Post: #1

Hola Amigos!

I know that there's plenty of threads on this and I've read plenty of them.
I've been learning Spanish using pretty much solely duo lingo for a while (probably half way through it) but I need to step up my game if I really want to master the language! My listening and speaking are really poor!

I'm working in China at the moment but plan to move somewhere Spanish speaking in a few months. But until then, I really want to put much more effort into this. What would you reccomend? Is it worth getting an online Spanish teacher? Watching cartoons in Spanish? Music?

My level is still really low so I find I can't understand barely anything I listen to.

Cheers!

Post: #2

Hi Zikibala
I'm learning spanish as well...

To better your listening skills I suggest that you start listening to spanish music daily.
Translate the song's lyrics, so you have an idea what its about, then try to sing along.
Also watch series/movies in spanish (La casa de papel, Ingobernable and Narcos are great)

Don't forget to read a bit once in a while since that can better your speaking.. here are a few short stories:
https://www.guiainfantil.com/articulos/o...-con-ninos

Now to the exciting part (IMO): Learning to speak the language.
I would recommend baselang.com (online tutoring)
for $129/month (first week is free) you can do unlimited one on one classes with native teachers mainly from venezuela.
You book classes with teachers who you choose (there are a lot of teachers, test a lot for one class, and then double down with the ones you like - some are really great, some are bad... luckily you always decide which teacher you want)
So the actual reason i think baselang really is vale la pena (worth it) is the "unlimited part".
E.g you could book 3 hours of classes everyday for 35 days, which would be an intense and nearly immersive learning experience... in the aforementioned case the cost/hour would be only $1.22

Personally, I had a great experienced with them... :-)

Cheers!

Post: #3

Thankyou, I’ll look into all of that. How’s your Spanish coming along?

Post: #4

It's coming along alright
I'm presumably intermediate...

Don't really want to specify any further than I did in my previous post due to paranoia (protecting my anonymity).

Post: #5

Check around for groups of people in your area also wanting to learn the same language, or finding a single person to partner up with. This is a good way to practice speaking, and a damn good excuse to meet women locally. You see them all over meetup.com or craigslist in the USA, and they usually get together at a coffee shop or a bar.

The only way I've experienced actually learning a language is a combination of thorough grammar introduction in classes / textbooks, and then immersion in country. It sounds like your already planning the second part (Mexico City, Bogota, Seville or Lima would be good places to go), but you definitely want to jump into the fundamentals of grammar before moving to a country. Once there, your vocabulary will explode just by living in the country. Hell, I'm living abroad in Eastern Europe and started picking up some Romanian vocabulary everyday even though I've got no intention of learning the language.

Also, there's a lot of great South American bands out there to listen to and learn language - Manu Chao, Jarabe de Palo, Cafe Tacuba.
Try reading Spanish news websites as well - El Pais or El Mundo in Spain, La Prensa in Mexico, La Nacion in Argentina.

Post: #6

Thankyou for the long reply SC! I've just paid for a membership with baselang, $129 a month but unlimited lessons. I'm going to aim for an hour every single day, with some duo lingo thrown in when I've got a little bit of time to kill.

I'm teaching in China at the moment and have plenty of spare time so may as well use it productively seeing as most of the women here are like nuns!

Post: #7

With baselang you use memrise, they have a specific lesson group that you need to follow that baselang created. If you do that between baselang lessons it will use the same words you use in lessons so you're learning the same stuff at the same time and it will speed up what you learn with lessons since the teacher won't have to tell you what a word means.

Post: #8

Sounds good. Can't wait to have my first lesson tomorrow! Hola chicaaaaas...

Post: #9

Additionally, as a matter of habit, use your discretionary time in Spanish (watching programs with Spanish subtitles and casually reading the news in Spanish). This usually is ~3 hours a day for a lot of folks.

Post: #10

Might be harder while in China, but definitely already start BEFORE moving to a Spanish speaking country.

Try to immerse yourself in the language. Watch Spanish series/movies with Spanish subtitles (or English with Spanish subtitles if your level is not that good yet), listen to Spanish music and read the lyrics next to it, read children books in Spanish. Try to find a Spanish native speaker to practice on Skype or something like that.

It's going to be a lot faster when you are in a Spanish speaking country. I've heard the ''cleanest'' and most understandable Spanish is in Mexico or Colombia. In Spain they speak a bit faster than in these countries. In Mexico (probably the same in Colombia), the people are really curious what you are doing there and are super friendly to talk too. I'd say this is also easier compared to Spain.

