What's the best way to learn Spanish?

[Meits J]

I mean I really want to learn Spanish, but I'm not really too interested in the classroom setting. I tried a few community classes at the local community college, but they just don't do it for me. There full of people who either already know Spanish, and I don't know why they're there, or people who have no clue and can't learn. I almost consider myslef in that last category, but Spansish is really something I really want to learn. So what is the best way to learn aside from classes?

[Zach]

A little of everything, really. What I do is I use programs such as Michel Thomas (not too expensive) to build myself up a bit. I also visit site such as Study Spanish (http://www.studyspanish.com) for grammar and vocabulary lessons.

Once I've gotten a basic understanding of grammar and some conversational skills, I move up to listening to Spanish radio (with English transcripts and a Spanish-English dictionary). One good place for this is World Radio Japan (http://www.nhk.or.jp/rj/index_e.html).

Now I'm up to listening to Spanish radio and watching Spanish television without transcripts. If I hear a word I don't know, I write it down and look it up later. One good thing about Spanish is that it's quite easy to spell, everything is spelled how it sounds mostly.

Just basically try to immerse yourself completely in the language if you can. Try to think in Spanish. If you say something in English, think in your mind how to say it in Spanish. And, keep a dictionary with you at all times..

This is what I've been doing for the past year or so, and I believe I'm far ahead of a friend who took 5 years of Spanish in school.

[Tomisimo]

Hi Meits and welcome. A while back I wrote some advice (http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2006/language-learning/11-ways-to-learn-spanish-or-any-foreign-language/) about 11 things to do to learn Spanish. Of course the first one was taking a class, but maybe you can use the other ten :)

Zach, that's some good advice you've got there. That's pretty much what I've been doing for over ten years.