Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog

Listen to Rapid Spanish from Spain: When a Ghost Town Became an Ecovillage

Rosana Hart — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:14:17 +0000

A while back, a friend sent me a link to this YouTube video about an ecovillage that formed in Spain. Evidently there is quite an ecoaldea movement there. I watched the 13-minute video with interest, both for the subject matter and also to see how much of the Spanish I could follow. It turned out to have easy-to-read English subtitles, so I think even people with just a little Spanish could enjoy it.

Here it is:

Listen to Rapid Spanish from Spain: When a Ghost Town Became an Ecovillage is a post from: Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog.

Here’s a Good List of Free Spanish Lessons

Rosana Hart — Wed, 08 May 2013 23:43:44 +0000

I’ve just been browsing around a Website which describes itself in this way: “Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community.”

Well, fine, but how do they choose things? While they probably have a variety of criteria, I was reassured when I read the list of people who work on the site. They have impressive credentials. For example, the lead editor is a man named Dan Colman who is the Director of Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program. Open Culture is not part of Stanford, but still reading this made me confident that things I would find there would be good quality.

Here’s the link to their list of free Spanish lessons. They list about 20 resources, both websites and free itunes items. I recognized their second and third items–two programs called Destinos and Mi Vida Loca–which are both very enjoyable series.

However, another item that is further down their list is one that I was not so fond of when I reviewed it a few years ago. Here’s my review of the FSI or Foreign Service Institute Spanish course.

Have fun with these! They can take you a long way to speaking better Spanish, whatever level you are presently at.

Here’s a Good List of Free Spanish Lessons is a post from: Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog.

Livemocha is Merging with Rosetta Stone

Rosana Hart — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:38:01 +0000

Livemocha is a remarkable and online learning center for many, many languages… here is a review I did of it back in 2009. Its methods of teaching Spanish and other languages are much like those used by the long-established Rosetta Stone.

So recently the news came out that Rosetta Stone is acquiring Livemocha. What will this mean for you as a learner of Spanish? Maybe the combined site will get even better.

Here is a small part of the email that Livemocha sent out:

Over the past five years, Livemocha has grown into a supportive, global community of over 16 million members, working together to learn, teach, and practice a new language…
We are passionate about building a world in which every person is fluent in multiple languages, and today, I am thrilled to announce that we have taken the next step towards that goal.
After months of hard work and preparation, Livemocha has agreed to merge with Rosetta Stone.

Please rest assured that Livemocha will continue to be the learning experience, product, and community you know and love….
We are and always will be committed to building a world without barriers.

Onward!
Michael Schutzler
CEO Livemocha Inc.

Livemocha is Merging with Rosetta Stone is a post from: Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog.

Working on Spanish Pronunciation with YouTube Videos

Rosana Hart — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:06:00 +0000

Learning to speak Spanish means getting your pronunication right, or at least good enough that native Spanish-speakers can have a clue what you are trying to say. YouTube videos offer a lot of good opportunities to practice, but do be sure that the person who made the video has a good accent.

I enjoy Professor Jason, who has made many videos on learning Spanish. Here are a few:

Spanish Alphabet and Pronunciation Lesson

Pronouncing the Sounds of the Letter A in Spanish

In this video, Professor Jason explains the pronunciation of the sounds represented by the letter A in Spanish, modeling several examples.

Ordering Food and Drinks in Spanish

Practice the phrases presented in this lesson to wow your friends as you order from or off the menu in Spanish! ¡Qué rico!

You can subscribe to his channel.

I have said many times that my own Spanish pronunciation has its flaws. I can almost never roll my rrs, and my Mexican friends have teased me–very politely, of course–about the rhythms of my sentences. So this is a case of “Do as I say, not as I do.” However well you can pronounce Spanish, be sure to practice with native speakers whenever you get the chance.

Working on Spanish Pronunciation with YouTube Videos is a post from: Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog.

Reviewing -AR Verbs in the Present Tense, Easy Enough!

Rosana Hart — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 01:51:52 +0000

One thing I like about learning Spanish verbs is how so many of them are easy to remember because they are so regular. To review a really basic situation, let’s look at the -ar verbs in the present tense.

I am no expert in Spanish grammar so I went looking for a good article on this, and I found one, from the blog of an online Spanish tutor:

http://spanishforlearners.com/2013/01/31/conjugating-ar-verbs-in-the-present-tense/

It’s worth checking out the whole article. Here’s a bit from it, how to conjugate hablar, to speak:

Yo hablo

Tu hablas

Usted habla

El / Ella habla

Nosotros hablamos

Vosotros habláis

Ustedes hablan

Ellos / Ellas hablan

These endings work for every regular verb that ends in -ar.

At the same blog, I found another interesting post related to -ar verbs:

What are the ten most common regular -ar verbs in Spanish?

Well, I guessed hablar, of course, since she’d used it as the example, and I correctly guessed comprar, but then I went and looked.

I find that even though at one time I knew my -ar verbs to perfection in every tense, it’s still good to do a bit of review now and then~

Reviewing -AR Verbs in the Present Tense, Easy Enough! is a post from: Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog.

A Ridiculous Way to Learn Spanish

Rosana Hart — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 18:33:17 +0000

Do you ever use your sense of the absurd to remember Spanish vocabulary? I recently came across an article:

Nobody forgets being attacked by a kangaroo or kissing Scarlett Johansson, but recalling what we had for lunch last Tuesday is generally much trickier….But one effective way to make these facts more interesting is through the use of mnemonics, or specifically in this case ‘mems’ – a kind of visual memory aid.

From an article on how to learn boring facts

The article uses the example of learning the capitals of the countries of the world, and has a ridiculous picture of a guinea pig smoking a Marlboro. This is to help you remember that the capital of Equatorial Guinea is Malabo. Okay, there is a jump from one M word to another, but it gives you a good handle. There is a link in the article to the course where you can remember capitals too, if you wish to!

