First, I must apologize for…several things: not putting out content with any kind of consistency (here or on social media networks like instagram), not updating a myriad of posts that need updating, and for not talking to you about this until now.

My little “project” is to spend a year traveling through South America.  This is something I’ve always wanted to do, not even South America specifically but just perpetual travel in general.  I love learning about new cultures and meeting new people; I also think you can’t really learn about a culture and its people if you don’t speak their language.  “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” (Nelson Mandela).

As you can see there on the left I did not get off to an auspicious start: in addition to the flight being delayed for over two hours and consequently arriving at 01:00 at night instead of the already late 10:50 it was scheduled to arrive at, I then left my passport in the airport (took it out to fill out the customs form that wanted my passport number) and didn’t realize it until I got to the hotel.  I got it back but only after two more hours of screwing around, not to mention having to pay for three trips between the airport and hotel instead of just the one.  I would like to mention that the taxi driver was extremely polite, accommodating, and patient.  Very friendly fellow who went out of his way to help me.

I’m currently in a hotel, just for this first day.  I figured it would be easier since I was arriving so late, instead of having to screw around trying to move into an apartment at midnight.  For the rest of the month I have an apartment via AirBnB in Zona T, next to Parque Virrey.  It’s a very nice area of Bogotá, supposedly excellent bars and restaurants.  After that I’m off to Cartagena for a little over two weeks where I’m staying in a hostel on the recommendation of a Colombian friend.  After that it’s Medellin for a month and a half and I’m off to Chile (flying into Santiago, no clue how long I’ll stay there).

Other than producing as much content as I can for you all and observing the culture (and telling you about it), I don’t have any terribly fixed plans.  A few years worth of perpetual travel is something I’ve wanted to do forever, I just wish I could’ve started sooner.

Oh!  Before we end!  Speaking of content for you all, I’m the most active on Instagram under the account “andrewhasacamera” (yes, very clever, I know).  I post multiple times per day and with its ability to share short videos (limited to 1 minute) and photos along with a good deal of text in the captions if you choose (where I can go into more detail), it’s really the best way for me to share the local culture I observe every day.  Additionally, I plan to write at least a couple posts a week on culture on another blog of mine specifically about that, Cultural Observation (which needs revising and prettying up, yes I know).

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

Note: this is a repost from my German blog. The original article is here.

I’ve tried six different tutors at this point (5 professional, 1 “community” tutor which is just someone who doesn’t teach the language as their day job and does online tutoring on the side), kept four of them (the first pro was flat out bad, the community tutor was “meh”), and one thing I’ve consistently noticed about the good ones is that they all have a plan and it’s a plan that works because it’s based on lots and lots of experience teaching people the language – they’ve already worked out all the various needs and problems that they know you’re going to have because they’ve done this hundreds of times before with other similar students with similar needs. In the words of the eminent physicist Niels Bohr:

“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.”

Hah. Yup.

Every single tutor I’ve tried, even the bad one (one out of six isn’t bad!) had at least a decent quality plan (the problem with the bad one wasn’t their plan): they had exercises, games (I’ve got a great story about this I’ll share below), workbook pages, something prepared for the lesson prior to the lesson beginning.  Here’s my point:

You don’t waste any time trying to figure out what to do.

And for beginning language learners, that’s huge.  Because they typically do spend a large portion of their time trying to figure out how exactly to go about learning the language in question, at least if it’s their first one they’ve ever learned besides their native tongue.  You don’t have to do this, the tutor who has tons of experience getting people to learn this language already knows what to do, so every second of your time is spent taking positive action towards your goal and making actual, real progress.

Mo

Ok, so here’s the story: I was having a lesson with Mo (great teacher, by the way) and she decided what she wanted to do for that lesson was play a game with me.  It went like this: she would start to tell a story, in this case about someone simply getting up in the morning, and then I would have to continue it (in German) by making up the next part of the story (I said, in German of course, that he had a cup of coffee), then she would do the next part (he had toast for breakfast), then I (he also had orange juice!), then her (the phone rang, I learned the word for “to ring”: klingeln), then I (it was his mother), then her (she was very excited: “aufgeregt” means “excited”), then I (because the neighbor’s dog had peed on her newspaper – I learned how to say “to pee” in German: “pinkeln”!), then her (she wants him to come over), then I (because she wants him to fight the neighbor: I learned how to say “to fight”: kämpfen), and on and on.  What fun!  Fun, and, most importantly: effective (frequently these two thing go together, as I’ve stated many times, right?).

This turned out to be fantastic.  I learned so much new German (vocabulary, grammar, everything) in that single one-hour session, I was just astounded – I should note that the few examples of new vocabulary I learned that I mentioned above were but a small portion of everything I learned that session, those are just a few examples I picked for you.  I was exhausted and ready to end by the time it was over, but in a good way.  I felt like we genuinely accomplished significant progress.  This was far, far more than I could’ve possibly hoped to accomplish on my own with any kind of self-study method (textbook, self-study course like Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur, etc.).

