I have taken spanish for two years in school , but my teachers were not great and they were not that helpful except for the basics. Now since ive decided to take learning spanish by myself i dont really know how to do it, so i was wondering how other people have learned their target language.
i do basic things like watching spanish tv and movies, and writing a little bit everyday, but i feel like it is not proficient. I want to become conversational in spanish in a year, with little goals here and there.
i would really appreciate suggestions, methods, or tools . Thankyou
Have you checked out Fluent in 3 Months? Great tips and inspiration: http://www.fluentin3months.com/
Despite the fact, that I’ve never lived in an English speaking country before, yet I was able to learn the language in a couple of years by relying on no one but myself, I’m certainly against the traditional, repetitive and in most cases ineffective way of learning languages, whether you believe it or not I’ve actually never had any formal English education, meaning that I’ve literally never spent a single Riyal(Saudi Currency) to enroll in any form of English learning institute, you could also imply from that, that I haven’t learnt English by studying and memorizing countless and never-ending grammar rules, by now I’m assuming that you’re wondering how on earth was I able to learn the English language ?, well it's quite simple, simple in a sense that the idea itself should've crossed every learner's mind, but very few for whatever reason are willing to put in practice, what I did was I tried to surround myself with anything that is English as much as possible, and it starts from as simple as restricting all the websites you visit to English websites only, whenever I would surf the internet I would force myself to only view English websites, my searches on the internet would always be in English only, that way I’ve forced myself to read English as much as possible, and the next thing you know, and without me even realizing it my vocabulary was increasing exponentially ,so in short that's what has worked for me, and I hope it works well with you.
Ditto what Jennifer said.
I read Benny's book and even had my kids read it. It's an eye-opener in terms of what you can really accomplish on your own. I don't mean that as doing it in total isolation, but in terms of just taking control and developing your own plan.
My kids have done Rosetta Stone and I've come to dislike it greatly. If they had followed Benny's book, they would have learned more in 3-6 months than they did in two years with RS.
That's not to say a program like that can't work. I'm sure it has for many people. It just didn't do as much as what I now know is possible.
Check out the site that Jennifer mentioned. He has a new post today about How to Start Learning a New Language. It was a good kick in the pants for me.
Try Pimsluer Spanish course. It is very good. Also, I suggest Extra Spanish series for you. You can find it with its text. And finally, find a profissional teacher here to teach you Spanish. One more thing, could you speak now? I see you are B1 in Spanish and I guess you can speak it. right? But I can't tell if this is the situation. I am A2 and I can react to a very simple conversation.
