I’ve got an excellent guest post for you today very much in line with my methods and previous posts, enjoy.

-Andrew

Watching Spanish-language TV series and movies is one of the best ways to improve your Spanish. First, you’ll be engaged and entertained, which will keep up your motivation. Second, you’ll hear people speak as they do in real life, which will give you invaluable exposure to natural speech — something you can’t extract from a textbook. And finally, you’ll gain not just linguistic knowledge, but cultural knowledge as well, as the stories and attitudes of the characters will shed light on the culture that’s being portrayed.

For learning about language and culture, there’s no better series than En Terapia (“In Therapy”), which consists of 30-minute dialogues between a therapist and his patients. In fact, En Terapia is an Argentine version of an English-language series In Treatment, which makes it a great educational tool for a variety of reasons. First, given that En Terapia is essentially a scene-by-scene remake of In Treatment, you can see directly how certain words and phrases are translated by comparing the two versions. And second, you can compare how characters handle the same situations, which illuminates interesting differences between the two cultures.

Image via TV Pública Argentina

Scene Analysis: Marina / Laura

To see what I mean, let’s analyze a scene! I’ll write out the dialogues below; if you’d like, you can follow along with these videos.

English-language video: click here (start from the beginning)

Spanish-language video: click here (start from 21:20)

Laura, one of the patients of In Treatment, is a young, intelligent woman who is having problems in her relationship, as you can see in the dialogue below:

PAUL: You were the one who made it specific: get married or to split up. That was your ultimatum.

LAURA: No no no, he had this thing with this on-and-off . . . the ultim- . . . yeah, okay. I was the first one to say it, you’re right. But he jumped all over it. I said, I didn’t know what I want, and he said you have a day or two, max, to decide what you want, and I said fine. And then he started crying, and . . . blah blah blah. The whole thing was really scary to him, I think.

PAUL: What about you? Weren’t you scared?

LAURA: Of what?

PAUL: Of splitting up.

LAURA: I wasn’t suggesting that we split up, that’s not the point.

In En Terapia, Laura’s equivalent is named Marina, and she describes basically the same dilemma:

GUILLERMO: Vos lo llevaste algo específico: casarse o terminar. Vos pusiste el plazo de uno o dos días para contestar.

MARINA: No. Él dio el ultimátum. O sea . . . Bueno, está bien . . . Yo di el ultimátum. Pero él aprovechó y me dijo que si no le contestaba en uno o dos días, se iba. Y después se puso a llorar. Como si se hubiese asustado de lo que dijo.

GUILLERMO: ¿Y a vos no te asustó?

MARINA: ¿Qué cosa?

GUILLERMO: Con la idea de separarse.

MARINA: Es que esa no era la idea.

There are a few notable points to look at in comparing these two scenes. First, you get a beautiful example of the Argentine dialect, which you might recognize from popular Argentine movies like El secreto de sue ojos or Relatos salvajes. You’ll see the use of the pronoun “vos” (which is used instead of “tú” in Rioplatense Spanish), and you’ll hear the distinct pronunciation of the letters y and ll, which sounds like “sh”.

There are also plenty of insights in vocabulary that you can take away from comparing the two clips. In the English-language version, Laura says that her boyfriend “jumped all over” the ultimatum. How would you translate a complex colloquial expression like that? Given that no exact translation of “jump all over” exists in Spanish, the writers of En Terapia decided to use a more common verb — aprovechar — to achieve the same effect.

Even in just these few lines of dialogue, we see more solutions to these tricky translations. For example, “splitting up” translates to “separarse”, and the question “Of what?” translates to “Qué cosa?”. This offers us an inside look as to how a Spanish speaker would naturally produce common utterances.

Laura, from the United States version of In Treatment

Later in that episode of In Treatment, Laura and Paul discuss an argument that Laura had with her spouse the night before. Paul suggests that Laura may have been the one who started the fight:

LAURA: I didn’t initiate anything.

PAUL: No, you may not have meant to, but you did. It sounds like you wanted to bring this relationship into crisis. I-I know you say that Andrew hates uncertainties, but perhaps you’re the one who can’t live with them. I mean, why did you choose this particular time to bring things to a head?

En Terapia progresses in the same way:

MARINA: Yo no empecé la pelea.

