When it comes to learning Spanish, or basically any other language known to man, the internet has become a treasure trove of information. I would say anyone with a strong desire to learn could get themselves well past the "beginner stage" of language learning without spending a dime thanks to all the great free sites out there. When I first dove into Spanish, I spent hours Googling every resource I could find, and I must say, I was fairly successful. Sure, I like to possess my learning materials, so while I probably did spend more money than I should have I can still say that doesn't have to be your road to success. That is, if you are only looking to get past the beginner stage. Unfortunately, one road block I have found in my journey is one I am sure many of you have come across as well. What do you do when asking "Where is the bathroom?" may be the only phrase you can readily pull from your repertoire? You can order your meal at the local restaurant, but what about having a conversation with the waiter that goes beyond asking for more napkins? I can tell you again and again how many brothers and sisters I have, but what if I want to talk about their personalities? I have read time and time again about the plateaus we reach but I have yet to discover a truly successful learning path to take once we are past the basics in order to keep climbing. I mean, I guess we can always force feed ourselves more vocabulary and try our hand at more verb conjugations, but let's face it. That's just boring. If you're like me, you want to TALK, not just memorize boring vocabulary.
When I was first learning all the various ways to conjugate Spanish verbs I kept myself busy by playing games that challenged me to conjugate verbs and phrases as fast as I could. It was fun and now I have a pretty solid grasp on all the various Spanish verb forms, and I even go back and review every now and then, but the only comparison I can make is that I feel like a high school student being forced to go back to elementary school. Sure, I am reviewing the basics and if I only want to have very remedial conversations it's a great thing to do, but I want to talk about sports, politics, that cute girl sitting at the end of the bar. I'm not learning how to do any of that if I can only say, "Hi, my name is James. I live in an apartment and have blonde hair." I mean, really is this how we introduce ourselves?
So what do we do to get past the basics? How do we transform a set of rote phrases into the ability to really converse in the language we want to converse in? I know many people are going to start shouting Skype, Skype, Skype, and I agree, I think Skype is a great tool, BUT Skype alone isn't going to teach you how to converse. It will certainly allow you to practice the skills you have, and surely you'll improve those skills, but even a true language teacher isn't going to be able to offer you a complete package like that. You'd basically be asking them to teach you how to be fluent. That's a tall order to fill.
For me, my solution has been my Spanish blog, which I have been working on since 2010. Unfortunately, it doesn't directly improve my speaking ability, although I do on occasion read my entries aloud to myself as means of practicing. This helps my pronunciation a bit, but in a real life situation, you aren't likely to have a script to hold in front of you as you go. In fact, one of my biggest challenges has been being able to respond to someone in Spanish when they catch me off guard with a topic I may not be too familiar with and I'm not ready to respond. One advantage of the blog however is that it gives me time to think of phrases I may actually use in everyday conversation and then I go look them up and add it to my vocabulary. It's been slow going, but I do feel having the blog is better than nothing, but I would really like to find resources out there that address moving past the intermediate stages and into the more advanced stuff. If anyone knows of any great advanced learning sites, I'd love to hear about them. I'm planning on compiling a list of my favorite sites and I'll be sure to take any suggestions I receive into consideration.
So really, what ways have you found to move past the beginner stage? I've got a few ideas floating around my head but I'd like to hear from some other folks first. Let me know and we can start progressing together.
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