Language learning

Has anyone done it to a high standard?

I'm thinking of learning spanish from home and was just wondering whether anybody had any advice on tips and tricks to become better

[anna]

Yes, yes and yes Pimsleur is the best way of learning a language to gain a fluent level of speaking. If you are only bothered with reading and writing then go the normal Linguaphone route, but if you really wish to speak and sound native Pimsleur is your friend... http://www.pimsleur.co.uk/?gclid=CLC...FRMgtAod2gESRQ

I would say that learning to read and write isn´t normally as difficult as it is to speak the language so get yourself as much audio such as music or story books from the internet that you can to aid your learning, then get some Spanish friends to chat with over skype.

Then chat to DavePreston to learn all the swear words

You can't learn a language to fluency level from books, CD's or a course. They will give you a foundation to start from, but to get fluent go spend a decent amount of time in Spain, preferably in some little back water village where most people speak very little English. It's the only way.

[johnnyrod]

You can learn the basics from books etc. but really listening is the hardest thing and you can only get that through practice. Look for evening classes at a local college, I bought a BBC book/tape set first and while I did learn a bit, it wasn't anything like as much as I did on the college course. Typically a foundation course gets you up to around GCSE level i.e. nearly all present tense stuff, and a range of everyday vocab. As Ralph says you need real practice but I have found this no too easy with Spanish compared to say German, to hear the individual words and understand the meaning. I'd say that you won't progress beyond a basic level at all unless you have some speaking and listening practice.

PS I used to travel a lot and tried to learn a few words wherever I went. The example of Spanish holds true even if you are trying to learn 20 words of Turkish, you've just got to use it on them and get used to people wondering what you are saying!

You need instruction from a fluent speaker. You also need lots of conversation at just above the level of your competency to challenge you and keep you learning.

I learned a lot about the basic structure of ASL from instructional websites and DVDs, and can have a very rudimentary conversation with my missus (little more than 'how are you?', 'do you want coffee?' and 'what time are you home from work?') but I'm sure we're doing a lot of it wrong and I'll find out just how wrong when my course starts in September.

Living or working in the country------as has been said above,start off with a basic vocabulary and then expand on it.
35 years working/int driver abroad and if I was going to a particular country regularly,learn menus,how to order beer,and swear.
Unless you have a particular desire to learn Spanish I would have thought German a better bet but for a general insight into a few languages Esperanto is your friend.

Several decades of arguing with customs at border crossings was a help

[dizzyblonde]

I'm learning Greek, its difficult, because getting a fluent speaker to talk a lot of it round the house is hit and miss. The good thing is, its right from the beginning, teaching a toddler is fun, and also easy and the best time.

I speak French better being over there, it all comes back once in the thick if it. Embarrassing I've forgotten all the German my gran taught us when we were little.

[widepants]

I always find it easier to speak German after a few scoops

That is known as being fluid as against fluent-----but i agree

As an illustration of the requirement to practice, my 4 yr old son is a fluent French listener, but not a fluent French speaker. This is because he doesn't get the opportunity to practice. My wife speaks to him in French whenever they are alone, but as soon as I am around it defaults back to English. He watches French DVD's, and my wife reads French books to him. He can translate from French into English perfectly (in fact when you test that out and ask 'how do you say that in English' he looks at you like you must be stupid and can't figure out why you have to ask), so he knows the words and what they mean in his head, he's just had little practice in speaking them. My wife can have a full conversation with him speaking in French, but he replies in English because that's what he's most comfortable with, the only time he speaks French is when forced to, ie: 'You can have a biscuit, but only if you ask for it in French'. We are going to France for two weeks in August, and he will come back more comfortable speaking in French, because he'll be forced to, none of the in-laws speak English, so it's the only way he can make himself heard. Within a couple of weeks coming home again, he'll be out of practice and finding it difficult again.

As Dizzy says, around the house you default to speaking in the language that the majority of participants are comfortable with and in our house that's English. We've been together for 11 years and for at least the first half of that my French wasn't good enough to use it in day to day conversation. When you've had a hard day at work, to have to think just to be able to speak to your wife and child, it is just too much hassle, so I only spoke French in France when I had no other choice, and nothing else to think about.

Even now I am fluent, I didn't pick up the phone to the in-laws the other night, because my wife was out and I was too tired to contemplate a half hour conversation with my father-in-law in French.

Now that I am more fluent we should speak French more around the house and get my son speaking more, but speaking English is a long established habit, which takes serious discipline to break, much harder than for instance stopping smoking.

So the best way to learn a language, is to be stuck in a country where it's all around you, and you have no other choice. Unless you speak the lingo, you can't even read a newspaper or watch the TV.

The two main problem with courses are

(1) they are subjective, they teach you how to deal with scenarios where you are talking to strangers, like buying a train ticket, or asking for directions, they don't teach you how to have a fluent conversation about general matters, ie: no course will ever teach you how to re-write all the posts in this thread in another language and have it all still make sense and retain the same meanings

(2) they teach the rules, not the exceptions, ie: slang, colloquialisms, humour, innuendo, abbreviations, words/expressions that literally translated would make sense in English, won't necessarily make sense in another language. You need to be able to understand and use these things to be fluent IMO.

The work of a translator is not to translate word for word, it's to relay the meanings and intentions of the original content. A translator may completely change what is said in order to achieve this (ie: translate a humorous comment and it may no longer be funny), and to be able to do that is a skill and a half, particularly on the fly when translating speech. The people you see on TV translating on the fly for politicians at international conferences, have had years and years of training and practice, and probably years of living in both countries.