The hardest part about learning your first language is figuring out what precisely to do, where to begin, coming up with a plan, a course of study for yourself–what to do, and what order to do it in.

This is one of those personal preference things, it really is: within the language-learning community, from experienced polyglots who speak half a dozen languages and have been learning languages for 20 years or more you’ll get a myriad of opinions on the matter, some of them polar opposites of each other.  And that’s fine.  They’ve tried a bunch of things and sorted out what works best for them, and you’ll have to do that, too.  There’s no getting around it: to figure out what works best for you, you’re going to have to try several different methods and styles of learning, you’re going to have to figure it out by testing.  Just like with many other things in life you’re going to have to fail your way to success: meaning the only way to figure out what works is to try a dozen things that don’t, first.

That said, I’d definitely like to give you some guidelines based off of my experience and what I’ve learned and heard from other language learners…

Vocabulary and Grammar

There is a certain minimum amount of basic vocabulary and grammar/syntax that you have to know to even begin learning to speak/read the language, but it’s probably far smaller than you think (you can get the minimum down in a few days–you’d be surprised how many words you can learn if you do it properly) and the best way to go about determining what precisely those words and rules are and then learning them is to do it in-context: this means grab any random everyday piece of writing (news story, magazine article, blog post, etc.) in the language you’re learning and then read it…yes, you’ll have to look up every single word, but that’s the point.  And as you do this you should be entering each of these words into your SRS (Spaced Repetition Software–I recommend Anki) or onto flashcards if you prefer.  In the process of doing this and forcing yourself to understand what’s being said, even if it takes you 10 minutes per sentence or something like that, you will end up learning how to use the language, the basic structure, syntax, and grammar, even if you don’t know the technical terms for them (which, as I’ve said before, you really don’t need to know).

Do this for a week or two and believe me you will end up picking up the minimum vocabulary AND grammar that you need to (and then some)–all those basic words (“the, at, go, is, are, you, he, she, it, were, am going,” etc.) that you have to know to be able to work with a language at all and how to use them (syntax/grammar), you will end up learning, it’s inevitable.  Done.

What Now?

Well, what do you want to do with the language you’re learning? Do you need to be able to, primarily, speak with other people? Do you need to be able to, primarily, read trade journals or technical manuals or news items in the language in question? Do you just want to be able to watch TV shows? What you want to do, what’s important to you, is what will determine how you go about this.

If you want to be able to speak, start speaking.  Hell, you could do that from Day 1 while you’re just getting some basic vocabulary and grammar down, throw yourself in the deep end of the pool, after you get over that initial shock of the cold water you’ll be glad you did it and you’ll find that it’s nowhere near as bad as you thought it was going to be.  Get on a language exchange site or a social network, find native speakers, or find some locally if you can, and START TALKING!

If you want to be able to read, start reading.  If you want to be able to read news items and general books, then use the method I described above, acquire those items, and start reading them–like I said, it might take you an hour to finish a single page, but you will learn FAST if you’ll do this and stick with it.  Same thing goes for if you want to be able to understand trade publications or more technical information: get the sort of material that you want to be able to read, pull up Google or an online dictionary (for Spanish I highly recommend SpanishDict) and get to work.  You’ll get faster and faster and faster as you go along, and won’t take as long as you think to get to a respectable rate of speed.

In Summary…

Notice a pattern here? Whatever it is that you want to do, the best way to learn how to do that is to start doing it no matter how bad you are at it to begin with! Just go, dive in, kick your own butt, make yourself do this–it’s not as scary as you think, you can do it!  I know I keep repeating this, but so many people want to procrastinate and delay and “prepare” by reading grammar books, doing verb conjugation workbooks, memorizing “just a few more words” before they’ll finally “be ready” to start speaking with native speakers: don’t do that, JUST GO!

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!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

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• President Obama Wants You to Learn Spanish (short video)
• How Many Words Do You Need to Know in Spanish (or any other foreign language)? And WHICH Words Should You Be Learning?
• Fascinating Report from the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute: “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching”

Frankly? None. You can learn all the grammar you’ll ever need for anything other than passing a test on grammar via context–meaning that you’ll learn how to say things correctly simply from trial and error: speaking with native speakers, making mistakes, and being corrected; you don’t need to know what it’s called when you correctly use the subjunctive, knowing what the subjunctive is is not a prerequisite to using it properly.  When you speak English (or whatever your native language is), can you actually explain everything you say in formal grammar and syntactical terms?  No, very few people can, but you and every other native speaker can still speak, read, and write at a very high level of fluency with very few if any grammatical errors, right?  You’ll never need to know actual formal terms for the concepts that you’re learning, you needn’t know the difference between the preterit and perfect subjunctive…however, it may be worth the time it takes to learn a minimal amount of it simply so you can understand verb conjugation charts and any exercises you may do online or in workbooks if you’re trying to learn how to read and write the language–I would recommend that you know what the difference is between the present tense and the preterit tense, in other words.

However, if all you want to do is learn how to speak, then knowledge of this stuff is the least useful, and even if you’re interested in learning how to read and write it’s still only slightly more useful.

I’ll put it this way: the best way to determine what you need to learn is to simply dive into the language and then look up anything you find that you have to know as you go along.  For example, if you’re using a workbook and they mention the ‘preterit’, and knowing what that word means is vital to you learning what you’re trying to learn, then go look it up, otherwise don’t.  In other words, let necessity dictate whether you bother learning something or not.

If you want to just quickly learn the basics, two great resources that you can get through in under an hour and continually reference are:

The Simple English Wikipedia article on Syntax, and

The Wikipedia article on Spanish Grammar

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!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• What Should You Start With? Grammar, Vocabulary, Basic Expressions, Everything?!!