Learning Spanish by Distance Learning

As someone who had to learn English the hardway ( moved to Canada from Europe ) I can tell you that nothing works like being immersed in the culture and having to speak English...

TV was an excellent tool - especially Commercials.. they never change, always say the same thing....

The hardest thing to learn is to try think in the new language, rather than trying to translate from your native tongue to the language you want to learn... (easier said that done, I know )

A friend of mine in the US learned Spanish (just about fluently) simply by watching nothing but Spanish Television for many months...

Your key, unless you are able to move and submerge yourself in a Spanish speaking area, is dedication ..

Good Luck on your endeavours... or should I say Buena suerte!

 

As someone who has used Pimsleur courses I must say that their method works so well it is scary.

I used the 90 day pimsleur course for french and recieved complements about my speaking ability from both french instructors in the US and while I was abroad in Paris. The vocabulary is limited but it does give you a strong base in the language. What Pimsleur teaches you to say, you will say very well.

The two biggest problems with Pimsleur are that first you will be able to speak the target language MUCH better that you will be able to listen to it. This stems in large part to the people you are speaking to using vocabulary which you are not familiar with. Second, I found that people tended to assume that my level of fluency with the languaage was much higher than it actually was, and conversed with me accordingly.

I spent 10 days in Paris and used English exactly 3 times (not counting times talking to American tourists). I had several fairly long conversations with people and even got to play translator for some tourists. This from a person who was told by Foreign language teacher that I has no ear for languages and should stop bothering with them (one instructor made an offer that I stop coming to class and she would just give me a C because I was so bad at it).

After Pimsleur, you may want to pick up a vocabulary book or vocabulary cassettes/CDs (vocabulearn comes to mind) and study those. I use mnemonics to help me remember them. It seems to be working rather well.

Hope this helps,

Jon

 

Are there differences between the Spanish language from Spain and that in Latin America?

 

I studied Spanish under the university's study abroad program during my undergrad degree. The one month abroad cost me around $6,000(personal savings) all up and was really a high-priced student funded junket for department staff. The graduating diploma was very pretty too. However, when I began my second masters(MBA), I was informed that the "pretty" piece of paper was not "on the list" of recognized credentials. This,"not so surprizing news now, came from the same university that organized it.

 

Yes, there are many, many differences. However, Castillian Spanish is much closer to Latin American Spanish than it is to other languages spoken in Spain, for example Catalan. Catalan is basically a different language.

Latin American Spanish has one big grammatical difference in that the way you conjugate verbs for second person "you" is going to be different. Then there are many vocabulary differences for common things like fruit or matches. One potentially embarassing difference is the verb "coger". In Spain it is a very commonly used word which means something like "get". In most Latin American countries it means "screw" and is very vulgar. Various sounds of S, Z and C also differ in pronunciation. Here's something else that can get you in trouble... in Cuban Spanish the word co*o (blanking out a letter in case I offend anyone) is a very light curse word that you'll hear grandmothers using in public... something like "dang it". In most other countries it's a much stronger curse word like the four-letter English word that also starts with a "c".

Accents are very different all over Latin America, but really, Spanish speakers usually don't have much of a problem understanding each other, and the written speech is extremely close. I've always wondered exactly how the closeness compares to English... I think it might be very comparable. I've seen many movies that come over from the UK subtitled in America because the particular accents are so thick that Americans can only understand about one third of the words.

 

Oops, sorry forgot. Pimsleur is excellent I've used it for mandarin Chinese. Rosetta stone is also an good course. I've tried numerous systems for four foreign languages and those two programs are extremely effective. The television watching is a good idea too. I watched a lot of TV in China for 6 months before beginning my study in earnest. Without tutors, I might add and damn good competence after 6 months of starting.

Good luck

 

If you would like to learn and teach in a country, joining the discussion forum at, Dave's ESL Cafe, will give you everything you need to know. You can do a search for posts similar to what your looking for country, situation-wise. You will also be able to discuss pros and cons. This site is excellent for quick information that is relavent to one's needs, teacher, student, or tourist.

 

Thanks for the info--I think I'll go with Pimsleur since it's on cassette and I can listen to it in the car and talk back to it without too many people thinking I'm weirder than I ordinarily am.

 

Here's how to avoid traffic signal embarrassment...

Just wear a cellphone headset, even if it's not actually connected to anything and its cord is dangling down onto the center console. People will think you're just talking on the phone.

 

Uncle alluded to this earlier in the thread and I wanted to put in a brief follow up. Most of the postings in the thread seem to suggest that the primary interest is in learning spoken Spanish (perhaps in addition to written Spanish). Most of my academic work in learnng non-English languages has been learning how to read/write in that language. If you are trying to satisfy a language requirement for a degree program I don't think they really care too much about your spoken language skills, it's your ability to translate from Spanish to English that seems to be their primary concern. This being the case it makes the knowledge acquisition much easier. In either case, I also suggest that it could be helpful to utilize "internet radio" as a means of exposure to a specific language. There are talk-radio shows going on everywhere and you can tune in whenever it's convenient. I listen to internet radio all the time when I'm on the computer. Aside from the different kinds of music, you get bits of culture and exposure to languages that you might never hear otherwise. Icelandic has a very interesting sound, for example.
Jack

 

I don´t understand why a post of mine in which I merely explained the differences between Castilian Spanish and South American Spanish has been deleted

Nevertheless, qvatlanta made a great summary of all differences that exist at both sides of the pond (Spanish is also spoken in some parts of Africa, like Northern Morocco, Sahara and Guinea).

Jack´s idea is also great. Every major radio network has an online broadcast. It will help you understand the language, but also, as he said, understand the culture, especially if you hear the news or political analysis programs.

