Learn Spanish, If you want to learn Spanish without taking classes, you can make a lot of progress on your own. There are CD’s and audio-books to aid you. There are plenty of books you can buy to help you learn Spanish more easily, as well. A nifty book to have as you learn Spanish is 1001 Most Useful Spanish Words (Beginners’ Guide), by Seymour Resnick. This book lists words by categories such as food, time, and family. The words are also in a dictionary type listing alphabetically. The words are defined and used in a sentence. Popular phrases using the words are given. It is helpful to anyone trying to learn Spanish. Sticking with the numbers theme, there is another book you can get tremendous help from as you learn Spanish. It is called 2000+ Essential Spanish Verbs: Learn the Forms, Master the Tenses, and Speak Fluently, put out by Living Language. This book makes it so easy to learn Spanish verbs; you’ll wonder why you ever thought it would be difficult. It covers conjugations, irregular forms, and teaches you to form tenses. It has answers to many tricky questions on verbs. If you’re a busy sort, maybe you have free time in your car. Learn in Your Car Spanish Complete Language Course is a tool to help you learn Spanish, written by Henry N. Raymond and Oscar M. Ramirez. You just play the CD’s in your car, or anywhere else you’d like to, and repeat after the speaker. The CD’s progress from the easiest to the most advanced. You will learn enough about basic Spanish dialogue to begin to join in conversations with Spanish speaking people. If you’re a stickler for details, you might be interested in a book called Spanish Grammar for Independent Learners, by Arie Vicente. This book covers everything you need to know about grammar. It has all the information neatly arranged for easy access. As you try to learn Spanish, you will come across sentences you just know you don’t have right. This book has a system to troubleshoot your language and help you figure out what you mean to say. For a taste of Spanish literature, try First Spanish Reader: A Beginner’s Dual Language Book, edited by Angel Flores. You will find stories old and new within its pages. You can learn Spanish almost effortlessly by reading these short stories and proverbs. The easiest ones are first, and more difficult verb tenses are used later on. The stories are interesting and make it fun to learn Spanish. The Language Heretic’s Super Crash Course in Spanish Conversation and Culture: GET BY in Spanish in One to Three Weeks is a unique book by L. Adams. It cuts through all the technical aspects of language learning in short order. The focus of the book is simply to give you enough language skills to get you into conversations so that you can learn Spanish from there. It never claims to make you a scholar. With all the books and CD’s on how to learn Spanish, you should be able to find books that will make your study easier. You can check them out at a library, but to get the most good out of them, you usually need to purchase them. However, that’s not much to spend if you want to learn Spanish.
Posts Tagged ‘Spanish Grammar’
Books and Other Tools to Help You Learn Spanish
January 3rd, 2010Learn Spanish With Audio Programs
December 27th, 2009Look Up ‘Learn Spanish Audio’ Material Spanish is one of the most spoken languages throughout the world. Some reports say that there are more than four hundred thousand people the world over speaking Spanish. It is a very easy language to learn and since it is spoken in many countries across the globe, it can be very useful for you. Spanish language is very close to English. It is based in Latin like the other romance languages and it is written in the same alphabet as English. If you know English there are many words and phrases that are similar. And there are many phrases and words which you can very easily guess accurately; some words are even written and pronounced the same. Learn Spanish Audio Book One of the easiest ways to learn Spanish, is with the help of learn Spanish audios. What are these learn Spanish audios? Well, these are audio tapes (audio cassettes) or audio files, which are sent through the Net when you enroll with any online course available. There are also many audio books that include “learn Spanish” programs that can be downloaded to your MP3 player or computer. It is very easy to learn any language – not only Spanish – when you have the lessons spoken to you. These ‘learn Spanish audios’ usually teach you step by step how to speak Spanish. Try Out the ‘Learn Spanish Audio’ Material You can buy such ‘learn Spanish audios’ from many audio book sites, such as, http://www. YourAudioBookHQ. com . There are also many online courses, which have their lessons divided into audio modules for your easy absorption. Through these lessons, you will not only learn Spanish grammar and vocabulary, you will also learn commonly used phrases and how to dialogue correctly. There are more advantages in choosing to learn Spanish through audio lessons: 1. You can hear the correct pronunciation, which is very important while learning a language; this is something you miss out on when you learn Spanish with the help of books only. 2. We are all used to multi-tasking now, and when you learn Spanish through audio material you can study your lessons while doing something else, like jogging, household chores, driving, etc. By using otherwise idle time you will not have to take additional time away from other activities. This will fast-forward the time taken for mastering the language. 3. Learning through audio books or programs will give you confidence to talk with Spanish people faster. People who learn through conventional classroom methods tend to be a little shy of the way they speak their newly learned language. However, the audio lessons will make you very familiar with the pronunciation, so that you will be confident to start a conversation, and secure in the knowledge that you speak correctly. 4. You can learn the local jargon – often, people learn Spanish, only to find that the language spoken by the common person in the street, is quite different. The audio lessons more often than not throw a good light on the local (street) jargon as well and help you to be familiar more common terms and phrases.