GUILLERMO: Quizás no te diste cuenta, pero sí, la empezaste vos. Como si quisieras llevar la relación al límite. A lo mejor, Andrés le puso palabra, pero la que no puede vivir en ese indecisión sos vos. ¿Por qué te parece tan importante tener una definición en este momento en particular?

Again, comparing the two scenes gives you an insider’s look at the challenging task of translating colloquial expressions. “Bring a relationship into crisis” becomes “Llevar la relación al límite”; “bring things to a head” is reduced to “tener una definición”. Here, you can also see some expressions that don’t exist in the American version, such as “ponerle palabra”, which translates to “put it into words”.

Marina, from the Argentine version of En Terapia

Finally, in En Terapia, the episode culminates in the moment when Marina admits that her relationship problems stem from the fact that she is in love with her therapist:

MARINA: Lo estoy engañando hace mucho tiempo.

GUILLERMO: Es interesante porque nunca lo mencionaste aquí.

MARINA: Sí que lo mencioné. Está presente todo el tiempo. ¿Me vas a decir que no te diste cuenta?

GUILLERMO: No . . . no creo . . . entender lo que querés decir.

MARINA: Entonces, te lo digo claramente. Yo estoy enamorada de vos.

But the same scene in the English-language version is a bit less climactic:

LAURA: Cause he’s right. Andrew’s right. I am being unfaithful to him.

PAUL: You mean what happened last night, at the club.

LAURA: Not just last night. I’ve been unfaithful to him for a long time.

PAUL: So why haven’t we talked about this before?

LAURA: I think we have. It’s been here all along. You mean to say you’ve never noticed it?…You’re surprised.

PAUL: No, I’m not surprised, I just…I don’t follow what you mean.

In both versions, a confession of love has occurred, but only in the Argentine version does Laura say it explicitly — “Estoy enamorada de vos”. This taps into the cultural insight that you can gain from Spanish-language TV series. Whereas people from the United States tend to be more implicit and subtle with expressing their feelings, there’s none of this beating-around-the-bush in Argentina. The writers of En Terapia decided that it would be more realistic if Laura stated her feelings “claramente”, instead of simply giving hints.

Are you intrigued by the dramatic storyline? Episodes of In Treatment can be viewed or purchased on HBO; episodes of En Terapia are available on the website for Argentina’s public television channel — it’s free for those in Argentina; outside of Argentina, episodes can be found easily on Google and YouTube.

The scenes that we’ve reviewed in this article are just a few seconds of an entire 30-minute episode that’s chock-full of dialogue, idiomatic expressions, and dramatic love confessions. This makes En Terapia ideal for improving your Spanish-language comprehension. Further, watching both versions is perfect for beginners who would prefer some English-language guidance before fully immersing themselves in Spanish television. Ultimately, En Terapia is a perfect choice for the Spanish-language learner who seeks to be enlightened both linguistically and culturally.

Paul writes on behalf of Language Trainers, a language tutoring service offering personalized course packages to individuals and groups. Check out their free Spanish-language level tests and other resources on their website or send them a quick inquiry to find out more about their tailor-made lesson plans.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

Hey guys, today we’ve got another guest post from Jeff at Living Bilingual, enjoy:

Let me start off by acknowledging that finding the easiest language to learn is highly subjective, and that there is no one, clear-cut, hands down easiest language to learn. However, if someone were to take a stab at it, the list may play out similar to the following one I have presented here.

There are several organizations and government entities which classify language difficulties for English speakers in terms of hours needed to reach conversational fluency and various other factors. I’m sure a lot of time and research has gone into these classifications presented by the Foreign Service Institute and Department of State, however I hope to expand on their information by adding a bit of a personal touch to it; breaking it down even further.

The List

According to the FSI and Department of State, the following languages come from the list classified in “Category 1” of languages closely related to English. This means that these languages will take roughly 575-600 class hours to get to a good level of fluency.

[One important note here: 600 class hours would mean if you studied a language for one hour per day, 5 days a week, it would take you 2.3 years to get to this level.]

#1: Afrikaans

The Good: Afrikaans seems to top a lot of easiest language to learn lists. A few reasons are:

The grammar is logical and easy. There is no verb conjugation and it has no gender. The languages I speak, Spanish and German, are beasts in both: Spanish is the king of verb conjugation and German has 3 genders. I can assure you all of that is very annoying. It’s a Germanic language closely related to German and English. It shares a ton of vocabulary. A lot of words are very similar; words like ‘wat’ for ‘what’ and ‘dit’ for ‘this’ are much easier to remember.

