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Author Topic: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.  (Read 3538 times)

Aqizzar

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I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« on: October 16, 2009, 10:46:53 am »

I have been taking classes to learn Spanish for about eleven years, or about six total of that eleven.  I can barely Espanol my way out a declarative statement.  No problem with the language itself per se, and I really do want to learn it, but I swear to God I am not built to be mutlilingual.  Nonetheless, I need to finish the conversational Spanish course that I'm in now, and another one in the Spring, and I will finally graduate and be done for ever.

Except that this morning, I slept through the first half of a Midterm exam.

I have always been a B student in general, and C at best in Spanish.  I've failed several times in the past, and I'm getting damn tired of doing it again.  Naturally, I was actually on track and doing fairly well for the first time ever this semester, but I just blew at least a letter off my final grade because I still haven't mastered the art of dragging myself out of bed.

Now, the way I look at it, if I really bust a nut and pull myself up to, say, B-student material for the rest of the course, I might, -might-, pull a D out of this and press onward.  But I've got to get better at Spanish than I am, and for fuck's sake I've been doing this for eleven years and I still haven't gotten a knack for it.

Can you spare some Language learnin' tips, Espanol especially, for a guy down on his luck?
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Rashilul

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #1 on: October 16, 2009, 11:52:34 am »



Worked well for my friend.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2009, 11:59:39 am by Rashilul »
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Rilder

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #2 on: October 16, 2009, 12:01:59 pm »

yeah I've heard good things about Rosetta stone, tempted to 'get it' to try and learn russian or something.
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Hawkfrost

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #3 on: October 16, 2009, 12:30:56 pm »

Livemocha?
I recently started using it to learn Spanish, and now I can speak at least 15ish sentences.
Not bad for three days.
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DJ

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #4 on: October 16, 2009, 01:57:42 pm »

Find a really patient Spanish-speaking friend. Only speak in Spanish with him. Don't be offended when he laughs at you.
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G-Flex

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #5 on: October 16, 2009, 02:05:39 pm »

I've heard bad things about Rosetta Stone from a friend of mine who's into linguistics, although the quality might vary across languages. I remember him mentioning things being just wrong, or based on weird/regional dialects or otherwise not being representative of the language as it's generally spoken. I know some other people have criticized it as well; there's information on Wikipedia about that.

Not saying it's a terrible product, just that it gets way too much credit.
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KaelGotDwarves

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #6 on: October 16, 2009, 02:36:36 pm »

Necesitas practicar con un hablante de Español. Also... watch Spanish tv, listen to Spanish radio or music.

Having lived near Chicago and now in California, learning Spanish in high school has been such a godsend... though I really wished my school district offered Mandarin. They started that a year or two after I left and now Chinese overlords will soon rule the world. :-X

userpay

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #7 on: October 16, 2009, 03:04:08 pm »

I would think the issue with learning off a program is that you don't learn the dialact/nucances of the language unless they happen to update the program or something. I took 3 years of japanese, successive classes not the same one, and I can barely speak some of it.
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Vector

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #8 on: October 16, 2009, 06:52:29 pm »

.
« Last Edit: March 26, 2017, 07:57:08 pm by Vector »
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x2yzh9

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #9 on: October 18, 2009, 09:45:48 pm »

I find that when learning language, a good way to understand it is to 'accept' that language itself is really associating combinations of letters, words, with physical objects, or concepts. So when learning a language, i try to associate the word in question with the object. Ie. 'flor' is a flower, try to visualize it. Then associate that with the language of espanol.

EDIT:Actually, what i just posted above is what the cavemen did i'm guessing.

