My tips for learning Spanish 3

[Manuel]

Grammar just explains how the language works, what its rules are, and you will need to know this eventually anyway if you want to speak with any degree of proficiency. You might as well learn it from the start. The problem is that most people study it and then learn to apply it by translating sentences on paper. But translating sentences will not turn you into a fluent speaker. Of course every contact with Spanish will help with speaking, but the best way to learn to speak, as we’ve already established is to practice speaking (or thinking) itself.

First, a note of warning. When you get a grammar book, in contrast to the dictionary, I do NOT recommend to get the biggest, most comprehensive, authoritative work on grammar available! This may seem contradictory but I’ll explain why. When you are a novice, you want to have a book with a good basic overview of the most important grammatical concepts you need to learn. If you buy a huge, comprehensive grammar book, like this one (which I’ve bought):

A new reference grammar of Modern Spanish by John Butt & Carmen Benjamin,

you get a thick book of almost 500 pages that goes into GREAT detail on every grammar issue and mentions lots of exceptions to rules etc.

The problem with that is that you will read about all sorts of minor details and exceptions that you don’t need at first. These will obscure all the major grammar points that are the most important to learn first. You will basically not see the forest through the trees. You will be much better off with a more modest grammar book that explains all the important things, but doesn’t go overboard on the details.

So how SHOULD you employ grammar?

I think the essential thing with grammar is to use the same rule as I mentioned in thinking:

Immediately apply whatever new thing you learn.

This means that you should NOT go through an entire grammar book and read all chapters and try to memorize all the rules. That will just overload your brain. Also, I wouldn’t do a whole bunch of written exercises where you have to translate sentences. If your goal is to learn to speak, then you must apply the grammar in your speech (or thinking), not your writing. UNLESS, of course, you also want to master writing Spanish. But even if you do, I still think it’s more useful (not to mention a lot more fun!) to first concentrate on speaking and thinking. You can always improve your writing later.

So just do the same as you do with your vocabulary. Pick ONE thing, for example, the construction “as….as”, like in “as big as a house” (which in Spanish is “tan…como”) and then start practicing thinking with this grammatical construction. Don’t translate sentences with it. Just practice talking to yourself with it, say stuff to yourself like “Este cuchillo no es tan grande como ése.” or “No es tan fácil como parece.” etc.

Every grammar book will have many example phrases, demonstrating the concept. You can use these written phrases as a starting point to make up your own; just vary them in some way to get extra practice. Except you don’t write them down but immediately think them to yourself. E.g., in one of my grammar books where the construction “menos…que”, which means “less/smaller…than”, is explained, there is the example phrase: Pepe es menos alto que Ana (Pepe is shorter than Ana.) You could change this to: Yo soy menos alto que tú (I am shorter than you.)

In this way you can use all the example phrases of the grammar book as starting points to create your own thoughts.

Passive learning
So far we’ve talked mostly about the active use of Spanish, in the sense of expressing yourself through speaking, thinking and writing.

The passive learning of Spanish involves reading and listening.

This is pretty self-explanatory, but the big question is: what do you read and listen TO?

There is an almost infinite amount of information available these days, especially since we have the internet. But not all information is equally useful. If someone says to you “the more Spanish you read, the faster you will learn”, that is true from a certain perspective, but it does matter a lot WHAT you read.

For example, suppose you read only highly technical information about electronics and computers in Spanish. Do you think that will help you to talk in an interesting way about relationships and dating? Of course not! Why not? Because the topic of relationships and dating has a totally different vocabulary than the topic of electronics.

If you read about electronics in Spanish, you will learn a lot of new words that deal with the topic of electronics. This should be obvious. It also means that the most effective way to use reading to improve your Spanish is to read about the things you would like to be able to talk about!

This is so important that I am going to say it again. Burn this into your brain:

To be able to speak fluently about a subject in a certain language, you need to absorb information about that subject in that specific language.

What does this mean in practice?

Think about everything you are interested in, talk about, or come in contact with in your own language. Then find a source of equivalent information in Spanish about it, not just books, but also radio, TV, film etc.

I will give you a huge list now of things that I’ve researched for my own life. All of the resources below relate to things that I am interested in myself, come in contact with, and occupy myself with in my own language. By learning about them and studying them in another language I will also be able to speak about them in that new language because through those resources I am learning the necessary vocabulary to be able to express myself regarding those topics.

Your needs will obviously be different, so you need to think about your own life and create a list like this yourself and find the appropriate resources in Spanish for YOU.