The Bad: Afrikaans is a fairly isolated language. There are not a lot of speakers and it isn’t as easily accessible as some languages, like Spanish or French, in the United States.

Other Facts:

Native Language Of: South Africa, Namibia (Botswana/Zimbabwe)

Number of Native Speakers/Total Speakers: ~7.1 million / ~15 million to ~20 million

Famous Person Who Speaks It: Charlize Theron

#2: Norwegian (norsk)

The Good: Norwegian is another popular choice for the easiest language to learn for English speakers. Again, like Afrikaans, the vocabulary is derived from the same root Latin-based vocabulary which makes learning new vocabulary words relatively easy.

The Bad: Norwegian has a lot of dialects and variations. This makes it hard to communicate in some situations. While not as bad as languages like Arabic, this still can create confusion for language learners. Also, the relative isolation of the language and smaller number of speakers can make it slightly harder to find opportunities to practice the language.

Other Facts:

Native Language Of: Norway
Number of Native Speakers/Total Speakers: ~5 Million (not real well known)
Famous Person Who Speaks It: Viggo Mortensen (some Norwegian)

#3: Spanish

The Good: I put Spanish on the list because it falls into the first category and it really is a fairly easy language to learn. What pushes it over the edge for me and makes it one of the easiest languages to learn is the fact that language practice abounds in the United States. Almost all movies you rent are subtitled in Spanish, there are tons of bilingual books and other resources, as well as literally tens of millions of speakers throughout the United States. It is incredibly easy to practice Spanish in the United States. This helps immensely when learning the language.

Technically speaking, Spanish again has a very similar past to English. A lot of words are mutually intelligible, if not exactly the same, or just need a slight variation to make them Spanish instead of English. Additionally, the close proximity to the United States makes a lot of English words work their way into Spanish. Mexicans use the English word for things like lunch, pickup, etc…

The Bad: There are about a thousand ways to say anything you want to say. Spanish has a lot of sayings or dichos as they call them. Also, the verb conjugation throws a lot of people for a loop. In addition, the subjunctive and various versions of past tense are a little difficult to get initially. It is basically the opposite of Afrikaans with genders, verb conjugations, and non-logical changes in grammar (at least for us English speakers) like the subjunctive/etc.

Other Facts:

Native Language Of: Mexico, Spain, and almost all of Central/South America (too long of a list)
Number of Native Speakers/Total Speakers: ~410 Million / ~470 Million
Famous Person Who Speaks It: Jennifer Lopez (Why not?)

Conclusion:

There are several languages that are all relatively the same in relation to how difficult they are for English speakers to master. While lists like this are fun to make, they really don’t get at the essence of what it means for a language to be easy. Language learning is a long process full of hard work, dedication, persistence, determination, and about a billion other things. In order to make it to the end of this long journey, you need to have the sufficient motivation. The easiest language to learn is the one you most want to learn. Picking one off this list to learn because “it’s easy” is not going to give you very good results in the end.

It’s important to figure out which language fits your lifestyle and in your heart; then go learn it.  I hope that was interesting, let me know what you think in the comments (and would like me to write about in the future), also…  If you thought the above was at all useful and you want to learn (or are learning) Spanish, please give me a chance and read what I have to say about my book below!  Thank you so much for checking out my blog and I hope you’ve enjoyed my writing.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It’s available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It’s currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

Hey guys, I’ve got a guest post today I think you’ll really enjoy by Jeffrey Nelson, who is a husband, father, author and bilingual living and working in the Midwestern United States. He lives with his Mexican wife and their son, Liam, who is currently being raised bilingual in English and Spanish.  He runs the blog Living Bilingual.  Check it out below:

One cultural issue that is ever-so-present in my world is the difference between Mexico and the United States as it relates to personal relationships. This is a cultural difference that is very apparent to members of each respective culture when interacting with people of the other culture. A few things I have noticed while experiencing this phenomenon are

the differences in personal space/physical contact, intensity with which people are greeted, and the expectations that exist when enter/exiting a situation.

