If you speak English already, Spanish is fairly easy to learn.
This document is primarily focused on Latin American Spanish.
Steve Smythe, v1.0.0 - Oct 29, 2024
This guide outlines the methods and techniques I use to study Spanish:
- Recognize that cognates (words that are similar to English) are your friend.
- Use a combination of learning methods: reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
- There are some great apps I use for these: Duolingo, Conjuu, SpanishDict, Google Translate, and of course ChatGPT.
My approach to learning Spanish is based around reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
Duolingo does all four modes of learning. It's getting quite good, especially for speaking practice ("video calls" with Duolingo characters).
Progress will seem slow in the very beginning, but after a while (about the second week) you will start recognizing the patterns (for instance verbs) and sentence structure rules.
For example, a common structure used for flavors, ingredients, or types similar to English adjective-noun pairings is:
<art> <primary noun> <prep> <descriptive noun>in Spanish means<art> <descriptive noun> <primary noun>in English- "un sándwich de queso" means "a cheese sandwich"
- "un jugo de naranja" means "an orange juice"
For conjugation practice, I use Conjuu to create custom verb lists from verbs I encounter on Duolingo. I practice five random verbs daily, speaking them out loud as I type to reinforce the patterns. The SpanishDict Conjugation Drill is good too.
I use a spaced repetition study method of high-frequency words using SpanishDict's custom vocabulary feature. I copy down the high-frequency dictionary entry for the word. Then I enter the word into SpanishDict, and quiz on the spaced repetition over time.
I also use a translation based approach to reading. By using the "Wonder Readers Spanish Emergent" series by Capstone Publishing, I first write down the Spanish sentences into a notebook, one by one. I underline the words I don't know. Then I write down the literal translation first (to get the vocabulary). Then, I write down the idiomatic translation, capturing the natural phrasing of the sentence, even if it's not word for word. I read the sentences out loud, and after the whole page is done, I read the whole page out loud. I use ChatGPT to analyze the various sentences, their grammatical structures, anything I notice or find interesting.
Whatever activity I'm doing, I'm constantly speaking out loud the content I'm studying. I repeat Duolingo material on the spot before clicking "continue", I speak conjugations of verbs, I speak the high-frequency dictionary entry, and read aloud. It's good to constantly be associating the sounds with your mouth movements to feel comfortable with them. Especially those trilled R's.
It's free to use, although I highly recommend using the paid plans so you can skip ads, and not be limited to access to content.
Pay so you don't get ads.
Pay so you don't get ads and you can practice your vocabulary lists offline.
Access to all the latest models as they come out, file uploads, vision, web browsing. In addition to discussions on various sentences and grammatical analysis, I sometime upload pictures of pages and discuss those images.
by Mark Davies (Author), Kathy Hayward Davies (Editor) This is a great way to build vocabulary based on how frequently words are used in the language.
I ordered all of them directly from the publisher so I could get the teacher notes too. A great resource. Colorful, fun, and great examples of idiomatic usage of the language.
Complete your daily quests for the day. These change up from day to day, but it takes about 20 minutes or so a day to complete. Longer if you have adventures or stories as goals for the day.
I keep a notebook where I write down:
<date>
<section> <unit> <lesson>.<num/total or legendary> <subject>
<section> <unit> <activity>
Examples:
- 2024.10.29
- S1 U4 L1.3/5 Order food and drink
- S1 U4 L1.Legendary Order food and drink
- S1 U4 Story: Good Morning
I will note new verbs off to the right side margins of my notebook so I can enter them in Conjuu:
Examples:
- v.querer - to want
- v.pagar - to pay
I keep a notebook for my conjugation work before I type the answers into Conjuu. I make a simple table on the page that looks like:
| Pronoun | To Speak (hablar) | To Pay (pagar) | To Drink (beber) | To Be (temp - estar) | To Want (querer) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I - yo | hablo | pago | bebo | estoy | quiero |
| You - tú | hablas | pagas | bebes | estás | quieres |
| He/She - él/ella | habla | paga | bebe | está | quiere |
| We - nosotros | hablamos | pagamos | bebemos | estamos | queremos |
| They - ellos/ellas/ustedes | hablan | pagan | beben | están | quieren |
I enter the verbs as they come up in the random order that Conjuu picks. In the example case, I wrote down the Pronoun column first, then worked through each verb as Conjuu picked them. Then after manually conjugating them and saying them out loud, I type them into Conjuu (without looking at my notes if I can).
If I don't know a verb, I look it up in SpanishDict, and it has a wonderful highlighting feature that lets you know if there are irregular spellings (example: querer has a red highlighted i in quiero to remind you that there's an i in there). Wonderful feature. Then, I'll write down the conjugations in the table as described above.
Each day, I copy the entry from the frequency dictionary to my high frequency words notebook (in order of presentation). I copy the entire entry verbatim. After that, I enter the word into SpanishDict into a custom vocabulary list for high-frequency words. Then, I quiz myself on the new content and review other spaced repetition items as they arise.
These beginning reader books are excellent for building reading skills, vocabulary, and grammar. Each reader is between 8 to 16 pages long. There are pictures most every page to give context and clues as to what's going on.