learn Spanish

I still like Learning Spanish Like Crazy. I’m kind of done with level 1. Kind of, meaning I need to go back and listen a few more times to the last five lessons to get more comfortable and quicker with my responses. Every lesson has the same format a conversation at the beginning, then smaller phrases along with new nouns and verbs are introduced. In the beginning only the present tense is introduced with new verbs. Later lessons introduce not only the present tense, but past tenses and other tenses of the verbs are not only introduced but interspersed throughout the lesson.

Usually at the end of the lesson there may be a little quiz, where you are asked a question in Spanish and told what to say in English and your response is to be in Spanish. Then the instructor repeats the answer and hopefully you were right.

There are 30 approximately 30 minute lessons. Plus several bonus lessons which include a couple of lessons from level 2. So, in level 1 you have a couple lessons from level 2 plus the insult lessons, a non-vulgar and a very vulgar insults lesson along with Spanish Idioms. Sayings that don’t really have a direct translation. With level 2 you get about the same format but more advanced of course and the bonus lessons include a couple of slang lessons and about five more regular lessons above and beyond the 30 normal lessons. Plus all of the video lessons, the user forums, pdf transcripts and weekly teleconferences. Learning Spanish Like Crazy is the best program out there.

The only lacking part is that I think there isn’t a review lesson. About every 5 or even 10 lessons I wish there was a review of the previous lessons without having to go through the entire 30 minutes of each lesson. If you only need a review going back the entire course is a much to listen to. To fix that I’ve started making my own review lessons. So far, I’m only taking the conversation at the beginning of the lesson and the little quiz at the end. In the later lessons I may go through and get some of the smaller phrases that are learned and worked on.

Get your free trial lessons, which are the real first 5 lessons to try it for yourself. Learning Spanish Like Crazy. If you can fully and easily understand the little snippet from lesson 30, you may want to go straight to Level 2, but there is still a lot of stuff in Level 1, especially in the later lessons, probably after lesson 13 it starts getting harder and it’s not just a matter of responding, it’s a matter of having to think and come up with your responses a lot quicker. Since they are on Mp3’s it’s easy to go back and even repeat the lessons several times, which most people have to do.
lesson30snippet

Spanish Pod celebrated their 100th lesson awhile back. Their website has had a makeover and they’ve added grammar and their “comments” (forums) have been expanded. A personal RSS Feed, audio quizzes, transcripts and more. Plus Spanish Pod has been doing a lot more Spanish slang. No swear words yet, but you can get Spanish swear words here.

• audios
• visuals
• text with speaking practice
• discussion
• exercises
• flashcards
• concentration game
• and more

Materials are organized into 3 subscription levels. You select the level that suits you according to your budget and schedule.

If you really want to go above and beyond you can sign up for the Guided or Executive levels and get SpanishPod’s new Guided service, you’ll chat with an expert to tailor your studies, and then meet once a month for testing and feedback.

The site and the program have been upgraded and is worth checking out and worth checking out again if you passed them up before. Spanish Pod! Sign up with only your email here and get a free 7 day Premium trial.

Flashcard Exchange is a great site for not only building your own flashcards but you can use and share the flashcards other people have made. There are literally thousands of flashcards already available for Spanish. People have made flashcards to help with certain CD programs, flashcards that are related by a certain subject or you’ll see flashcard sets made to help in a language class in school.

The basic membership is free and allows you to build a flashcard set and share it, use other’s flashcard sets and study online. With a on time fee of $19.95 you get to print out your flash cards, export them to excel and use flash cards with images.

Not only is there Spanish, but almost any language in the world. And not only languages but many different subjects like Pharmacology, Anatomy, Chemistry, Nursing and almost any subject imaginable.

There are a zillion different places on the internet to find stuff to help you learn how to speak Spanish. The most common and well known is Amazon.com. I’ve got a “Store” setup on the Products page that has a bunch of learning Spanish products in one place. Full disclosure - It’s an “affiliate” store, if you buy something or even click through to Amazon, I’ll get a very small commission. I mainly put it there to see how it would look and another was so everything would be in one place. There are books, dictionaries, and I even started going to Amazon for downloading of some Latin music MP3’s. So, it’s convienent for me. I like Amazon for the reviews, but I try and be careful of the reviews too. I take out the highest (could be an agenda) and the lowest (could be an ax to grind) and believe more of the ones in the middle ground. And I’ve still boughten things that weren’t really right for me.

Did you know there are Spanish Learning Products on Ebay? (Click here) Tons and tons of Spanish learning stuff. Ebay isn’t just about auctions. Most products have a “Buy it Now” symbol. Instead of waiting for the auction to end, just buy it. Usually for a lot cheaper than anywhere else on the net. A lot of people have regular stores setup on Ebay and are carrying more than one item or more than one copy so what’s the point of an auction? You may still get it cheaper, but probably not by much. If you’ve never done Ebay, it’s easy to sign up, most take credit cards or Paypal and your purchases are completely secure and any customer service issues are usually handled quickly because people don’t want bad reviews or their rating to drop. And yes, that’s an affiliate link also.

Either the Amazon or the Ebay listings are there mainly as reference for myself and my own shopping. Plus it was a nice programming exercise. With the commissions either of these pay, I’d have to get tens of thousands of visitors here a month to quit my day job and that’s not going to happen. If you’d like to support the site, I’d appreciate it, especially since it doesn’t raise or affect your costs at all.