The Personal Space Difference:

Mexicans greet each other in very different ways than Americans. In Mexico, women kiss everyone on the cheek when greeting them. A man, on the other hand, will kiss a woman on the cheek and shake the hand of another man. This hand shake usually involves a pat on the shoulder/bicep area or another hand placed on top of the hand being shaken.

The bottom line is that Mexicans are a lot more physical when greeting each other. Whether it’s a quick beso, a firm handshake that lingers, or all of the above plus a hug, they greet each other physically as opposed to the quick ‘hey’ that we Americans tend to throw out.

The Intensity of The Greeting:

Mexicans also greet each other with much more intensity than Americans. A big smile, the kiss, handshake, hug, combination depending on who is greeting whom, and a passionate como estas? Que bueno verte! [How are you? It’s so good to see you!]Mexicans greet each other like Americans would if they hadn’t seen each other in a few weeks/months as a standard greeting. My wife says good night to her parents every night in the same way I say good bye to my parents when we are headed back home from visiting them and won’t see them again for 3-6 months. A simple ‘hey, how are you doing?’ devoid of emotion is considered rude in Mexican culture. In America, we tend to tailor our greeting to the circumstance a lot more. For example, if I just saw you 10 minutes ago, and I will see you again in two hours, there may not even be a greeting.

In Mexico, the formal, excited, intense, drawn out greeting is there every.single.time. Whether I’m just going to the store for milk or am going off to war, it’s basically the same goodbye. This may be a slight exaggeration, however it isn’t as far-fetched as you might think if you don’t understand Mexican culture.

The Cultural Expectations When Greeting/Leaving Someone:

As I’ve stated, there are certain expectations that exist in Mexican culture when you are greeting and/or leaving a person or group of people. Basically, anytime you enter, re-enter, leave, return for your keys, whatever, you are expected to not only greet the people, but greet everyone individually with the kiss/hug/handshake/combo style. Even my wife will greet me formally every single time I come home from work, or from any other place. She will despedirse almost every morning while walking me to the door as I head out for work. This is just part of the culture. The hello/goodbye moments are very important to the Mexican people. It’s almost a sign of respect to acknowledge and greet individually everyone in the room at all times regardless of who they are or how comfortable you are with them; parents, spouses, children, etc.

Due to these three points, Mexicans often perceive Americans as cold, aloof, indifferent, and ultimately almost rude for the way we greet and interact with each other. To them, it’s ridiculous that we don’t hug and kiss our parents more, go on-and-on about how much we love them, or call them on the phone every day (or even once a week). The stereotype that family is incredibly important for Mexicans holds true, however it’s more of the way they express the importance.

While their language may be easier to learn than some, the true Mexican language consists of not only Spanish, but the way they use it to interact with each other. The true language of Mexico is a combination of Spanish and their diverse and special culture.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

Hi guys, today I’ve got a guest post from Alberto Horihuela, who’s the head of business development over at Drama Fever, currently one of the few legal sites for watching full episodes of Spanish-language telenovelas in the United States (I just recently added Drama Fever to my very popular List of Best Free Sites to Watch Spanish-Language TV Online).  He contacted me because they had noticed that a growing percentage of their members were people who were using their service for the express purpose of learning the language that the TV show was in and he knew that was a method that I advocated.  They currently have several telenovelas available on their site–full episodes, for free–and they all have English subtitles available; I asked him if they had considered doing Spanish subtitles and he said that it was being considered, so let’s hope that happens.

Today he’s going to write about something very related to their service and the method that I advocate, that is learning a language tacitly versus explicitly.  Have a look.

The Tacit Approach to Learning Languages

Have you noticed how people who move to other countries tend to learn the language faster than those who studied it from their home countries? Intuitively, it isn’t hard to see how the constant exposure to a new language in day-to-day interactions would push one to learn faster. However, educational science tells us that it is more than just increased exposure, but also the method of exposure. Indeed, the improved rate of learning comes largely from the use of tacit vs. explicit knowledge creation.