Learning Spanish From Scratch
December 27th, 2009I was half shocked, half amused reading all the stuff on the Internet about how learning Spanish is “easy” and how some guides teach you how to speak Spanish in 21 days. I always wanted to ask the people writing this kind of guides, exactly who they think they’re fooling. Spanish, just like any other language, takes time to learn. You’ll need constant exercise, you’ll need to focus on several parts of the language, such as the Spanish vocabulary, Spanish grammar and so forth. Of course, each person has a particular level of informational absorption that can help them (or hinder them if it’s low) in learning Spanish from scratch.
Obviously, it depends whether you want to learn Spanish for your next-week trip to Madrid, or if you intend to learn it for that job offer waiting for you there in 4 months. You may be able to grasp the basic language notions in a week, if you use one of those free language lessons that you can find online, but if you want to learn it properly and in-depth, you’ll be better off taking things slowly and chewing on what you learn instead of swallowing it as soon as you learn it.
During your first 2 weeks, take a child’s approach to learning Spanish. Learn what you would teach a child to know in English first: the colors, 0 to 20 numbers, helloes and goodbyes, seasons, months of the year, days of the week and all sorts of easy things that will help you get a taste of learning a new language as well as getting you accustomed to pronunciation and writing.
Once you’re at this point, go for a few grammar rules. Use a Spanish course if needed, or look up a Spanish grammar online lesson and try to find out differences and common points between Spanish and English (or your mother tongue if it’s not English of course). You’ll also work on your pronunciation, writing and understanding while going through the grammar rules.
Next up, assuming you already know the basic grammar rules and have a solid grip of the basic Spanish words, you’ll need to work hard to improve your vocabulary. Learning Spanish is just like playing with a jigsaw puzzle. You know that you want to get the bigger picture out of the small pieces, but before sticking them together you’ll need to start with the corners to give you a base (the “child” vocabulary mentioned above). After that, you need to understand the rules involved in sticking the pieces together (Spanish grammar) and finally, you will have to start picking the small pieces one by one and attach them to the forming picture (improve vocabulary).
Improving vocabulary in Spanish can be done in a number of ways. Probably the most common one is “relating objects”. That means that if you learn a new word from a specific category (fruits for example), you should expand your vocabulary in that particular category first, then move on to another related context.
For example, you learn the word “apple”, you move on to words like “pears”, “strawberries” and “peaches” then after you’re done with that distinct group of words, move on to bigger contexts in which you can use them such as “kitchen”, “farms” or “marketplace”. This will allow you to learn new words from the new bigger contexts and at the same time, re-use the words you had learnt in the smaller categories, which “fixes” them better in your memory.
I’m not saying this is THE only way of learning Spanish from scratch, but trust me, if you manage to follow these easy steps, you’ll soon have a solid and correct grasp of the Spanish language. There might be faster methods of learning a new language out there, but this old fashion step-by-step one practically restrains you from taking any huge leaps in the learning process and skipping some important stuff.
If you want to add some spice to your language learning process, you can try playing some word games, watching some Spanish shows on TV and last but not least, you could search the internet for some free language lessons online or even better, those free online “learn Spanish” videos that you can find all over the world wide web.
