41–50 of 71 posts
Although a grounding in the language from a course is good, until you are racking your brains for the correct word while talking to someone, you're not really training your brain usefully.
1. Learn basic grammar and vocabulary. 2. Read. Read a lot. 3. Listen to movies and songs and pick up pronunciation. 4. Keep on reading! 5. Now you know quite a bit!
Immersion is obviously ideal, but not always practical. Then, you're left with finding friends who speak the language, college courses, movies, etc.
Any other ideas?
I cheated by marrying a Japanese woman and inviting her mother (who speaks no English) to come and stay with us. You pick things up pretty quickly when you're forced to.
Marry a native speaker. Failing that get friends who are willing to converse with you exclusively in that language. Since it's Spanish, that shouldn't be very hard.
I'd change that to "Marry a native speaker who doesn't speak English." It's too easy to revert to the common tongue.
That is hardly practical for most people though. Take the classes, but supplement that learning. Watch Spanish language films with and without subtitles. Watch movies you already know very well dubbed in Spanish (I learned lots from that).
Chat up people in Spanish speaking countries and attempt to speak Spanish as much as possible. You might even find an English language student you can assist at the same time.
If you go eat at a Mexican place, order in Spanish. Yes, you will butcher it at first, yes you will feel silly. But you improve quickly by doing this.
Learning the way I did does have its drawbacks. While I can more or less communicate effectively, I know almost know grammar rules. I can conjugate correctly, but have no idea "why" something is correct.
A class can only take you so far. I took four years of Spanish when I was in school, and then spent 2 months in an intensive Spanish course ( several hours a day, every day ). I still felt very much the same as you do now. Then I went to a place where I lived, worked, and socialized with native Spanish speakers from several different countries - within 6 months, people I spoke to on the phone thought I was born and r…
This is true - if you really want to learn a language you have to go to the country and speak the language. I'm fluent in English because I lived in London for three years, and spoke the language every day from dusk till dawn. I also lived in Spain, but never became fluent in the language because I spoke English to everyone. Immerse yourself in the language, speak to natives all the time and you'll be fluent in 6 mon…