Think of tacit knowledge as intuition – it is knowledge we already have or acquired through past experiences, yet we are unable to easily explain it. It’s what we have learned through observation, practice and repetition – think about knowing how to ride a bike, or more relevant, your own native language. You may not necessarily know the ins and outs of it, but you know what sounds right and how to speak it. Explicit knowledge on the other hand is what you learn from studying facts, policies, and rules, i.e. your typical classroom learning experience. Not surprisingly, language learners tend to focus most of their energy developing explicit knowledge, while those who learn a language in a foreign country develop a more extensive tacit knowledge drawn from exposure to television and day-to-day interactions.

That is the reason why most will tell you that watching foreign television is a great way to learn a language. Short of taking a long break and moving to another country, the best (and most amusing) way to throw yourself into a new culture is through the local entertainment they produce, which reflects the language, traditions and customs of a region. An immensely useful example is watching a traditional Spanish telenovela to practice listening comprehension and absorb the elaborate yet necessary colloquialisms. It’s no coincidence that this is the method recommended by many, including the great Telenovela Method we’ve formerly advocated.

If you live in the US, you may already have access to the Latin TV channels such as Univision. Or, if you’d rather watch from your computer, you can find telenovelas in YouTube or streaming platforms such as DramaFever, which subtitles full telenovelas from Latin American and Spain.

Nonetheless, we are not saying it’ll be easy: the tacit learning method requires active engagement and participation, not mere memorization. But it pays dividends! Auditory learning is more organic, babies learn languages by simply listening to the flow of dialogue and drawing logical connections. While you’re no longer a baby (we presume) your learning process will be somewhat similar. By watching telenovelas you’ll be listening to real dialogue, not perfectly annunciated Spanish, which will strengthen your listening abilities in real situations.

That being said, don’t toss your books yet – the best learning method is one which effectively combines traditional explicit learning with tacit knowledge creation – after all knowing the difference between what sounds right and what is actually right can save you a moment of mild embarrassment. Go ahead, enjoy some telenovelas and let us know cómo te va!

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

Hello my name is Jade and I started studying Spanish in High School back in 7^th grade. I was excited to finally be learning a second language, but when I started I found class to be very boring, and it took 2 years before the teachers started to teach different tenses.  After a few years of Spanish in High School, I came to the conclusion that I would never learn how to speak.

After a few years of looking over methods I finally found a method that worked for me. It was so simple and right before my eyes. You see you can buy a lot of software, take a lot of classes, and read a lot of books but at the end of the day, they won’t get you to the point that you want to be at. I even tried Rosetta Stone once–now, I’m not going to criticize Rosetta Stone, because it does have its uses, but if you seriously want to learn, just sitting down with Rosetta Stone alone will not help.

Facilitators

In language learning, facilitators are things that will help you along the way, but will not necessarily make you fluent. The books, software, etc. you buy and the teachers in your classroom are just facilitators, at the end of the day they can’t truly teach you this language. That means the majority of the effort is up to you. But what’s the point of taking these classes and doing these things? There isn’t anything wrong with taking classes, take this for example: an athlete has a coach, the coach tells the athlete what to do. But despite the coach telling the athlete what to do, it’s up to the athlete him/herself to know just how hard they have to work and when enough is enough. The coach cannot force an athlete to train if they don’t want to.  If an athlete feels they need more work, they need to make themselves go into overtime. When it’s time for game day, the coach is on the sideline and it’s up to the athlete to learn and make decisions for themselves.

Language learners are like athletes, the teachers are our coaches our brains needs for training. We ourselves have to put the work in if we want to see results. And this is the first mistake people make when they begin learning a language, in this case Spanish. They instantly go out and find people that they think will make them proficient in this language, when all you need was just yourself.

Making a Timetable

Making a timetable is not a must but it helps. A timetable helps keep you organize your time and it also helps you to guide yourself. Now for the first month or two of learning a new language, I recommend using a timetable. After the first few months of learning you can divert a little from this timetable and just begin to listen and speak in your second language. A timetable for a beginner must have these 4 aspects of learning: speaking, listening, writing and reading. In the beginning, there should be a lot more input than output, so more reading and listening than writing and speaking.

• divide your time right

This is to ensure that you do not spend too much time on just one aspect or topic. Within the first three months there should be some amount of gain in your Spanish learning. Spanish is a language that is hard at first, but after the initial stages, there are so many similarities to English. Also, Spanish is a somewhat predictable language, e.g. often times grammar rules do not change. For absolute beginners you can use courses such as Assimil just to get you started. Then as your timetable progresses you can add more podcasts and books into the mix.

