spanish

Mononoke28 says on Sep 17, 2008, 10:01:

Michael Phelps swears by Rosetta Stone, but then again he's getting paid to say that.

I personally think that it's best to have someone teach you something so you can ask questions if you're stuck. Have you tried classes at a community college to get started?

I know that I took two semesters of French when I was in college and had a really hard time mainly because of the gender of things. Some things that are masculine in Spanish were feminine in French and I just got all messed up with that.

Diana

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antiguru says on Sep 17, 2008, 10:15:

pay paisas in the USA $15/hour to give you private lessons. divide the hour into four 15 minute intervals. 15 minutes where you talk and they listen (noting your errors)....this develops fluency., spend another 15 minutes asking questions (grammar, vocabulary, anything you are confused about), spend another 15 reading an article of interest to you out loud and talking about it, and the last 15 just talking with corrections on the spot.

they don't need any experience teaching, just patience. they need to be able to listen and not interrupt you for 15 minutes...you need time constructing sentences from whatever spanish you have in your head. someone intelligent, a good conversationalist.

3 hours a week and you'll learn a lot

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CascadeBob says on Sep 17, 2008, 10:20:

I've never used Rosetta Stone, but folks that have tell me it's expensive and over-rated. When I was first learning, I took a beginner's course at the local community college and used a book called "Spanish for Gringos" and its associated audio cassette. I found this to be a pretty good start. Then I married a Mexican national and immersed myself so my Spanish is pretty functional now.

Other resources I've found: Larousse (sp) English/Spanish dictionaries, don't bother with anything else.

The "Big Red Book of Spanish Verbs" by McGraw-Hill. This is by far the best organized and easy-to-use Spanish verb book I've ever found.

Now that I speak rather fluent Spanish, I find understanding Italian, Portuguese, and French to be both easier and confusing at the same time. The languages are similar in the Latin base, but diverge significantly after that. An Italian friend traveling through southern Mexico last year had lots of difficulty communicating.

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bickerss says on Sep 17, 2008, 11:36:

I like rosetta stone to play around on but its very expensive unless you have a dodgy copy.

A good freeby is

www.learnspanish.com

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Teacher08 says on Sep 22, 2008, 19:27:

Hey! Join my spanish lessons here in Bogota! Only 15'000 Pesos per hour. I teached spanish to foreigners from all over the world for 2 years, so I have a lot of experience.
Would be a pleasure teaching you my beautiful language!

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ujay says on Sep 23, 2008, 01:20:

go get on this site and you can load all the Rosetta Stone for free,works great.


http://www.bitsoup.org/

http://www.jukelightning.com

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rocinante says on Sep 23, 2008, 06:05:

Rosetta Stone is a nice toy and it's better than nothing. But it's all lazy communicative/natural strategy/approach.

I have never met anyone who even became slightly conversational solely taking these types of classes and/or using the types of study aids (Rosetta, Plimseur etc...) that use this nativist approach - and many of these folks are fully imersed.

You don't just pick up a language as an adult unless you are already multilingual and have studied languages. It's just not common.

"World economic indicators point to a democrat winning 2008. It will surely be Obama. Not that the US president actually runs the US." Feb 5, 2008

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gamm2 says on Sep 23, 2008, 06:53:

I actually picked up spanish in Mexico but I was REALLY immersed 100% and for a lot of the time I had no English speakers to communicate with. I was always worried that you couldnt learn a language just listening to it, but I did.

Now of course there were a lot of holes in my grammatical structure which I am learning now that I am actually taking a spanish class. But it is so much easier to learn grammar when I have somewhat of an ability to listen to it to see if it sounds right. I actually used a lot of grammatical phrases but only in one specific phrase that I heard a lot. So now that I have a teacher to explain the rules behind the commonly used phrases, I can use them in other instances as well.

Seriously though, after about 5-6 months in Mexico, fully immersed I was communicating without the help of any classes. Though at the time, I was dying for a class.

builder, is there a spanish speaking community anywhere near you. Maybe a spanish mass or a spanish language group. If your spanish is so so, then the best thing you can do is practice practice practice using the language. And then maybe some of the time learning new structures you can put to use and have someone correct what you are saying.

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rocinante says on Sep 23, 2008, 07:04:

gamm2 - great post.

Communication is not that difficult when face to face and fully immersed. I see people who only know a few words but are able to communicate/get their point accross. The listener's job is a bit more difficult but we are creatures of habit and basic communication given a usual scenario is redictable (asking directions, order food at a counter, etc...)

THese people I speak of are not having unpredictable conversations about larger topics.

Body language also accounts for a great deal of communication.

I am REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY interested in knowing more about the gramatical phrases you picked up and after some grammer instruction were able to extend.

IMHO I am a believer in a quantitative approach of learning key grammer rules, drilling them and then communicating imersion with that rule all in the same hour. Repeat, review, build. Vocabulary added slowly as to not hinder the structures being learned. After getting all the structures and tenses down then vocab, vocab, vocab.

Last question: Do you see a slight nuissance having to unlearn a few bad habits that native speakers were letting slide since you were understandable at the time of commiting the error?

"World economic indicators point to a democrat winning 2008. It will surely be Obama. Not that the US president actually runs the US." Feb 5, 2008

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