But I’m writing about learning Spanish, so I went to the website home and signed up, which was quick and free. You can do the same at Memrise.com. I had a choice of languages I wanted to learn and I chose Spanish, from English. I was surprised at how many free courses came up. Below the name of each course, it tells you how long they expect it to take, from a few minutes to quite a few hours.

But… not all the course have the memory aids, or mems as they call them. It’s very interactive and you can add your own mems, or not. So actually this turned out to be a good place to learn Spanish for free in a non-ridiculous way too! Of the several courses I explored, the one on 350 Spanish sayings DID have some mems added.

A Ridiculous Way to Learn Spanish is a post from: Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog.

Learning Spanish with Spaced Repetition and Flashcards

Rosana Hart — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:28:17 +0000

I recently came across a blog post on the approach to learning called spaced repetition. The subtitle of that article is How to Learn Anything Quickly and Efficiently, and the fellow is learning the capitals of the countries of the world. Well, I knew those pretty well in school though of course many have changed or taken new names!

But it did remind me that I had written before about the free program he uses, called Anki. When we were living in Mexico and I was far more diligent about my Spanish than I am lately, I used Anki quite a lot. Here is that article: My review of Anki, and there are links from there to other flashcard programs I have reviewed too.

I really love flashcards to remember things.

Learning Spanish with Spaced Repetition and Flashcards is a post from: Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog.

Can You Really Learn a Language in 90 Days?

Rosana Hart — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 01:28:32 +0000

I recently came across a blog post on how to learn a language in 90 days. Yeah, sure, I thought cynically, remembering how many years I’ve put in on Spanish and French. But as I started reading, I realized that this was written by someone who knows what he’s talking about. He does not mean spending a few minutes a day while going about your ordinary life. Nor does he mean getting good grades in Spanish or another language in school.

Nope, he has something more drastic in mind. Do take a look at the post–I linked to it in the first sentence–and you’ll see he’s suggesting things like not speaking English, getting a private tutor, and moving to another country. Even if you don’t have the time or money for those things, I think you’d be stimulated by reading the guy’s article.

He links from it to an offer to sign up and get more free info. Likely worth doing! And don’t be put off by his use of the word hack… he’s Stanford-educated, and they talk like that there!

Can You Really Learn a Language in 90 Days? is a post from: Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog.

Learning to Spell in Spanish… And What If You Are Dyslexic?

Rosana Hart — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 00:36:26 +0000

I received an email from a reader asking if I knew of any programs that would be good for helping her dyslexic teenage son to learn to spell in Spanish. I didn’t–and still don’t specifically–but I’ve had an interesting time wandering around the internet, and I have found some useful tips. First, I’ll give you some general tips on learning to spell in Spanish, and then I’ll move on to tips about learning Spanish if you have dyslexia.

Learning to Spell in Spanish is Much Easier than in English

As you may have noticed, Spanish is spelled much more logically than English. Where our letters can often have several different pronunciations, the Spanish letters typically only have one. Another way of putting this is that English has variable pronunciations and Spanish is generally a phonetic language.

So if you know how to pronounce a word in Spanish, you have a better head start on figuring out how to spell it than if you know how to pronounce a word in English.

(To digress a moment, if you knew how to pronounce the English word though, and the English word thought, how likely would you be to guess their spellings if you were learning English as a second language? Or, for that matter, how likely would you be to pronounce them correctly if you were reading them both in a sentence? But I won’t get going on the irregularities of English!)

So you do need to learn to pronounce the Spanish alphabet and to know the sounds each letter can make. Just about any Spanish-language program or class will help you with that. Here is a video from Professor Jason, who has a lot of good videos on YouTube about learning Spanish:

If you spell English okay, you’ll also benefit from certain spelling principles that, again, any course is likely to teach you. Like the fact that a lot of words in English end in -tion and in Spanish they usually change to -ción. An example of this would be our word nation, which in Spanish is nación.

But what if you don’t spell English well? What if you are dyslexic?

Tips on Learning Spanish for Dyslexics

This topic is outside my area of expertise, but what I am good at, as a librarian, is digging out information. Here I’m going to point you to a couple of pages I found on the the internet that talk about dyslexics learning languages, and I’ll comment on what struck me on those pages.

Foreign Language and the Dyslexic Student is on a website by a woman whose son is dyslexic. She emphasizes that every person is different, and that what worked for her son in learning Spanish may or may not work for others. Her son’s teacher agreed to give him his vocabulary tests orally, and that worked out for them.

There are several interesting comments on that article. You need to read the last one first and work up the page to get the chronology right.

Another page to read is a post on Yahoo Answers. Here, a high school student with dyslexia asks for advice in taking Spanish 1. Some of it is the same as above, but there is a lot about using color. The person who wrote the longest answer, ranked the best, seems to be a teacher who is dyslexic. Included are some links to other sites on dyslexia. Further down that page, there are other comments that could be useful.

I do love how we can find all sorts of things on the internet, and I hope this article is helpful!

Learning to Spell in Spanish… And What If You Are Dyslexic? is a post from: Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog.

Notes in Spanish is Having a Good Special

Rosana Hart — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 01:05:49 +0000

I’ve gotten the email newsletter from the website Notes in Spanish for years. Today I noticed that they have a half-off sale with some bonuses, good till midnight (in Madrid, presumably, that is their home) on January 16. Here is the link if you want to take a look:

Notes in Spanish Special Offer

In some cases, I make a commission if you click through and buy something, but not in this case.

Notes in Spanish is Having a Good Special is a post from: Learn Spanish Rapidly: The Blog.