In these countries you will definitely have an advantage (with girls also), over the foreigners who don't speak any Spanish. I'd say more than 50%, either the girl doesn't speak that well English, or is a bit shy to speak it and it will be harder to make a strong connection.

Post: #11

Subscribe to The Great Course Plus. They'll give you a month for free. There are two college course you can watch by Bill Worden that will teach you everything :

https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/show...w_language

and

https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/show...w_language

The site is amazing, you can watch college courses on everything from cooking, spanish, psychology, history.

Post: #12

I'm using this for watching series in Spanish:

http://clasevirtual.ru/index/peliculas/0-4

The notesinspanish podcast is good too for additional listening.

As far as I've heard italki is a decent and inexpensive way of getting conversational practice.

My only problem is that I can follow Iberian Spanish but South American Spanish is sometimes hard to comprehend, even in the books that I'm using.

Post: #13

@icrus: Really? That's odd...the differences don't seem to be that significant to me

Try the Pimsleur(get the torrent, don't buy it). It'll help you with pronunciation.

In Bang Colombia, Roosh recommends an exercise book series titled"Practice makes perfect".

Also, get a netflix subscription and watch Spanish movies and shows with the subtitles. Also when you learn new words write them down on index cards and make sentences with them.

Post: #14

Thanks but I'm good with pronunciation and all, Spanish is actually fairly easy imo.

It's just that South American pronunciation sometimes differs a ton from Iberian Spanish. The other day I listened to something from Uruguay and had to repeat the audio three times. Colombia is fairly easy I agree, everything on Narcos is comprehensible.

Just a matter of preferences and getting used to it. But one should listen to as many regional accents as possible.

Post: #15

Read different kinds of texts and write a loooot. Listen to as much music as possible and then of course choose whatever learning method helps you. Find language partners online and dominate.

Post: #16

I was going to do italki and pay for the 15 per hour pro teachers. IS this the same quality teachers?

Post: #17

I second pimsleur and netflix. There are tons of American movies you can watch dubbed into Spanish on Netflix (just do a search by audio).

Obviously it's not the best way to learn "real" local Spanish and slang but for an intermediate speaker you can practice listening, but if you aren't a fan of the native Spanish selection you can listen to Spanish and still enjoy your favorite American movies and TV shows.

Lots of good podcasts as well - CNN en espanol, SBS radio spanish, spanishpod, etc

Post: #18

Cheers guys! I had two seperate 30 min lessons yesterday which wasn't ideal so now on I'll be doing a 1 hour lesson minimum everyday. First tutor I didn't really click with but the second was great so I've noted his name down for future reference. Got another hour booked for 7pm tonight!

Can anybody reccomend good Spanish movies/music/series?

Post: #19

(05-11-2018 10:43 PM)Zikibala Wrote:  Can anybody reccomend good Spanish movies/music/series?

As I mentioned above: La casa de papel, ingobernable and Narcos are great. I would also recommend documentary "The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate del Castillo Story" - It's pretty interesting, IMO.

Post: #20

I'm posting same question I've posted in Russian language thread, but applied to Spanish. For those of you who actually speak Spanish:

Is there a huge variation of accents among Spanish speakers - I imagine there is? I'm mostly interested in Spanish for gaming purposes in South and Central America.

Post: #21

(05-12-2018 02:56 AM)ComebackKid Wrote:  I'm posting same question I've posted in Russian language thread, but applied to Spanish. For those of you who actually speak Spanish:

Is there a huge variation of accents among Spanish speakers - I imagine there is? I'm mostly interested in Spanish for gaming purposes in South and Central America.

More or less. The spanish accent is not the same as the Argentinian (be porteño or from the provincies) as the Colombian or the Mexican.

The Colombian castellano tend to be more "neutral", and if you have some experience with italian, the Argentinian castellano is better for you. If you plan to go to Spain, learn the spaniard castellano.

Post: #22

(05-11-2018 10:43 PM)Zikibala Wrote:  Cheers guys! I had two seperate 30 min lessons yesterday which wasn't ideal so now on I'll be doing a 1 hour lesson minimum everyday. First tutor I didn't really click with but the second was great so I've noted his name down for future reference. Got another hour booked for 7pm tonight!

Can anybody reccomend good Spanish movies/music/series?

As cheesy as the little Mexican woman is, I like Butterfly Cupid. She takes a single theme and drills down. She is a little bit of an oddball, but I like it, keeps me awake. Shes all over youtube.

Narcos is always good, or just start watching movies in Spanish with subtitles. Rule of thumb is to watch a Spanish movie with the subtitles on IN SPANISH at first, then you can get away from that.