Regardless of anything else, I will say this about tutors (good ones): they’re extremely time-efficient.  Probably the most time-efficient method out there, or as we Americans like to say: you get the most bang for your buck.

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’m currently doing the iTalki 2015 Language Challenge which is where if you take at least 20 hours of instruction via their tutors then you can win 400 ITC (iTalki Credits, which are used to buy lessons with the tutors on there, with ten of them costing $1US). The language I’m doing it in is, of course, German since that’s what I’m learning at the moment.

What you’re reading right now is a repost from my blog on learning German (this links to the original) that I just started called Learn German with Andrew.  I will crosspost things between these two blogs from time to time, including this series of posts I’m going to do on the iTalki 2015 Language Challenge and using tutors in general.  I’m doing German for the challenge but everything I have to tell you about it and using tutors to learn a language will apply to whatever language you’re learning, not just German.  So no, it doesn’t matter if you’re not learning German – if you’re learning a language and think you might be interested in trying a tutor, these will be of interest to you.  I will tell you when I’m doing this (copying something from one blog to another) so if you’ve read it before you don’t waste your time.  On to the subject at hand…

I actually have tried this before, though that was for Spanish. I plan on doing at least six, possibly more, of these blog posts as I continue learning German via an online tutor so that you can follow my progress and get an idea of what it would entail if you were to do it.

I just had my first tutoring session the other day (and another one today, though that hasn’t given me much to add to this) and wanted to use my experience to relate to you how your first session will likely go and what you can expect:

• So far all the tutors I’ve scheduled a session with have sent me a message shortly thereafter, either asking for further clarification about my current abilities in the language or at least letting me know that the session is scheduled and they’ll see me then. So your first interaction with them will probably be with an iTalki message they’ll send you after you schedule your session.
• You’ll get a reminder on the day of the session about an hour and a half before it starts. I personally am grateful for this since I’m the sort of person who’s butt might just be saved by something like that (I don’t often forget appointments but it does happen).
• Once the call starts (on Skype, the tutoring sessions are all conducted via Skype), the first thing the tutor needs to do is assess your ability, to figure out just where you’re at in the process of learning this language. This is very important and can take a while if you’re not a complete beginner (if you are then they know just where you stand and where to start with you), expect to spend half or more of the first session doing this, though most of it is sort of done in the background. That is, they’ll be assessing your ability as they teach you, e.g. they might try to teach you something, not knowing whether you know it or not, and then find that you do and adjust their strategy accordingly. In other words, they’ll skip around and teach according to your specific needs. This is a good thing, you’re only spending your time learning what you don’t know and need to know and not spending your time on things you do already know or don’t need to know – the teacher figures all this out and does the work for you in this regard. This way you’re not wasting your time going over concepts you already know like you would with something rigid that doesn’t adjust to you personally like a software program, book, or class.
• My experience so far has been that the tutor will adapt themselves to you in every way possible, so that if you’re proficient enough in the language that the entire session can be conducted in it then they will, if you’re not then they’ll do it in your native language (presuming they speak it which is something you need to ensure beforehand). For example, my Spanish session with Vero was entirely in Spanish, this wasn’t a problem since I was already reasonably competent. My first German session was almost entirely in English since my German isn’t even near good enough to allow that sort of thing. I’ve yet to encounter a tutor who insists on doing the whole thing in the language being taught regardless of how well you speak it (that’s kind of an old-school technique that has, thankfully, mostly fallen out of fashion).
• Afterwards you’ll get an e-mail from iTalki asking you to confirm the session was completed and to leave feedback.

That’s pretty much it. I hope to be able to tell you more as I sample different tutors and get more experience with the whole tutoring thing in general. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments, 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

Hi guys, short little post here, primarily to share a video with you I just did but I also wanted to add some things that I didn’t get to in the video.  I’ve mentioned several times that SpanishDict is my preferred Spanish dictionary and my preferred Spanish verb conjugator, and I finally got around to doing a proper post about it.  It’s an extraordinarily useful tool for anyone learning Spanish that’s far, far more than just a dictionary, it also helps you learn/look up idioms, sayings, expressions, slang, as well as conjugates verbs better than any other tool I’ve ever seen, plus it has videos of native speakers pronouncing the great majority of all the words in their dictionary (which is huge, that’s a massive undertaking, that’s tens of thousands of videos), plus they’ve got a great grammar reference section as well as free Spanish lessons on their YouTube channel.  Check it out and be sure to look at the bit below the video where I go into the other areas of the site I didn’t get to in the video:

Additionally be sure to check out SpanishDict’s section on Spanish grammar and syntax – this is a great little list of various Spanish grammar and syntax components, they have good, easy to understand explanations and a quiz at the end of each one – as well as SpanishDict’s channel on YouTube where they have tons of lessons (aimed at beginners, they’re very clear and easy to understand) such as Por vs. Para and their excellent 2-part series of videos on the subjunctive which I used as the basis for my very popular post on that subject called The Spanish Subjunctive Explained + W.E.I.R.D.O System (awesome little mnemonic device for dealing with the subjunctive in Spanish).

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