Core Spanish fundamentals learning spanish as an A1 what is the most important things to work on and practice

Search from various English teachers...

Garry

Feb 3, 2018 12:17 AM

For A1, I'd recommend mastering the pronunciation first, because nobody wants to have to relearn all their vocabulary after 10000 words.

February 3, 2018

By any means necessary — really depends on your personal tastes. As you’re an English speaker, make sure to really pay attention to the vowels, especially in the unaccented syllables.

For Latin American Spanish (requires flash player):

http://soundsofspeech.uiowa.edu/index.html#english

You can also find old Foreign Service Institute (FSI) courses free on line. The vocabulary is dated, but the initial pronunciation modules are killer.

For European Spanish, the BBC probably has something.

The intro to a good bilingual dictionary should give you a quick overview in English. I’ve heard the University of Chicago SP-EN / EN-SP dictionary has a good section on Latin American pronunciation. See what they have at your library. You should also learn IPA and then you can check out the Royal Academy:

http://www.rae.es/

Focus mostly on the variety you’re likely to use, but don’t worry too much — Spanish is Spanish until you start getting into slang.

And of course, do a lot of listening, and get *honest* feedback.

February 3, 2018

As far as grammar goes, ser vs estar. It's tricky at first and it just keeps getting tricker as you advance.

And, of course, all the different endings on all the different verbs in present tense. It's a slog, but you'll be happy you did later.

If you are working on your own, I'd also suggest to you looking at the subjunctive present tense, too. The subjunctive can throw English speakers when they meet it later down the road, so if you get the idea (just the idea!) and learn to recognize the most common verbs in their subjunctive forms now, then you will make life easier for yourself at B1 level. You don't have to be able to use them, or have them mastered in any way....just wrap your head around the idea!

February 3, 2018