Learning Spanish
I started studying Spanish when I started learning back in December 2006,
back when I got married in Cuba. I found myself fascinated with this
language that was so close to French, yet wasn't French at all. French
is my first language which was a real gift from my parents and my
minority French speaking community. Growing up in Winnipeg, English is
learnt more easily growing up here as it is the most spoken language.
Learning is very different as I am learning as an adult. The adult mind
is harder to train with languages as is the mind of a child.
I
wanted to share the ressources and strategies that I have found useful
in learning Spanish. The bulk of the ressources what I have used is
media that interested me. This media includes books, movies with
Spanish audio and subtitles, online radio, online news clips, online
dictionnaries and other.
Immersion
is my primary strategy, though I did take a couple of weeks of classes
in Guatemala to give me a bit of a formal base. Individual classes were
ideal as I already had a base in the langugage and my teachers were
able to adapt to my needs. I also used recordings where words are given
to you in a language that you understand and repeated in the lanugage
that you are learning, these I was able to find in Airports and able to
borrow at the
Winnipeg
Public Library. The best practise of course is
to speak it with a native speaker.
I try and expose myself to
the language as much as possible. Some of the strategies that have
worked for me have included listening to Spanish recordings in the car
and listening to Spanish recordings when I have a spare moment on my
portable audio player while walking the dogs or while doing household
chores. I have also found that reading out loud is good to practise
pronunciation.
There are many ressources that I have used online to learn Spanish,
including:
News:
bbcmundo.com,
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/,
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/spanish,
http://news.google.es/
Potcasts:
spanishpodcast.org
Dictionnary:
wordreference.com
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