• do not divert from your goals

If you spend a few months or even weeks without practicing your new language, chances are you will forget a large portion of it. In between each big goal are mini goals. So the big goal by the end of the 6 months is to be able to speak Spanish. Then mini goals would be to listen to X number of podcasts in Spanish, download X number of free eBooks in Spanish and read them, etc.

Go out and find resources

As your learning progresses, you are going to get better, don’t spend your time on materials that are made for beginning students when you are really at a more advanced level. There are a lot of resources out there and something that works for one person might not work for someone else. You can check out reviews of certain products on several sites.

Listen

If your aim is to actually be able to communicate with speakers one day, you have to listen to them in order to mimic them and learn from them. Often times we find in a classroom setting less time is focused on listening and more on writing comprehension. How are you going to learn pronunciation if you do not listen? Listening will eventually help you to speak. A tip is to repeat everything you hear out loud to access your pronunciation (agreed! that’s precisely what I recommend – Andrew).

Be realistic

Realistically speaking you will not be absolutely fluent in a second language you have never learned before with just a few months of study. However, it is possible to be proficient within 3-6 months. If you go absolutely all out, within six months you will surprise yourself with your achievements. One thing I should point out is that in different Spanish speaking countries there are different idioms and phrases, beware of these. For example, how men call their friends varies in different countries. In Spain they will say (tío), Argentina(che) and Mexico (compinche). The point is some words and phrases are different in different countries, if you come across a word that you don’t know don’t freak out and feel as if you lost your ‘proficiency’, not even Spanish professors know it all.

Chatting

Speaking with native speakers is so important, there are many websites that will help you to find a speaking partner. Verbling is probably the only website out there that was designed for Speaking practice, there are also a lot of native Spanish speakers on Verbling. Livemocha also has a large number of Spanish speakers from all over the word to chat with.

La Passion

I found out the best way to learn the language, is firstly: you have to want to learn it. Passion is is probably the main thing that will get you started in learning Spanish.

Final word

It’s all about creating that environment yourself, I can speak Spanish without ever leaving my country (with the hope of one day being able to of course). In fact I could maintain a basic conversation in French after just two weeks of learning. It’s all about the passion and finding time. The resources you choose also impact the speed of your learning.

Cheers,

Andrew

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

I’ve got a short guest post here from someone whose site I’ve recommended before (I put it under my recommended links section in the sidebar), I’ll let him explain what they do:

At eLanguageSchool.net we are teaching people how to learn Spanish with
Comics. You can read the comic in Spanish, then click the speech
bubbles to reveal the English translation. So far we have gotten very
positive feedback that it is a useful tool to practice reading
Spanish.

The entire project is a Creative Commons project, and we are looking
for volunteers to help translate and make the comics interactive. Here
are the steps involved to make what you see.

Step 1: Someone translates the comics from English, into Spanish (and
other languages). The translators simply write the translation on a
text document with one line per speech bubble, and a line between
pages.

Step 2: Someone opens up the comic book pages in an image editor, and
cuts out the speech bubbles and whites out the text. That way they are
just blank speech bubbles.

Step 3: Someone takes the translation, and fits them into the speech
bubbles, again in a text editor.

Step 4: Someone takes the translated speech bubbles, and overlays them
with the the original comic book page. This involves finding the exact
horizontal and vertical position to perfectly overlap the speech
bubbles.

You can see the finished result on the website. So far, we have
translated the first chapter of the comic into Spanish and French. If you would
like to volunteer in any of those steps, please email me, James, at
JDDunn9 – at – gmail.com.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

And today I’ve got my first guest post ever!  From J. over at Polyglottally, he addresses something that every language-learner has done at some point and then had to deal with…

Oh dear, you’ve fallen off the language learning wagon.

You were tired, so you took a day off. The next day you were swamped and didn’t get around to it. The day after that you forgot your cue cards at home. Next thing you know, it’s been a month and you’ve made zero progress on your language studies. How embarrassing.

You want to get back into it, you want to learn more, but now you have feelings of a) guilt for having slacked off for so long, and b) despair at the thought of having to relearn what you may have forgotten.

Well, my fellow depressed language learners, here’s how to climb back on that wagon with gusto, seize those reins, and steer yourself back on course!

