourself no choice but working hard. Iversen's approach. I can't really do this justice, because I've never tried it, but Iversen has explained it well. Basically, find an approach that seems appealing, and go for it. You can mix in a bit of another approach if that seems interesting. Your goal isn't to find the best possible course—you just want to spend time puzzling out Spanish until it starts to make sense, and then spend enough time with it that you eventually get used to it. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SiHH Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4340 days ago 28 posts - 30 votes | Message 14 of 19 20 November 2012 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Guys thank you!
Firstly I think I will try this (although having listened to the first chapter, it does state NOT to use whilst driving): - http://www.languagetransfer.org/html/english_speakers.html I will try and get hold of: - Assimil And make use of the excellent free resources above by @Serpent. I guess the key is to make it fun, keep on top of things and in time, try and do the things I love but in Spanish! I love Football so could listen to Spanish commentary or read Spanish football websites. I also LOVE to cook Tapas at home, so could try and use a Spanish recipe book rather than an English one.. etc etc FSI is probably good but having looked at the bland cover of the .pdf - it has put me right off it. So dull.. Once i have learned a bit, I will definitely be looking at getting speaking practice early on. I am confident enough to give it a go without worrying about getting things wrong. We only live once! Am excited ! PS: Is Assimil's audio useful for when driving? I do quite a bit of driving, so it would be really beneficial to have something I could use during that time. Edited by SiHH on 20 November 2012 at 6:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6418 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 15 of 19 20 November 2012 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil is good for driving but each lesson is very short - under 5 minutes, often just two or three.
Definitely watch football in Spanish!!! There are Spanish streams online for almost anything, I even recently watched Danish football in Spanish! LOL. Football is great because the visual clues are more direct than in movies and TV-shows; however, the topics you'll come across are far more varied than you'd assume; last but not least, the Spanish commentators tend to be very emotional :D From the football point of view, it's great to hear an outside opinion on your league, the quality of refereeing etc... Well, more special for me because even a sane Russian won't say our league is the best :D But also, if you watch a foreign league in the original language, this feels more authentic. I'm sorry, haven't tried out that course myself. Well, the key is to give it some concentrated time, so there's nothing wrong with listening to it AGAIN while driving, to consolidate etc. Spanish is a BIG language, I'd not even be learning it if it didn't have some awesome resources I love and a lot of football stuff :D If you think it won't be a problem to use two resources and stay on track with both, find a good podcast and listen to it while driving:) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5083 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 16 of 19 20 November 2012 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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For learning while driving: Learning Spanish Like Crazy or Pimsleur Spanish. These courses are designed to be audio only and are a good supplement to whatever you choose as your resource to study at home. They are also quite expensive. It's best to find a used copy or borrow from the library.
Don't write off FSI so quickly. You can't judge a book by it's cover, or lack thereof. One of the most important things about language learning is actually learning the language. FSI has a lot of drills for a reason. They may not be fun but they will teach you what you need to know and teach it well- if you are willing to give it a go. What have you got to lose? It's free! The fun (for me) comes from using what you've learned by understanding and speaking. I'm willing to do a lot of work to get me there. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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