 

As an introduction, I think the most economical method of learning Spanish would be through your community adult education system typically offered at the county or regional level. This method provides both personal coaching and extremely low cost. You could combine this with a specialized language provider or immersion in-country in say Mexico, the Dominican Republic, or Costa Rica to augment your skills. I think personal feedback and coaching would be much more effective during the formative stages of learning a new language.

 

Discovery

Hey... I just discovered something: I've been so negative, about Berlitz, generally, ever since I discovered RosettaStone and Pimsleur that I haven't bothered to look at Berlitz's web site in a while. So imagine my surprise to discover that Berltiz's online eBerlitz Self-Study program actually is RosettaStone!

SEE: http://www.berlitz.us/Online/Instruction/selfStudy.htm

But it's apparently not the complete RosettaStone program. Berlitz's eBerlitz Self-Study program claims to offer up to 400 hours of online study. RosettaStone's level 1 product offers 250 hours; and its level 2 product offers another 300 hours -- for a total of 550 hours between the two. Therefore, it would appear, at least, that Berlitz's 400-hour online version of RosettaStone stops somewhere about two thirds into the Rosettastone level 2 product's hours.

Or so I'm guessing. Actually, though, as I think about it, it's probably fairly likely that RosettaStone did some kind of custom program from Berlitz... which might mean that there's no real way to compare Berlitz's 400 hours against RosettaStone's 550.

That said, RosettaStone appears to be a better deal in any case. Berlitz charges $275 for one year of 'round-the-clock access to its 400 hours of online training, for a net cost of approximately $.69 per course hour; but RosettaStone charges $299.90 for one year (actually, it's $149.95 per six months x 2 = $299.90/year) of 'round-the-clock access to its 550 hours of online training (150 hours more than Berlitz), for a net cost of approximately $.55 per course hour if you sign-up for a full year, or approximately $.27 per course hour if you sign-up for only six months... albeit it for a shorter time.

Of course, the best deal, probably, is the RosettaStone CD-based products because you can refer back to them and review them for years for just the one-time price. Levels 1 and 2, as a package, can be had for $329 -- a savings of around ninety bucks over buying them separately... which, incidentally, is the same offer the RosettaStone makes in magazines like the New Yorker, etc. All three levels can be had for $499 -- or about $160 off the price of the three products separately; and about $75 off the price of buying levels 1 & 2 as a package, first, and then realizing, later, that you'd like the level 3 product and then having to pay $245 for it separately.

Of course, if you believe that Pimseleur is superior (which it may well be), then all (RosettaStone) bets are off, of course. In that case, you'll pay maybe $274 each for levels 1, 2 or 3; or a grand total of $822 for all three... more or less, depending on where you purchase them (click here for yet another place). Or you can get them all on a bookchip for less... though I'm not completely convinced that the bookchip method is, necessarily, the best method... although I can certainly see what's kinda' cool about it. Pimsleur, it should be noted, teaches in about a tenth the number of course hours as RosettaStone -- only 45 in all, even after you've been through all three levels; compared with RosettaStone's grand total, after all three levels, of 550 hours, plus whatever level 3 gives you in terms of practice. But this, I suspect, is a testament to Pimsleur's effectiveness -- and an indication of why the U.S. government seems to prefer Pimsleur over RosettaStone or other programs (that said... RosettaStone, as I understand it, gets a whole bunch of government business, too).

Hooboy... I started out just remarking on the fact that Berlitz online is now nothing more than a Berlitz version of RosettaStone, and I end-up talking about that, RosettaStone and Pimsleur.

Go figure.

 

another self-study choice

Hi folks,

When I was setting up language learning lab at a uni in Texas a few years ago, after evaluating several different language-learning software packages, I decided on the one produced by Auralog (http://www.auralog.com). The company is smaller and less well-marketed than Rosetta Stone, but I was quite happy with the ESL software that we used . . . so much so that I got the Chinese set for myself to brush up on my rapidly declining Mandarin skills.

The exercises are quite varied in this program, and it is "intelligent" software, meaning that it suggests learning paths based on your already completed work. It also has a nifty speech recognition/feedback feature as well.

I don't know if it is necessarily better than Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur, as a lot of it depends on what you want to do with the language. I offer it as another option.

I will say, though, that living amongst people who speak the target language natively, where you must use the language just to communicate on a daily basis, wins hands down . . . my college Chinese barely scratched the surface, and when I went to live and study in China, I got a rude awakening!

Cheers,
Adrienne

 

is there a free one?

 

As our well respected moderator Ted would say: "Que demonios Batman! Un thread resucitado después de siete años."

 

Hmmm -- Creo que Ted habla muy bien el español. :smile:

Johann

 

My last Spanish class was in junior high (or maybe high school) ... which was longer ago than I wish to admit.

 

My first and last Spanish classes were a long time ago, too, Ted. I had a total of two semesters of night-school Spanish in college, the second with a wonderful teacher from southern Mexico (Chiapas), who was Mayan on her mother's side. Definitely my most enjoyable college experience! I was maybe 45 at the time -1988 or so. My teacher's husband (an engineer) had come to Canada from Greece. Good combo! Great people!

I think it might be very useful for me to get back to learning Spanish, around now. In the past 25 years, there has been much immigration to Canada from Mexico, Central and South America. I hear Spanish every day now downtown and I've read somewhere that Chile is now Canada's second-largest trading partner.

Johann

 

I think it would be very efficient way to learn Spanish in distance learning because you will only be using the access in learning, but I guess that it still be advisable to learn the actual spanish learning through using the certain language firm.