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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 (read 1435 times)
Is Your New Year's Resolution to Learn Spanish?
by PaquiTop 10 Tips on How to Learn Spanish or Any Foreign Language:
- Set realistic expectations. When you begin to learn a new language, you will make mistakes and you will not understand everything. It's perfectly natural. Accept it as part of the learning process. Don't expect to become fluent in a few weeks - or even months. Fluency takes every student a lot of work and a lot of time. The important thing is to get started – and to learn to communicate basic ideas to native speakers. That you can do in just a few lessons!
- Flash cards. Carry index cards with you. Whenever you hear a new word or phrase, write it down. Put the English meaning on the back of the card. If you like, you can colour code your cards into categories: foods, irregular verbs, colloquial phrases, greetings, etc.
- Start rolling those rr's. This can be tricky, as the rr sound doesn't exist in English. Here's a tip to master that roll of the tongue: Visualize the front of your tongue as a flag flapping in a strong breeze. Now try purring like a cat. If you've succeeded in doing both simultaneously, you've likely come out with something pretty close to the Spanish rr.
- Get a Spanish-speaking boyfriend or girlfriend. Develop relationships with native speakers. OK, the romance side of things isn't required, but it helps. The more time you spend speaking Spanish, about anything and everything, the faster you'll gain confidence and find yourself speaking naturally.
- Listen to Spanish. Tune in to Spanish radio, Spanish movies, Spanish soap operas, Spanish news channels, Spanish music…. Listening to Spanish between classes will keep what you've learned fresh in your mind.
- Read Spanish. Read Spanish magazines, books and newspapers. Many bookstores and local libraries have language sections with a variety of books in and about Spanish.
- Speak out loud. Transfer your newly learned language skills from your mind to your mouth – right away! Always practice your Spanish out loud. Read your Spanish books and magazines out loud. Although you may feel a little silly at first, this is an important first step toward improving your pronunciation and gaining confidence speaking in Spanish.
- Make mistakes. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes are an inevitable part of the learning process. In almost any country you visit, you will find that people appreciate your attempt to speak their language, even if you don't get everything right. You'll learn more from your mistakes than from any class or book you'll ever invest in.
- Visit online forums. Meet and exchange ideas with Spanish students from all over the world. Ask questions, answer questions, find yourself a Spanish pen pal! A quick Google search will pull a good starting list of websites for students of Spanish.
- Maximise your exposure. What is your ultimate language goal? If, like most budding linguists, you want to gain fluency, you'll want to find all the direct exposure you can to achieve your goal. An immersion course in a Spanish-speaking country is a great way to do this, whether for an extended course or a quick language vacation. Not only will you study with native teachers and live with the locals, when you find yourself speaking Spanish just to order your coffee or pick up a newspaper, you'll quickly put all you've learned in class to good use – and measure your daily progress in leaps and bounds.
For 19 years, don Quijote, a leading provider of in-country Spanish language courses, has been exclusively dedicated to the teaching of Spanish to foreigners. Each year the company welcomes as many as 12,000 students from 60 countries to its schools in Salamanca, Madrid, Barcelona, Tenerife, Seville, Granada and Valencia in Spain, and Guanajuato, Mexico. The company's website, www.donquijote.org, a Spanish language portal offering more than 70,000 pages of Spanish language resources, receives more than 35,000 visits daily.
This is a press release published at PR web
Keywords: spanish,learn,beginners,aprender
Comments
Thanks for the great tips!! I think reading and listening to Spanish is key. There is a good magazine called Think Spanish that helps with this monthly. It's also great for the classroom because the articles are all about culture.
I also agree with those most common mistakes that the other commenter mentioned.
I am taking Spanish lessons with a company called InterLangua and I HIGHLY recommend it for those of you who are interested in becoming fluent in Spanish. The lessons happen via webcam with native-Spanish speaking tutors living in Guatemala! It's convenient, engaging, and it really is working for me. I love it!
Hello,
Listen and answer is a excellent way to improve your speaking and you can reach think in spanish faster.
regrads,
Thanks for the tips, they made a lot of sense.
Glad they're useful, Jiffy. Thanks for the comment.
Hi,Good tips to learn spanish.Nice article.can i say about 10 mistakes one should avoid when learning spanish.Here are they
1 Assuming that Spanish words that look like English words mean the same thing
2. Using pronouns unnecessarily
3. Not learning how to use prepositions properly
4. Always following English sentence order
5. Translating idioms word for word
6. Not learning when to use articles (un, una, el, la, los, las)
7. Not learning the subjunctive mood
8. Ignoring proper pronunciation
9. Assuming that the textbook is always correct
10. Being afraid to make mistakes
Even i used to make mistakes.Iam also trying to avoid all these mistakes. i want to learn it for my girlfriend..she knows spanish well
Thanks Learn Spanish. You seem to like collecting the Adsense for learning Spanish, too. ;)
Let me add a link to a page on the don Quijote site where we offer some detailed common errors - and how to avoid them.
http://www.donquijote.org/spanishlanguage/words/
or in Spanish:
http://www.donquijote.org/spanishlanguage/words/index_es.asp
If you want to improve/maintain your level of Spanish, do try joining a MeetUp group. visit www.spanish.meetup.com and you can do a search to see what is available in your area. We meet twice a month in Manchester UK, and twice a month in Bolton, and have a large proportion of native Spanish speakers: almost as good as going to Spain/Latin America! - and you get to speak very much more than is possible in a formal class, unless one-to-one It is from the MeetUp.com site that I found donQuijote, and have been to three of their schools, in Barcelona, Seville and Guanajuato, Mexico. I also find their newsletter excellent, click the link to read it in SPANISH, much better for you!!
I am taking Spanish lessons with a company called InterLangua and I HIGHLY recommend it for those of you who are interested in becoming fluent in Spanish. The lessons happen via webcam with native-Spanish speaking tutors living in Guatemala! It's convenient, engaging, and it really is working for me. I love it!
Thanks for the great tips!! I think reading and listening to Spanish is key. There is a good magazine called Think Spanish that helps with this monthly. It's also great for the classroom because the articles are all about culture.
I also agree with those most common mistakes that the other commenter mentioned.
Hello,
Listen and answer is a excellent way to improve your speaking and you can reach think in spanish faster.
regrads,
If you want to improve/maintain your level of Spanish, do try joining a MeetUp group. visit www.spanish.meetup.com and you can do a search to see what is available in your area. We meet twice a month in Manchester UK, and twice a month in Bolton, and have a large proportion of native Spanish speakers: almost as good as going to Spain/Latin America! - and you get to speak very much more than is possible in a formal class, unless one-to-one It is from the MeetUp.com site that I found donQuijote, and have been to three of their schools, in Barcelona, Seville and Guanajuato, Mexico. I also find their newsletter excellent, click the link to read it in SPANISH, much better for you!!