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Learning Spanish to fluency in 2 months? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Lucie Tellier Diglot Newbie France Joined 3258 days ago 21 posts - 27 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 1 of 9 12 July 2015 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
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EDIT: While I currently can't express myself in Spanish at all, I was utterly shocked when I discovered I could understand a good 50% of this video which I found in another topic: youtube dot com/watch?v=OFKsC5U4-0Q
(including the part when they say the water is hard and sometimes it causes issues with the shower). I suppose it's because I'm French and also because I've studied Italian. I studied Italian very seriously about a decade ago, then took the language in school but dropped it right before college. For various reasons, I wanted to learn Italian again, this time to an advanced level, but I've decided to learn Spanish instead. I originally liked Italian a bit better, but I love Spanish music, and I've found some good resources for learning Spanish. I was getting really excited about the language, but then realised that the resources I'm currently using aren't that good. I'm currently looking for: - more Spanish resources in both French and English. Preferably written + spoken lessons. - some internet penpals - solid advice to learn the language quickly - a realistic guesstimate on where I'll be at in my learning (by September 10) if I study every day for around 2-3 hours. I've already studied Spanish for a couple of weeks, but this was two years ago. I was told I was a quick learner, but I used horrible methods and I just didn't care much about what I considered to be a side project. If I were really brave, I'd start studying Japanese or German again, but I'll add a third foreign language later in the year. In case you're wondering, I'm doing this to major in translation. I'm currently "undesirable" because I only speak English and French. Edited by Lucie Tellier on 12 July 2015 at 1:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4797 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 9 12 July 2015 at 2:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Lucie,
I think I may have relevant experience, even though not exactly the same of course, I had improved my Spanish really fast before my exchange stay in Spain last year. I got to really good comprehension level and to getting my point across even in quite complicated situation despite making tons of mistakes after just one week of being there, thanks to being prepared. To your questions: Yes, you are correct about the root of your high comprehension. Having studied French, and some Latin, made my comprehension skills really fast to get. So, you as a native speaker should have even more advantage. French is helping as well with the active skills and the best part is, that you can use native input for further learning really soon. You can expect a huge bonus in vocabulary, especially the more advanced kinds as the everyday words were subject to much larger changes than the scientific and scolarly stuff during the last millenium or so. And the grammar is in many ways similar, even though it is sometimes tricky to rely on the similarities too much, that's why I recommend you study the grammar. If I were you, I combine two paths: 1:Fast and intensive formal studying, with the main purpose of creating a grammatical skeleton for your Spanish. Thanks to having such high comprehension right away and being native to a related language, I think you could use monolingual sources right away. Gramatica de uso del espanol has become really popular among htlalers for its high quality. An easy answer to your search for book+audio would be Assimil. However, I must say I tried it and didn't like it as much as some other Assimils. I found the lessons (went through the first ten or so) much less fun than in other courses and the audio too slow and annoying. About other courses. I think many English based ones might be too slow paced for you, given the French bonus. But there is good quality stuff with lots of content. Several Spanish learners are now finishing FSI and several other members were really happy with FSI's efficiency. 2: Your comprehension, and later more and more active use. What took my comprehension up a few levels really fast was watching tv series in Spanish. I started with dubbing of Once upon a Time/Erase una vez, and dubbed Juego de Tronos. I continued with native stuff, you can watch many awesome tv series on rtve.es or mitele.es. And it didn't stop there. The large amounts of listening practice took care of interferences with French, keep widening my vocabulary, get me used to proper grammar and thinking in the language, which is all needed for speaking. A good complement to anything can be lyricstraining.com, there is some really good stuff for Spanish learners among the shared anki decks and on memrise, Spanishpod101 has a lot of content (even though that might be easy for you soon). I don't know about many penpal/exchange websites but you can have your writing corrected for free on italki.com, free of chare. And the corrections tend to be of excellent quality. In those two months, I believe you can get really far. You can start speaking, even though you'll probably still be far from perfection, you can certainly get to a point of enjoying some books and tv series. You can surely start with the pronunciation, which you had probably covered during your previous studies, learn all the basic gramamr (at least the first volume of gramatica de uso for example), get fast through a course (except for fsi, that takes time, you probably won't finish that soon but I might be wrong), you can get started with native input at the end of your two intensive months. Fluency is a dangerous word to use as it can mean a lot of things. If you define "fluent" as speaking without too many pauses, too many mistakes, too few ,and too many limitations in subjects, than two months are too much optimism, in my opinion. But you can surely run a nice chunk of the journey and become fluent not that long after. Next year this time, or perhaps earlier, you could be quite a fluent speaker, I guess. I wish you lots of fun and great results. And some patience ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6385 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 3 of 9 12 July 2015 at 5:56am | IP Logged | ||
What would you have to do in order to prove your Spanish skills then? Take a CEFR exam? Pass a written test? an oral interview? Would you be a translator or interpreter? Usually you'd be translating INTO your native language, although some interpreting jobs will require both directions. If even minimal Spanish can boost your application, go for it, but only if you really want to learn Spanish now, rather than Italian/German/Japanese. Do you honestly see yourself as a translator working from Spanish? I don't think there should be any shortage of them really. Technically it's enough to understand in order to translate, but nuanced comprehension requires at least some active skills, and your university/college may require quite strong active skills. I second Cavesa's recs but if you actually want to be an English-French translator/interpreter, I don't think this makes much sense. That said, I love lyricstraining.com especially, a great thing is that you can use it from the very beginning. Same goes for GLOSS and Destinos. I also love this page about the phonetics. Edited by Serpent on 12 July 2015 at 5:58am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4918 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 4 of 9 12 July 2015 at 10:43am | IP Logged | ||
If I can make a suggestion regarding becoming a translator, finish up your translation major, but you should also seriously consider either majoring or minoring in another subject, such as law or medicine. All the language pairs which interest you are quite saturated, to be honest. But, if you can get your name out there as a specialist in a certain field, it will be much easier. It will even make your "undesirable" English > French language pair desirable. R. == 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lucie Tellier Diglot Newbie France Joined 3258 days ago 21 posts - 27 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 5 of 9 12 July 2015 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you all.