I’m about two thirds through level one of Learning Spanish Like Crazy. It’s getting harder, but not impossible. It is getting more challenging. Now when a new verb is learned, the past tense and the present tense is learned along with whatever other tense they can throw in. It takes me a little longer to think about which tense is suppose to be and what the answer is. They’re not really “trick” questions, but the questions definitely make you think. It’s not just a hear and translate mode. I’ve noticed the English part being said in different ways for the same Spanish answer.

I’m still listening to Spanish Pod. Newbie lessons are too easy, Elementary is good, Intermediate is about right. There’s still some English at Intermediate about half and half. One instructor will be speaking totally Spanish and the other will be speaking mostly English while explaining the grammar. Spanish Pod is a good listen and learn. They don’t give the listener any time to respond so any responding or practicing has to be done while the program is in progress. One thing I like about Spanish Pod is it’s very practical, very every day and modern. You can learn modern terms for using cellphones, texting and computers which is pretty cool.

I actually do my best studying while working. Since I haven’t been driving much I don’t get the study time I was getting before. And between another job and trying to find other jobs while I’m not working at my real job takes away from study time also. Plus, being really sick for about a week and trying to work through it didn’t put me in a studying mood.

These things happen. Life gets in the way of studying and fun stuff. A few days is easy, but this time a few days turned into a lot of days. One bad thing about Learning Spanish Like Crazy is there is no review. There is a ton of stuff that is learned but no little quizzes or review chapters. For myself, I can’t stand going through the entire half hour lesson for just a review. I’ve done podcasts and I actually became moderately good at using Audacity, an open source sound file editor. I’ve got the mp3’s, all I need to do is go through and take out the repetition. Easier said than done. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m not going to post it so forget about that idea. I will let you know how it turns out.

Guest post by Bliss at blissbloggin.blogspot.com

I had one Spanish class in third grade because I was a Texas kid. In my 20s I went to Mexico with two other women, we spent a couple of weeks playing around with an old Spanish textbook we found. When my husband and I sailed to Mexico in 1997 we took a Jr. College course, but didn’t finish it. I still have the textbook. I also have Spanish for dummies, a couple of good dictionaries, a verb book, and I use Ultralingua on my computer for translations.

But best of all I found a teacher in Guaymas, 20 min. from home, who spends an hour with me on Spanish and an hour singing Mexican songs with me. I’ve learned a lot about pronunciation and Mexican culture by singing. She’s helping me translate my blog into Spanish, goes over newspaper articles with me so I’m beginning to read more Mexican news, and helped me break into conjugating, an area where I was clueless. I could be working a lot harder (and plan to) but I’m already able to have limited conversations with Mexicans. It’s my goal to be able to have unlimited conversations on any subject and make friends with Mexicans wherever I go.

Bliss
blissbloggin.blogspot.com

Even if you don’t swear or use bad words in English, you know what they are. You learned what they were at some point in your life, even if the only reason was to avoid them. The same principle can be used while learning Spanish. I don’t swear a lot in English, right now. There was a time when I swore a lot. I’m not planning on swearing a lot in Spanish, but I wanted to know, partly for curiosity and partly to know when I was being insulted or made fun of.

Also you want to make sure you’re not insulting anyone by accident by saying the wrong word or a word in the wrong way. Knowing profanity doesn’t make you a profane person, it makes you smarter so you know which words to avoid.

What I found was that it depends on what country you’re going to or in my case, where the people you’re talking to came from. Swearing has more to do with the local slang and how certain words have a meaning in one country and may mean something completely different in another country or the biggest point - In what context it’s used. Do I have to use an example? Balls. Perfectly normal everyday, family rated word used all of the time. But used in a certain context, has a completely different meaning.

I don’t endorse swearing or insulting anyone, but for educational purposes, here are a few resources I’ve found if you’re looking to learn what the guy yelling at you was saying!

Read the rest of this entry »

En la fiesta del carnaval Silacayoapan, Oaxaca.
In the carnival on Silacayoapan, Oaxaca.

Carnaval Silacayoapan, originally uploaded by BurrodeOaxaca..

 

Words Galore is a free program for Windows only. Words Galore has thousands of Spanish words made into several different lists you can choose from.

You’re able to move the words you know into the “known” list so you won’t see them again and you can concentrate on words you don’t know.

Features

• Make your own lists - Choose from several lists available on the program or download others from the website or make your own customized list of words.
• Student Testing - You can test yourself (or someone else) on Spanish vocabulary. The test will alternate between knowing the Spanish for an English word and then randomly reverse it to being tested on knowing the English for a Spanish word.
• Flash Cards - Choose a list and learn from the words on the screen. It can’t print actual cards to carry around. Adjustable settings and it remembers the words you’ve learned.
• Search - A search feature if your looking for a specific English or Spanish word.
• Create Mp3 files - Take your flash card list and make a Mp3. You have to download the English version of the sound files to hear both English along with the Spanish.
• Hangman - It’s not in the program, but there’s a link to a hangman game on the front page.

This is a great program to learn thousands (9,100 to be exact) of Spanish vocabulary words. There aren’t phrases and you can’t split the lists into categories unless you go in manually and edit the files. If there’s demand for that, let me know and I’ll do it or put up a tutorial showing how to do it.

For a flash card program and to create flash card mp3’s this does a great job! Here’s the link for it again.