Learning Spanish?
 

Hi All. ¡Feliz Año Nuevo! ,I have been learning Spanish for two years ,at night school and with the help from CD,s etc .The Michel Thomas CD,s i thought were very good ,and also BBC Languages site, has anyone used the www.studyspanish.com Camino del Exito CD,s? or have ideas on learning the language as i seem to have come to a sudden halt.
¡Hasta luego! John.

Re: Learning Spanish?
 

Hola Jean y Juan!

Happy New Year to you too, and to the expats site members!

Personally, I like to listen/watch the TVEi, channel 822 on Sky digital. Programs like "Vamos a cocinar con Jose..." (usually on at tea time 5.30 -ish), "Espana directo" (covers different regions of Spain), and "Telediario" and "Canal 24 horas" (both news) are easy enough to follow & pick up a few key phrases, useful for everyday things. For celebrity gossip etc. try "Corazon de (season)", or "Las Cerezas". The only game show type I've seen is "Palabra por palabra".
I know some folk may say they can't stand Spanish TV (that's fine if they live in Spain), but at least you're listening to the language at it's full pace! You'll be surprised at how much you'll learn!
Or, if you're not feeling too brave, try "Los Lunnis" (arrgh!), "Ankawa", or "Tirame con la lengua" - all childrens' programs!!
Good luck!

P.S. I'm not a TV addict, honestly! :o I just know that this method works for me!
Carol

Re: Learning Spanish?
 

Spanish sport programs also help ;)

Re: Learning Spanish?
 

Except Michael Robinson on C+. unless you want to learn drivel :D

regards
BW.

Re: Learning Spanish?
 

If you can watch stuff with teletext subtitles on it can help match sounds to actual works.

I've just completed a CELTA (TEFL) course and most listening exercises are graded to match the level of the learner, ie, the speed and difficulty of vocab are kept slower and simpler for lower levels, whilst still being fairly realistic. The exercises are normally done in two parts - getting the gist first time round, then more detail 2nd time through, without worrying about translating word for word. This is the kind of approach to take with TV watching: pick up the words you recognise as you go along to work out the general meaning and interpolate from them and the pictures to get the meaning of some of the words you don't recognise.

Where the listening is particularly difficult, a transcript is often used in doing more detailed listening. This helps the listener to break the stream of sounds into specific words, something that is particularly difficult with real stuff (think how you tend to run words into each other when speaking). Keeping your attention drifting over the visuals, the text and the sounds can bring it all together to help understanding and over time promote improvement.

Re: Learning Spanish?
 

I tried to get channel 822 on my Sky but it says I have to upgrade, obviously to a subscription.

Re: Learning Spanish?
 

Hola Coralsoft What is the CELTA course? John

Re: Learning Spanish?
 

It probably sounds simplistic, but one of the things that helped me the most in learning Spanish years ago was a book titled "501 Spanish verbs, fully conjugated". I set a goal of learning one new verb a day, and it's main forms of use (I travel, I traveled, I have traveled, I will travel, I am traveling). As the conjugations are basically the same for 98% of verbs, it was easy enough, once you knew the infinitive form.

My logic was that once you know the verbs, the nouns were easy enough to pick up in day to day Spanish life.

Re: Learning Spanish?
 

It's the Cambridge Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults course.

See here:
http://www.british-blc.com/ted/ttframe.htm

I can highly recommend it, but it took some serious work.

Re: Learning Spanish?
 

Yes, I agree with the idea of the book, 501 Spanish Verbs (fully conjugated)! I have a copy of the older edition, 201 Spanish verbs etc.! :o
I flicked through it and remembered the subjunctive, imperfect, & past perfect subjunctive tenses (et al) :confused: that I had to memorize at school. Phew! It used to make me feel nervous to speak in spanish, in case I flubbed up on the conjugation! I realised an important thing is to know how to ask for something politely. For example, instead of "I want...", one would say "I should like...(,please)." The Conditional tense goes a long way!