Henry, I'm not in a position where I can specialize, and law and medicine make me sick (literally). I can't stand medical texts, and I studied law for a bit and didn't understand a thing. I'll try to branch out at some point, but I'm more interested in other fields. Serpent, this has to do with the number of native Spanish speakers, and my love for Spanish music. Also, I was under the impression that you were doing some kind of master's in translation and that you study both German and Spanish. Do you think these languages are useless? I've tried studying Japanese before. Maybe I should have more faith in myself, but I never got past the kana. I'm not a visual learner at all. I've got an official IQ test to prove it. I seriously struggle with anything visual, and I believe trying to learn Japanese is, in my case, an enterprise that is sure to fail. I've taken Chinese in the past and got an F for the minor. I know Japanese would be a better choice, but an unrealistic one. Now, if you think I can't learn Spanish to a B1 level (just an example) in 2 months, I respect that. Maybe I can't. I don't know what level this video is, and obviously I don't have the ability to write in Spanish yet. However, like I said I could devote around 2 hours a day to this project (which is quite a lot). I can even try 3 hours, but I believe the brain saturates at some point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4918 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 6 of 9 12 July 2015 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are you studying translation for your own
enjoyment (perfectly valid), or do you want to make a career of it? If it's a translation career you're after, what type of text do you see yourself translating? Just curious. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 12 July 2015 at 4:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucie Tellier Diglot Newbie France Joined 3258 days ago 21 posts - 27 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 7 of 9 12 July 2015 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I want to make a career of it. It's not that I don't enjoy translating (otherwise I wouldn't have studied English for so long) but I'm not that young and I really, really need to find a job. I can see myself working in Spanish on a daily basis. I mean, I think I'd like that.
I've been told by teachers that given my level in English/French translation, I had a good shot at becoming a translator soon. While I kind of believe them, I was also told that a second language would probably seal the deal for me. I already have a BA in English, but I want to complete my education, so that's why I'd like to major for a year in "multilingual translation and economics/law/banking/accounting". I'd be majoring in three languages, as well as acquiring basic knowledge in a wide variety of (mostly) financial fields. Obviously this is going to be a challenge for me, given that the only advantage I have over the other students is my already proficient English. Before delving into Spanish seriously, I'll probably gather more information about languages in demand in my country. However, I clearly can't study Chinese or Japanese, so isn't it a waste of time to "stall" in order to find the perfect language combination? My reasoning is this: - German has always been challenging for me. I can see myself taking it as a third language (at the beginner level). A third foreign language is a requirement for the major. It doesn't mean I have to keep it forever. - Romance languages come more easily to me than German, so even if I can't get to B2 by the end of the summer, I'm hoping I'll be advanced enough to follow the classes. - Taking both Spanish and Italian would probably be the easiest option, but also pretty stupid. I've mixed up both languages before, and while I've seen translators with combos such as English/German/Spanish/Italian, I'm pretty sure they did not learn all the languages at the same time! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4797 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 8 of 9 12 July 2015 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, you didn't say your goal was B1 in two months, you said your goal was fluency. Those two are not the same. I'd say most learners are fluent (in the sense most commonly understood) around their B2 level. Some, the shy ones usually, speak fluently after they hit C1, while others (usually those with great personality trit for this, who just squeeze every bit of "fluency value" from their knowledge) can be fluent at B1. I don't know which case you are. In terms of cefr levels, I think you can easily get over B2 comprehension and to B levels with grammar and vocabulary. However, the active skills take some practice, the brain just tends to require some time to process it all, therefore your active skills may not come as fast despite all your efforts. Whether your overall skills, which means even the weakest one, will be B1, that is hard to say. The gap between the speed of learning the passive skills and that of the active skills can be really wide when it comes to learning related languages. I totally share your worries about learning both Spanish and Italian at the same time (that's why I am waiting with Italian). Either Spanish or Italian surely can be learnt to at least B2 in a year, given the previous French knowledge. But in two months, I don't think so. Yeah, finding out what is the situation in your region like these days, that could help. Or you could ask your teachers, since they are giving you career advice, they might take it this one step further. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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