Hippoman

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #10 on: October 19, 2009, 12:25:33 am »

Livemocha?
I recently started using it to learn Spanish, and now I can speak at least 15ish sentences.
Not bad for three days.
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ChairmanPoo

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #11 on: October 19, 2009, 07:17:47 am »

In my experience interactivity helps when learning a language. Consider chats and computer games in Spanish
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eerr

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #12 on: October 20, 2009, 08:39:49 pm »

You're not having fun Aquizzar. That makes learning harder.
(except for calculus, thats hard anyway, and probably spanish 5 as well)
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Samyotix

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #13 on: October 21, 2009, 03:40:33 am »

eerr is right ... Just studying in a class, and hating the language (or being embarrassed because you tell yourself you suck) will work to some extent, but you won't like the studying or the results.

Now the question is ... do you do it the olf-fashioned way, forcing yourself to do the hated studying, with a reward at the end? That basically translates into "Spanish is work and rewards are fun". You should try and work Spanish into your everyday life - set the DVD player or Xbox to Spanish,  play games in Spanish, get a Spanish newspaper; and if there's a favorite book you want to read again - get it in Spanish. Don't read it like word-for-word with a dictionary, as this is no fun; if you get a book you've read before, you can take educated guesses at what a word means.

The problem is that consuming media only in Spanish will improve your vocabulary and comprehension skills, but not pronunciation ... for that, a Spanish girlfriend would be best *g*
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Sappho

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Re: I need to learn Spanish, well and quickly.
« Reply #14 on: October 21, 2009, 08:00:54 am »

My advice, based on my own personal experience, is that you can use all the software and language learning programs in the world or study every textbook you can get your hands on for as long as you want, and you are never, ever going to really learn that language.  Never.  I took four years of German in college and by the end, I could tell you what part of speech a word was or give you basic sentences if you gave me time to think, but if you put me in front of a native speaker, I wouldn't understand more than a few words. 

Then I lived in Switzerland for nine months.  More than half the time I was there, I was speaking English.  But every single day, for at least an hour or two and often more than that, I was speaking German.  With people who couldn't really speak English.  By the end of the year, I was fluent.  I learned new words by asking the native speakers or looking them up in a dictionary, and I learned proper grammar by hearing things said the correct way over and over again until it just sounded "wrong" to say it any other way (just like we learn our first language).  If I had been living in an area where no one spoke English, I'm quite confident I would have been perfectly fluent within three months.

You're not living in a Spanish-speaking country, so you're not going to be surrounded by it all the time.  But if you're serious about improving, I would say don't bother with software and books.  Find someone who is a native Spanish speaker.  If you're in America, that shouldn't be too hard to do.  As someone else suggested, speak to them only in Spanish and ask them to correct your mistakes (and even if you were in the top of your Spanish class, you'd still be making loads of mistakes in real-life conversation).  Watch Spanish movies and TV.  Get yourself a Spanish-speaking pen pal.  Keep a journal in Spanish.  Force yourself to do everything possible in Spanish.  Talk to yourself (out loud!) in Spanish when no one is around - seriously.  I did that in Switzerland to practice my German and I improved much faster as a result; forcing yourself to think in the language is the key.  And Samyotix' suggestion about video games is an excellent one - I still practice my German by playing games in the language and it helps immensely.

Even if you were dropped in the middle of a Spanish-speaking country, it wouldn't happen on its own.  Learning a new language (once you're past a certain age) does not happen automatically.  Prime example: I've been in Prague three months and can't say any more than hello, goodbye, please, and thank you - and I hear it all day long.  You have to be willing to work at it.  Force yourself to do it and be disciplined about looking up and learning new words.  Do this, and you WILL learn Spanish - there is no such thing as a person who is incapable of learning a second language.  It's just a matter of making yourself put in the work.  Sure, it comes easier to some than to others, but everyone can do it.

And remember, the benefits from this go beyond passing your course.  Speaking a second language will look amazing on your resume and open up entirely new opportunities in your career and your life.  It opens up the borders of many new countries, allowing you the opportunity to explore the world without a tour guide and without looking like an annoying tourist all the time.  And it even makes you smarter - learning one language improves your ability to learn more, and also strengthens various types of thinking and reasoning skills, making learning and understanding in general MUCH easier.  If you put in the work, it will be worth it.

Good luck!
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