(Note: I fully endorse giving yourself a full day off for a personal retreat. Go ahead, call in sick or tell your boss you’re at an all-day off-site meeting. Escape to your favourite cafe or shady tree. You deserve it.)

Step 1: Release

Absolve yourself of the guilt, release yourself from past obligations. If you continue to kick yourself for what you haven’t done, you’ll constantly be mired in the past. You can’t change the past, but you do have full power over what you choose to do right now. That’s what counts.

It’s hard to forgive yourself sometimes, especially when you think back to all that precious time you wasted playing World of Warcraft when you could have memorized the Devanagari script and be reading Hindi fluently by now. No matter, what’s done is done. Once you’ve fully forgiven yourself, then you are ready for step 2 (and perhaps another lattÈ).

Step 2: Remember

Why did you start out on this language learning quest anyway? Remember what your motivations are and place them front and centre in your brain. Like Andrew previously wrote, motivation is the most important factor in learning a new language.

It is often easy to lose sight of why we began, especially when we get bogged down in the details of case endings and verb conjugations. Remind yourself of the reason why you are trying to learn French, Spanish, Greek, Klingon, et cetera. It could be for the love of travel, the love of food, the love of the intellectual challenge, or the love of your significant other. Whatever your motivation, bring it back to the forefront of your mind.

Write down your motivation in large block letters, tack it to the wall in front of you, then order another fudge brownie and continue to step 3.

Step 3: Refocus

What is your goal? What does “success” mean to you? It’s incredible how far off course we can get when we don’t know where we are going. If, after some soul searching, you realize you only want to be able to order food in a restaurant, then why are you reviewing vocabulary for negotiating business deals?

Some quick questions to ask yourself to gauge your definition of success:

• Where and with whom do you imagine using the language?
• What level of grammatical perfection do you need? Are you writing a doctoral dissertation, or are you chatting in the bar with friends?
• What is the minimum you can get away with right now?

Focusing on your goal will tell you what you need to learn and, more importantly, what you can ignore for the moment. Your goal may very well change and increase as you approach it, which is the sign of intentional learning. But for the moment try to describe as accurately as possible what your goal is right now. Putting a timeline on it is also a good idea, but don’t stress yourself out. Write it all down, then go to step 4.

Step 4: Review

You probably remember more than you think. It may take a bit of gentle stretching to eke it out of your brain, but don’t despair: You’re not starting over from scratch.

Go through the table of contents in a grammar or phrase book, see what you know. Try translating whole conversations in your head, especially as they relate to your goal (see step 3). Gather the entire corpus of your knowledge together to remind yourself of how far you’ve come. This will not only act as a general review, it will also encourage you to see how much you already know, and hopefully reignite new interest in the act of learning the language.

Step 5: Recalibrate

Often we splash about without any real plan of what to do next. We jump on anything interesting that comes along, whether or not it helps us move towards our goal. When it turns out to be unrelated or irrelevant, we will soon forget all about it and will have then wasted our time.

Take the results from step 3 and step 4. Imagine you are looking at a big map. Where are you now? And where do you want to be? The gap in between will give you an indication of what to do next. Write down what you are missing, and this becomes your learning plan for the next little while. It’s as simple as that. Time for more coffee.

Step 6: Repeat

At the end of this personal retreat, you will have your goal and motivating force clearly articulated, you will have a summary of your past accomplishments, and you will have a game plan for what to do next. But now that you’ve forgiven your past transgressions, how do you avoid falling off that wagon again?

The answer is to conduct frequent reviews. I recommend “New Moon resolutions” (as opposed to New Year’s resolutions): the shorter time frame and higher frequency means you will have more opportunities to refresh and recalibrate your actions. Every 28 days, go through this exercise again to reinvigorate yourself, whether you feel you need it or not. The iterative process will ensure you are on track and on target. Calling in sick every month is entirely optional.

Best of luck,
J.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

I just did a guest post over on Jennie’s blog (which is fantastic, you definitely should subscribe, by the way) where I listed my absolute favorite free Spanish-learning resources: check it out here.  I should note that, as I said in that post, I only included about 10% of all the stuff I’ve got bookmarked and saved, but it’s the very top 10%, I didn’t want to make it a ridiculously long post and waste people’s time with every imaginable resource and tool.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew