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LANGUAGE STUDY TIPS: FOR LEARNING SPANISH AND OTHER LANGUAGES

PREPARING FOR YOUR IN-COUNTRY
SPANISH LANGUAGE IMMERSION SCHOOL EXPERIENCE

~Charley Hodson, Director, Aventuras Languages

At AVENTURAS LANGUAGES , we receive dozens of calls and emails every year from students who have studied a language in high school or at the university level that complain that although they understand the structure of the language, they cannot speak it very well. Most of the time, this is because they were not encouraged nor given opportunities to speak! Here we offer some tips of things that have been useful to us in improving our Spanish skills!

Many Spanish language schools will try to attract you to their schools by stating that you can learn in one week with them what you can learn at other language schools in 6. Some note a guarantee. Other schools try to entice you by noting that they use the natural approach or communicative method and don't emphasize grammar. We like the natural approach and the communicative methods, but even these teach you grammar. You do need to know how to structure a sentence and conjugate a verb to speak a language! As language immersion students ourselves, we suggest that you stay away from hype like this. Learning a language is fun and it is hard work requiring commitment and adjunctive means of study to integrate the language. You don't learn the guitar by letting it sit in the corner of your room. La practica hace el maestro! Practice makes the teacher! So you need to find a number of different ways to help you along your learning adventure. Studying in-country is both fun and potentially tax deductible. There are also other adjuncts to help you learn Spanish or another language. We have listed some tips below for you.

Regardless of your level of Spanish, there are many things that you can do in 2-4 hours per week to help you begin to ramp-up and prepare right now for your in-country language immersion studies. Listed in this article are tips for beginning students with little or no knowledge of Spanish or your chosen language to study. Some of these tips are also great for intermediate and advanced students. These are also good ideas after your in-country studies to maintain gains and continue to improve your skills. The more of these ideas you commit yourself to, the quicker you will begin speaking!

You will need an introductory Spanish text book: You can pick-up a cheap or inexpensive Spanish book online. Focus on initially understanding basic sentence structure and verb conjugation. Choose 10-15 high use verbs: Go, work, eat, travel, drink, talk, listen, study, buy, sell, make, use, live, and a few others. Then learn to construct one simple sentence, the same one, in basic present tense conjugations (Voy a Mexico=I am going to Mexico), preterite tense conjugations (Fuí a México=I went to Mexico), and simple future tense conjugations (Voy a ir a México=I am going to go to Mexico). This will build your ability to make sentences and allow you to quickly be able to speak in the most common present, past and future verb forms.

Pick-up a verb conjugation book: To begin with something like the series 201 Spanish Verbs, 201 Italian Verbs or the language of your choice. You won't yet need the 501 Spanish Verbs version! Keep it simple. 201 SPANISH VERBS 201 Spanish Verbs

Consider buying a Spanish language software program: There are several excellent ones available online. We like Visual Link Spanish software. You can try out a several of Visual Link's free online lessons at this link: Visual Link Software Free Online Lessons. We like this software because it helps students quickly understand verb conjugation and sentence structure as well as allowing you to hear the Latin American accent. We also think that it is excellent for building quick conversational fluency.

Listening to Spanish and Latin Music: Now find some Latin music that you like and purchase a couple of CDs or simply turn on your car or home stereo and tune in a Spanish languages radio station. These days Spanish language radio stations are available in most locations. Search around to find one with music you enjoy. You can begin with just listening to 10-20 minutes a couple of times a day. This helps you to build a listening ear for both the accent, rythm and speed of the language. I like to practice words that I hear to build practice actually speaking. In the car or at home alone is a great place to do this.

Study online with a professional language immersion teacher or tutor: There are many online learning formats for learning a language most using live voice/video/email methods. It is important when searching for live online Spanish teachers, instructors or tutors, to evaluate your potential instructor. A native speaker is worth the investment. I recently viewed a site for a Spanish tutor online who is a recent college graduate from England who offers live online classes. Consider the difference in learning from this native tutor from the UK who has had to work to develop an accent and is just beginning to teach versus another Spanish tutor online with live classes who is a native Mexican instructor with 25 years of experience teaching Spanish in an in-country language format and who has his Diplomate in Teaching Spanish as a Second Language. There is another website offering Spanish lessons online from native Guatemalan instructors. The price is right, but I don't see where they have either a lot of experience in teaching nor the advanced training in teaching Spanish as a second language. The other thing to note here is what kind of accent and dialect of Spanish do you want to learn. Those in Europe may want to consider a native Spanish teacher with years of experience from Spain. However, someone in the United States or Canada would generally prefer someone from Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America as folks that they will come in contact with at home in their employment or elsewhere in their communities will likely use Latin America styles of speaking and accents will be more similar. Spanish spoken in Spain uses verb forms and an accent with a lisp not used in Latin American countries.

Viewing Movies and CDs in Spanish: This is fun, helps develop your ear and is also very challenging! It helps to begin with movies that you may have seen before in English. It also helps to view the movie more than once. Sometimes it is helpful to view the movie in bite size chunks! Watch for 15-20 minutes, then return later for another bite.

Hire a Local Spanish Tutor: Consider hiring a local tutor, perhaps a local community college or university student that is a native speaker and well versed in English. When doing this or any other adjunct to study it is important to consider repetition and consistency. This means that it is better to set up 2-3 study blocks with your tutor of 1-2 hours per week versus one longer block of 3-4 hours per week. You will get better integration and retention with smaller blocks and higher frequency of classes. Building spontaneous speech is so important. Structure your tutoring with input and consultation from your tutor, but be certain that they understand that you need to be actually speaking for a large part of the class. Many teachers will talk on and on giving instruction. What we have learned from the communicative method of language learning is that opportunities for the students to speak are vital in building conversational fluency.

Use It or Lose It! Upon return from in-country immersion studies: Once you return from in-country immersion studies it is vital that you make a plan to integrate at least 2-3 of the above recommendations. You must continue using what you have learned or you will begin to lose what you have spent considerable time, money and energy in acquiring. Return trips for additional immersion are recommended unless you have studied abroad for 4 months or more.

Limitations of local Conversational Spanish classes at community colleges and universities: While taking a class like this can be fun and certainly won't hurt (or will it?!), there are far more effective methods of study to integrate language acquisition. The major problem with conversational Spanish classes, although well intentioned, is that students never really get much time to actually speak. Usually, this is what they were looking for! When they do, it is usually in small breakout groups that are minimally supervised by instructors or class tutors. The reason for this is obviously cost. If conversational Spanish classes actually had an instructor or class aide or tutor in each of these breakout groups then I would think differently about this as an adjunct to your studies. So what happens in these classes is that while students get more of an opportunity to speak, they are unsupervised most of the time. This simply reinforces incorrect patterns of speech and pronunciation.

If you have come up with other helpful tips, please send them to us and we will consider them for inclusion in this article.

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