Lefty2021

Ive just looked at lingua.com, I found the vocabulary section on lingua useful to practice what I have already learned during the last 10 months on Duolingo, good for self testing and a good indication of what you have absorbed and how far you have come, I don’t think you could learn Spanish from scratch on just lingua without joining and taking lessons.
Another good resource for learning is la Vida loca on youtube, it is an old BBC learn Spanish programme, you can always pick something up to add to your knowledge from any resource you find

TicTac111

Lefty2021 > I agree with you can't learn the language with lingua. I also find the vocabulary section quite good and the stories because you have the Spanish text so you are able to listen and read. I can remember when I've listening the first time to one story I could not understand anything but I've found out when I listen to a story several time I do understand more and more the words and I hope it will help a little bit with understanding Spanish speaking people but at the end I don't know.

Thanks a lot for the advice with the BBC program I'll have a look. Think you need to try everything and hope to find something it suits you

Lefty2021

Here’s Vida Loca, i picked up quite a bit from this along with Duolingo before I started taking lessons

youtube.com/watch?v=J85JdNuCQ6I

for learning numbers, pronunciation, verbs and loads more this is well worth investigating, there is so much good information amongst it if you search, well worth a look, just make sure you select the European Spanish and not South American

spanishdict.com/conjugate/leer

This week I have been using Wlingua,

wlingua.com/en/

it does offer something, combined together they do all have a place in learning Spanish along with proper lessons with a native speaker.

Does anyone else have any links which they recommend?

It won’t let me post the full urls

IminSpain

Intercambio and discussing football, no English tv for our first 10’years helped as well!

Loafing Along

basketball on TV great for getting numbers , the commentator reports the score and it flashes up on the screen

mikelincs

One of the problems that British peple have learning ANY foreigh language is that English is a very unstructured language, we do NOT decline verbs in any set way. and word endings do not indicate whether a subject is masculine, feminine or neuter. This means that when we do try to learn a structured language it is difficult. I did French to 'O' level standard, and some Latin at school, having done these it helped me when I was learning Spanish and Russian, Russian to GCSE level.

Chipmonk

Not sure if it explains British persons seemingly speaking less languages than say, Europeans however it is something that intially confounds English speakers. I imagine that the fact that English dominates as a global language means Britain is less likely to need or be subjected to other languages accounts for our poor language ability. That said I feel it is a shame from the point of view that language learning appears to use different intelligences than other disciplines so British children probably dont develop those skills as much as their foreign counterparts. It also leads to a rather embarrassing image of us being slightly stupid.

rspltd

I am using Language transfer - a different way to learn and doesn't concentrate on all the grammar that other courses do. Involves listening to a lot of Spanish but slowly - win, win!!

bobd22

Another useful app for learning Spanish that I have found is Language Transfer which is a totally free app. It is along the lines of Michelle Thomas and Paul Noble but I find it much easier to follow and learn from. It does also do other languages if any wants to learn other than Spanish. As for the Spanish it does cover the various alternatives Latin America etc with explanations of differences. I will add the link for the App from Playstore for those with Android Tablets/mobiles and the link to their main website for those that use computers. Well worth a look and nothing to lose as totally free.
App Linkhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/d...nguagetransfer

Computer link
https://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-spanish

dougal03

Very true,Mikelincs,l passed GCE in French which helped with learning Spanish & I think all Grammar schools taught Latin as did some other State schools in UK.That certainly helps us understand a bit when Boris speaks to us minions.My niece taught German & French but to get promoted to Head she had to retrain as a Maths.teacher some years ago.And now languages as a school subject appears to be further down the list of priorities.Perhaps more English ,particularly spelling,could be a substitute lesson or is "Text" to be the universal favourite with us Brits.

Barriej

When I was at School in the mid 1970's there were no language lessons (I did fail my 11 plus so went to a secondary modern)
Neither of my children had languages in their High Schools either (Catholic School 2000 - 2008)

I am unfortunately not proud of the fact I can't speak any other languages well. I can order food and drink and say hello etc in about 12 though (Wont go hungry)
I have never understood why items such as, tables, books, chairs and even a record should have a sex. Makes no sense, which again adds another complication.

When I worked, 80% of my time was out of the UK, the German engineers wanted to speak English because they travelled to Africa and Asia, the same with the Italians in my last job. In fact they didn't enjoy me asking what this or that was in German and Italian. They were the same for others, so it was not just me.

Now we are here in Spain Ive got to the point again, where food and drink and a few other things are not an issue. However my issue is understanding what others are saying back to me, if it deviates from my little script.
The lady in our supermarket asked me something the other day (we always say hi and how are you) but she said something I didn't catch as it was related to our shopping, when I asked her to repeat she went into English. Until then I didn't even know she could speak it.

Im using Babbel, Duolingo, a mix of basic podcasts and as many other things as I can. However Im finding it easier to learn to read and write than to talk (maybe because Ive always had manual type jobs that require eye hand co-ordination).
Local lessons from our town hall are suspended, but we are looking at private lessons more for me to listen and get pronunciation better (although my hearing in one ear is not so good after all the years in noisy factories and my dodgy London accent dont help)

Mustard

You could try a private class online.

https://www.tusclasesparticulares.co...tranjeros.aspx

I took some classes last year for 13€ / hour. Teacher knew all typical English speaker problems and was very well prepared. She really resolved a lot of my doubts.

Barriej

There is a lady near here who is a translator she charges about the same, so we are looking at using her.
Ive also just looked at Language Transfer and it seems quite good (I already knew about some of the stuff but I can listen to this when out walking)

bobd22

This link should give you a PDF script of all the lessons in language transfer spanish
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...ZEC2SERqoXEFO2

Lagoo

For listening practice I found the 'Español con Juan' and 'Dreaming Spanish' youtube channels helpful.