Post: #23

I've gone through the Spanish learning journey. Took me roughly 2.5 years to become something I call fluent. There are still words or grammatical expressions missing here and there, but I'm able to hold basically any normal conversation, watch movies, read books.

This is how I would do it, if I had to do it again (goes for all languages with Roman alphabet):

1. Do at least half of the Duolingo course. The later exercises are too heavy on the grammar imo.

2. You still don't know enough to enjoy any movie, book etc. First you need a working base and this is now the hardest part in my opinion. I would look at my favourite TV series, that I know really well and start watching it in Spanish. Sometimes with Spanish subtitles, sometimes without. The key is, that you already know the series very well, so you know what the actors say in which situation. Pro tip: drink a cup of coffee beforehand, you will get more immersed.

3. Books are far too difficult to read in the beginning. Go with comic books + Google Translate. It does apply the same logic as with TV series. If you already have a favourite comic book you know well, get a Spanish copy. Otherwise I recommend the walking dead, which is called "los muertos vivientes" in Spanish. The images help to transport the meaning and there is less decorative and more direct, useful speach. Look for complete volumes, called "integral", as they are much cheaper. The internet is also full of websites too download them. Just google for "cómics español descargar". Don't go with computer games as the "game" part will draw your attention away from the actual language.

4. Probably at some point you want to get used to the grammar. Get a pure grammar textbook without exercises and vocabularies and shit.

5. Change the language of your smartphone and computer OS to Spanish. You can do this also right from the beginning if you don't fear making mistakes.

6. While keeping on with steps 2-5 you want to start practicing with real humans. It would be awesome if you have access to Spanish speakers in your city. If not, get Tinder plus and spoof to any Spanish location and start texting.

7. Start traveling. Your Spanish is probably still total shit, especially speaking. So I think it's crucial that you force yourself into speaking as much Spanish as possible. This might be very difficult for some guys, as gaming does become much harder. Rather just enjoy the trip and talk everyone up. Old grandma, drug dealers, taxi drivers, hot chicks, ugly chicks, you get it. Naturally you want to go to a place where people are friendly, curious about you and willing to listen to your pathetic language abilities. For this, I recommend Mexico or Colombia. Ideally you dedicate some 2-3 months to this and keep on reading/listening to music/watching movies while traveling.

8. You should have at least a small working base by now. Keep going on and always immerse yourself in content that you are really interested about.

As I said, it took me roughly 2.5 years with some intense phases of learning but also some major breaks. Also lived 1 year in Spain. If you push really hard, I believe you can get a decent level within 1 year.

Post: #24

Great post. I am learning Spanish right now. With Baselang, do the tutors use the total immersion style of teaching where they do everything in Spanish or do they teach in English and use the traditional approach used in schools to teach languages?

(05-10-2018 02:13 AM)Plexiglass Wrote:  Hi Zikibala
I'm learning spanish as well...

To better your listening skills I suggest that you start listening to spanish music daily.
Translate the song's lyrics, so you have an idea what its about, then try to sing along.
Also watch series/movies in spanish (La casa de papel, Ingobernable and Narcos are great)

Don't forget to read a bit once in a while since that can better your speaking.. here are a few short stories:
https://www.guiainfantil.com/articulos/o...-con-ninos

Now to the exciting part (IMO): Learning to speak the language.
I would recommend baselang.com (online tutoring)
for $129/month (first week is free) you can do unlimited one on one classes with native teachers mainly from venezuela.
You book classes with teachers who you choose (there are a lot of teachers, test a lot for one class, and then double down with the ones you like - some are really great, some are bad... luckily you always decide which teacher you want)
So the actual reason i think baselang really is vale la pena (worth it) is the "unlimited part".
E.g you could book 3 hours of classes everyday for 35 days, which would be an intense and nearly immersive learning experience... in the aforementioned case the cost/hour would be only $1.22

Personally, I had a great experienced with them... :-)

Cheers!

Post: #25

After learning the basics using Duolingo, Pimsleur and such, what did a big difference for me was consuming some reading/listening material that was easy enough to understand without relying too much on a dictionary. This is called extensive reading/listening. The point is to immerse you into the language by doing something that is relatively enjoyable, while also grinding some vocab and grammar patterns into your brain.

For reading I suggest Lola Lago graded readers about a female detective. Easy to find a pdf on google, just search "lola lago pdf". The first/easiest book is called "Vacaciones al sol". I already felt a huge jump in my comprehension (not to mention the feeling of accomplishment) just by reading this one.

For listening I suggest "Extra spanish" on youtube (enable spanish subtitles to make it easier to understand). It's super dorky but good practice until you're ready for some real TV series.