Resources for Learning Spanish

What are there in the way of resources for “independent” learning of Spanish?  And resources for those who might be in a more structured setting?  Get online and there are "About 65,300,000 results (0.44 seconds)”.  Amazing! This tells us a couple of things; first, there are a lot of people wanting to learn Spanish, and second, there are a lot of people trying to sell those people something that purports to make it faster and more painless.  Over my next few blogs I’m going to take a closer look at some of the things that have worked for me and why, and some of the things that didn’t work and why not.  Take what I say with a grain of salt and the understanding that we all learn differently.  Also, that I am 65 years old, I have a low threshold of boredom, and am not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

 

I’ve used resources from all types of mediums.  When I first started I found a young woman, recommended to me by a college professor, who was a native speaker.  I had her come to my house Saturday mornings for a couple of hours and we practiced pronunciation, we practiced simple vocabulary and we practiced the present tense.  I used a college textbook and worked through the first few chapters with her.

Soon I wanted to accelerate my learning.  My wife and I visited Cabo San Lucas in Mexico frequently and I found a school close to Cabo in La Paz, Mexico.  Spending a couple of weeks at “Se Habla La Paz” (http://www.sehablalapaz.com/photos.html) and learning from a structured program was the best investment I could have made in my attempts to learn Spanish.  We had classes in the mornings and in the afternoons I was free to roam.  Mostly I went to a beach bar located at Playa de Tecolote (Tecolote Beach) and inflicted my Spanish on un mesero (a waiter).  The setting was beautiful, the beer cold and I learned the difference in pronunciation between “casado” (married) and “cansado” (tired).  All those letters are important in pronunciation, don’t get lazy!

Here’s what to take away from this.  You can learn a lot on your own, but finding a structured learning setting will help move things along immensely.  Once you have an idea of how the language is built (i.e. verbs changing endings to denote who performs the action, etc.), then your independent learning will be much more successful.  

Your structured learning might be in a classroom in another country as mine began.  It might be via Skype, or in a local classroom.  I’m not sure that it is critical where as much as it is important to have expectations and a structure to begin to understand some of the basics.  More next time….