My list of resources

-Fiction books (my public library has a pretty large collection).
-Non-fiction books (bought from Amazon, or also downloaded from a torrent site, e.g. spanish translations of English personal growth books etc. Spanish audiobooks are great too.)
-Spanish version of English comics
-Grammar books. (I sort of read the grammar book as a novel, skipping all the explanations, and just reading the example phrases, for review. Remember: repetition is the mother of skill.)
-Movies (original Spanish language and Spanish versions of Hollywood movies)
-Youtube videos with Spanish subtitles
-Spanish magazines
-The internet (I use the spanish version of google (Google.es) when I want to look something up in Spanish. For example, if I want some information about something that is not country-specific, I might look it up in Spanish instead of in my own language and then I would use the Spanish google)
-Music with Spanish lyrics. I went online and searched for listings of Spanish pop and added dozens of songs to my playlist in Spotify. I also listen to a lot of salsa music.
-Spanish language forums. Like Tomísimo.org

The biggest resource I use at the moment, however, is specific websites on the internet that deal with my interests. This is a huge list, I have put the links below. Check some of them out, they deal with my personal interests so many of them will probably not interest you, but you can use them as a starting point for creating your own list of websites that you will regularly visit.

Here’s how I created the list: I thought to myself “Ok, what things do I occupy myself with in my own language? What do I always talk about with others? What kinds of things am I interested in? What do I always think about? What do I like to read about? Learn more about? etc.” It’s easy to figure this out, just look around in your own life! Here is a partial list of topics that I learned I needed to find information in Spanish about:

Martial arts (something I study myself)
Blogs (I like to read certain blogs in English online)
Personal growth/psychology (a topic I like to read about and think about)
Forums (places online that I visit in English)
IT (I am also interested in computers and I know VERY few Spanish terms when it comes to this topic!)
Music
News (Spanish newspapers etc. to learn about current events in Spanish)
Movies (I am a movie buff)
Radio & television (obviously useful for improving listening skills)
Magazines (I love to read about anything and everything in my own language, so I also like to explore many different topics in Spanish)
The yellow pages (I don’t use those much anymore with the internet available nowadays, but it was something I consulted in my own language, so I figured I would try and find the Spanish version of the yellow pages)
Website of a public library (I use the public library of my own city, so why not try to find the website of a public library of a major Spanish city? You don’t have to be able to borrow books. Just visit the website to learn new vocabulary that relates to library use)
Spanish version of Wikipedia.
Spanish version of Ebay
Spanish TV guide online. Again, not because I need to know what’s on TV in Spain, but because the guide often has descriptions of the TV programs that teaches me new vocabulary etc.
Restaurant review sites. I use one here in Amsterdam, so I figured I would go look up one of those for Spain.
Supermarket websites. Great for learning vocabulary related to food, packaging etc.!
Spanish version of Amazon.com. Very useful too because you can read the reviews of books in Spanish.
Spanish version of the National Geographic website.
City websites in Spanish. Often can be found simply by typing the Spanish version of the city name, followed by .es For example, www.paris.es
Spanish versions of particular websites I already use in English. It always pays to see if there is a Spanish version of your favorite website. For example, there is a Spanish version of www.Khanacademy.com , which is https://es.khanacademy.org/
Websites of Spanish institutions/stores/banks/shops etc. For example, let’s say you want to increase your vocabulary regarding mobile phones and related topics. Look up the website of a Spanish telecom provider, like http://www.movistar.es/particulares . I did this for many Spanish companies, like the department store El Corte Inglés, the bank IberCaja, Madrid’s public transportation system etc. etc.

Without further ado, here’s my list of Spanish websites that I’ve bookmarked in my browser:

http://www.guiaespana.com.es/
http://www.movistar.es/particulares
http://www.movistar.es/particulares
http://www.emtmadrid.es/
http://www.carrefour.es/
http://www.madrid.es/portales/munima...00dc0ca8c0RCRD
https://www.mercadona.es/indexie.php
http://www.ibercaja.es/home/
http://www.renfe.com/
http://www.elcorteingles.es/foreigners/index.html
http://www.bde.es/bde/es/
http://www.ctm-madrid.es/
http://www.aena.es/csee/Satellite/Ae...id-Barajas/es/
http://www.ufv.es/
http://www.seg-social.es/Internet_1/index.htm
http://www.zaragoza.es/sedeelectronica/
http://www.telepizza.es/homeinicio.aspx
http://spanish.alibaba.com/trade/sea...=17rckdclr9v71
http://www.juegosmalabares.com/
http://www.masymas.es/
http://www.bne.es/es/Inicio/index.html
http://www.quehoroscopo.com/horoscopodehoy/geminis.html
http://www.salir.com/
http://www.paginasamarillas.es/
http://www.terra.es/