The Telenovela Method of Learning Spanish
I had a friend, years ago, who learned to speak fluent Spanish with a perfect Mexican accent while working as a line cook at an Applebees here in Texas (he decided to do this because everyone else in the kitchen was a native Spanish speaker with very limited English skills), and the method he used is…interesting, funny, and just plain damn ingenious all at the same time.
What I recommend you do is incorporate this method into your current learning system, as opposed to doing it exclusively, but I do think it’s probably worth spending 30-60 minutes on per day–if you do that you’ll probably work wonders in a couple months’ time.
What he had to work with from the get-go was the basic grammar and very little vocabulary he remembered from high school Spanish classes from 5 years prior. He had DirectTV and what he would do is choose a telenovela (soap opera) on Univision and record a one hour episode of it on Tivo (you can watch these online now, see my list of sites to do that here). Now, he would play back the episode and, pausing every few seconds, write down verbatim one or two minutes worth of dialog. Then, he would go through those two or three paragraphs of dialogue and learn absolutely everything he needed to completely understand what was being said–he would look up definitions of any words he didn’t know, ask friends from work what certain idioms, expressions, or slang terms meant, etc. He would try saying the lines himself, then immediately replay the character saying the line, then rewind, say it again, replay – he would keep this up until he sounded exactly like the actor (and consequently had excellent pronunciation after a very short period of time). This might take him a couple of days because although he could look up definitions and grammar online, often times he would need to consult with a native speaker either via a Spanish or language learning forum or someone he knew from work. He would really learn absolutely everything he could about those few sentences to the point of memorization. When you do this yourself, keep in mind that the characters will occasionally use incorrect grammar that you will need to identify and note along with the correct version of what they said.
He would initially get through one 30 minute show every few weeks but quickly accelerated because he was learning so much at such a rapid pace. After about a year of this he was completely fluent which, when you think about just how much conversational Spanish he was exposed to and forced himself to learn, isn’t really surprising. Persistence, persistence, persistence 
There are formal Spanish-learning programs that do this with the express purpose of teaching you Spanish, but I honestly really don’t like them because it tends to be a bunch of Spaniards speaking perfect Castilian Spanish slowly and clearly with perfect grammar, no idioms, and certainly no slang – in short, it’s just short of useless for anyone other than a complete beginner (and even then it will only get you to a low intermediate level, whereas doing it with actual TV shows and movies can get you all the way to a near native-level of fluency if you stick with it). The telenovelas, along with movies, are the best. The Spanish is colloquial, but not extremely formal, technical, obscure, or difficult; and there’s a wide variety of characters who you would actually encounter if you were living in a Spanish-speaking country who speak Spanish at very different levels: children, mechanics, housewives, doctors, street hustlers, and beggars.
Let’s take this a little further and improve on this method…
Now, this actually dovetails nicely with a method that I have actually used before that’s very similar, which I did before I ever heard about my friend’s ‘Telenovela Method’. I like to get Spanish-language movies, turn on the Spanish subtitles (NOT the English ones!), and then watch it, pausing whenever I hear something I don’t understand–then, I just look at the bottom of the screen where I can see whatever word or phrase it was that threw me, look it up, learn it, and note it for later review…then just press play and wash, rinse, repeat until I’m through with the movie (which may very well take a few weeks)!
Oh, and always remember to pause and repeat after the speaker if your Spanish isn’t already excellent or you see a new word. Rewind, replay, and repeat until you’ve got it down cold.
An even better way to do this can be done if you can obtain the English translation of the script–this is not very often, but it does happen. What you do is watch the movie with the Spanish subtitles on and the English translation of the script so that you can follow along and, of course, pause at anything you don’t know and immediately learn it, just like above (the script just makes it a lot easier and allows you to learn things you wouldn’t be able to otherwise). My all-time favorite movie where I managed to pull this off is Maria Full of Grace (María llena eres de gracia)
Of course, this presumes you can get the English translation of the script, which you often can’t, but you can often enough that it’s always worth the trouble to find out if a Spanish language movie has one available on the internet–easiest way to find out is to just Google “[movie title] english script” and “[movie title] script” and see what comes up. If that doesn’t immediately turn it up, three great sites to check with are The Internet Movie Script Database, Drew’s Script-O-Rama (go to the menu at the bottom under the picture–yes, I know, his site design does suck), and Simply Scripts. Not only can you find movie scripts, but you can often find scripts for TV shows as well.
A quick note…
You may want to check out my List of Best Free Sites to Watch Spanish-Language TV Online where I put together THE most comprehensive list of such sites you’ll find – I checked every other available list on the internet in the process of putting this together and, as such, mine not only includes more sites but ALL of them are guaranteed to work because I personally hand-checked each and every one to make sure you could use them and that it didn’t cost anything. Every other list I checked had dead links in it (links to sites that no longer worked).
Alright, well I think that’s it, if you’ve got any additional tips or resources (or questions), please please please post them in the comments, they’re more than welcome!!
The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources
I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.
Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.
Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!
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Andrew
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