Effective ways to learn a new language

[The Notorious PhD]

I want to achieve conversational fluency in Spanish (took two years of it in high-school, many years ago) and I'm looking around to find the best methods to do so, besides full-immersion in a Spanish-speaking country.

The three options I can think of are: take classes at local community college, Rosetta Stone, and the Pimsleur programs, combined with listening to Spanish radio and practicing with my friends who are native speakers.

Does anyone have experience with these, or other, methods? Which have you found most effective?

[CHB2]

I took spanish in high school and college, and did rosetta stone to brush up one summer, although I was trying to speak to this Mexican girl a few weeks ago and my skills have significantly diminished since I stopped taking classes. I found that when I was learning that watching cartoons dubbed into spanish with spanish subtitles helped a lot - I just watched a few episodes of the simpsons that I was familiar with every day and I started to get better. It sounds strange, but I have heard it suggested in other places and it was pretty easy.

[The Notorious PhD]

(03-21-2012 02:53 AM)CHB2 Wrote:  I just watched a few episodes of the simpsons that I was familiar with every day and I started to get better. It sounds strange, but I have heard it suggested in other places and it was pretty easy.

Haha, I really like that idea! Especially since Telemundo/Univision always seem to have the best choice for movie re-runs.

[Leo]

The best and easiest way? Get a girlfriend that speaks spanish. That's the best way to speak any language, I'm not kidding. It's sooooo easy! Of course try to get a smart, educated hispanic girlfriend to learn spanish properly. I've met hispanic girls that don't know how to speak or write spanish properly.

[Tim]

Oh man I don't want to go into salesperson mode here butttttt... buy my program! I work for a small startup called Go Vocab and basically our site lets you practice your vocab online with quizzes and other activities. And in fact for Spanish you can also practice conjugating verbs, which is a big part of learning Spanish. The software is aimed at secondary school students, and you can't learn a whole language just from it, but it's really great at what it does specifically.

Currently I'm trying to learn some Spanish, and to do so I'm basically using spanish.about.com to teach myself the concepts behind it, use Go Vocab to learn a big vocabulary and how to conjugate verbs, and then I'll speak with fluent speakers to get conversational with it. I'd recommend anyone else to do the same.

Basically you need a big vocabulary, no matter how many of the Spanish grammar rules or whatever you know. You can know what the preterite tense is or when to use usted, but without the words you can't read, write or understand anything. Go Vocab is basically a way to build up a big bank of words, including just listening to the pronunciation of them, and in Spanish we've now introduced a verbs feature, which will teach you how to conjugate both regular and irregular verbs.

There's a two week trial for free, so you can try it out and make sure I'm not bullshitting you
And if you need any help you can email me at tim@govocab.com directly and I'll help you out!

Mark, if this is too spammy/commercial let me know and I'll edit it.

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Oh, and I hate Rosetta Stone. Huge waste of time.

[Mark]

Ahh! A subject close to my heart. I plan on writing a full post on this at some point. I speak Spanish quasi-fluently (very high conversational), am conversational in Portuguese and low conversational in Russian. I've spent hundreds of hours studying and practicing languages in the past two years. Here are some comments.

- Rosetta Stone blows. Waste of money.

- Pimsleur is the best at going from zero to low conversational. If you need to learn the most important and basic phrases in any language quickly Pimsleur will get you there the fastest. But past that, it's almost useless. Every new language I start with, I start with Pimsleur though.

- Classes can take you from no experience to highly conversational, but I find them to be an inefficient use of time. It's very easy to get held up in classes due to a poor teacher, or classmates who suck. You don't get personal attention and you never get to practice on subjects you like talking about, so it's hard to stay motivated.

- Watching TV shows and movies is useful once you already have a basic understanding of the language. They're helpful and can give you a little extra boost, but nobody ever got fluent watching TV or movies in another language alone. Same goes for reading websites in other languages. Helpful, but not sufficient by itself. These should be a supplement to your studying, not your primary source of studying.

- One on one tutoring is absolutely the most efficient way to learn a new language. It's also the most expensive. But to me it's worth it. I've wasted a LOT of time and money with online courses, books, classes, etc. A good one on one tutor will get you as far in two hours as you would normally in ten.

- Studying on your own should be a supplement no matter what you do. Practice vocabulary and grammar. Anki is a great online flashcard tool and you can download databases of vocabulary in other languages to practice.

- Load up on as many lessons as possible in as little time as possible. What I mean is, two hours a day for a week is better than one hour a day for two weeks. What I've learned (the hard way), is that when I want to learn a new language, I block off 3-4 weeks of my life and basically dedicate everything to it and study it 4+ hours a day during that time. It's draining and sucks sometimes, but you come out the other end MASSIVELY better. If you came to me and said I could do 4 hours a day for a month, or three hours a week for a year, I would take the four hours a day for a month every single time. You learn more. You learn faster. You retain more.

- Once your conversational, find a language exchange buddy, i.e., a native Spanish speaker who wants to practice their English. This is easier to find abroad, but I'm sure you could find it in the states for Spanish fairly easily. Meet up 1-2 times a week, talk for an hour in English and correct them, and then speak for an hour in Spanish and let them correct you. It's very useful for going from conversational to fluent. And it's free as well!

- And as Leo said, dating a native speaker helps a lot.

[The Notorious PhD]

You guys rock - thank you for the superb suggestions! Muchas gracias (ha!)

[Leo]

Ya sabes, buscate tu novia hispana, que este bien buena, con tremendo culo para que disfrutes de buen sexo y aprendas espanol rapidamente. Asi matas 2 pajaros de un tiro, practicas PU y aprendes espanol. Que mas quieres?

[Mark]

Quote:...con tremendo culo...

Esta es la parte mas importante de aprender espanol.

[t_bone]

Aprendo espanol tambien

I heard a lot of good reviews about the products from "Auralog: Tell Me More".

I use it, just started a week ago so I can´t tell if it´s good or not. Besides that had also a course in college for 3 months.
I´m looking forward to my trip to Madrid next week

[CharlesB]

(03-21-2012 09:24 PM)t_bone Wrote:  Aprendo espanol tambien

I heard a lot of good reviews about the products from "Auralog: Tell Me More".

I use it, just started a week ago so I can´t tell if it´s good or not. Besides that had also a course in college for 3 months.
I´m looking forward to my trip to Madrid next week

Well it's stupid how there is still no serious software product about learning language(except some vocabularies).I found Tell me more, very hard to navigate,and seems like it is more for the people that they already know the language,as I didn't found any organised chain-course of learning.

[Chaos]

(03-21-2012 03:34 AM)Mark Wrote:  - Watching TV shows and movies is useful once you already have a basic understanding of the language. They're helpful and can give you a little extra boost, but nobody ever got fluent watching TV or movies in another language alone. Same goes for reading websites in other languages. Helpful, but not sufficient by itself. These should be a supplement to your studying, not your primary source of studying.

I did, once you get the basics for me that's the most effective (price wise) method to improve. You just fucking watch anything in that language... I used to consume EVERY single tv show, even the ones that I would have problems understanding (like House)... and since I'm a freak that means like 2 hours a day at leas , over time I picked up most of the language and, specially, a lot of slang and expressions that you're not likely to get anything else.