Learning Spanish online

[rich p]

@rich p, being a fluent Spanish speaker by now should understand

The only bit I recall from the first lesson is, 'the woman eats apples'.
A useful phrase we should all probably commit to memory..
la mujer come manzanas - in case you're wondering.

 

[vernon]

I like Duolingo (although it's French and Dutch for me) but I do think that it needs supplementing with some more direct teaching of grammatical rules &c. I bought a couple of books for that.

If you're happier with a more experience based teaching method, you might find Duolingo OK on its own.

Mrs Vernon, a modern languages teacher, abandoned Duolingo when trying to learn Italian. She claimed that although it gave a 'leg up' with learning a language, it didn't equip learners with the skills to have meaningful conversations - a bit like a phrase book that allowed you to ask questions but did bugger all to help you cope with the answers.

 

[Fnaar]

[QUOTE 4177357, member: 259"]I have tried computer-aided language training for Portuguese beginners - the Rosetta Stone one, and I didn't get on with it.

I need to know about the grammar, and learning all the other languages I know has involved some learning by rote.

I know I learned English as a baby, but I am an old git now and it's not going to work like that now for anything else.[/QUOTE]
My recommendation is start by learning lots of vocab and phrases ... the grammar can wait for later (although if you are confident with English grammar, by all means dive into it too) but it's very useful to learn lots of vocab/phrases first.

 

[John the Monkey]

Mrs Vernon, a modern languages teacher, abandoned Duolingo when trying to learn Italian. She claimed that although it gave a 'leg up' with learning a language, it didn't equip learners with the skills to have meaningful conversations - a bit like a phrase book that allowed you to ask questions but did bugger all to help you cope with the answers.

That sounds about right - although I think it is a great way to get started, and for more experienced learners to keep in practice.

 

[rich p]

That sounds about right - although I think it is a great way to get started, and for more experienced learners to keep in practice.

I'm getting there with Duolingo ...

...now I know that the girl eats apples too.

 

[Markymark]

My favourite languages story from school. An A level paper asked for a paragraph to be translated from Latin. It didn't say translated to what - so he translated it to serbo-croat (not his native language). The examiners had to get the text translated back to English and found it was a perfect translation so gave him an A.

 

[Crackle]

I always remembered a couple of useful phrases from my German Linguaphone course which I role out whenever there's a gap in the conversation or people look confused when I talk to them.

Ich bin ein tischler

Ich bin die schwester von Walter

They work without fail.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

Having mastered many other languages, although, to be fair, English is a work in progress, I have decided to try and learn a bit of Spanish from home.
Given that I'm starting from virtually zero, I've done a few basic tests on the free Duolingo site but I'm not sure about the structure of their learning.
Has anyone used Duolingo or can recommend a better one?
I've used CD and book approaches for French and Italian. Some good, some appalling. I particularly disliked Michel Thomas' approach and would go so far as to say I'd have like to punchio his lampios out sometimes.

The Pimsleur CD course is very good, I have it in Italian, French and (yet to learn) Spanish.
Duolingo is useful up to a point, it'll give you familiarity with sentence structure, then you'll need to supplement it with more traditional methods. I'm using it to kick off my German and Swedish and I like it.

A friend of mine suggested Memrise to me the other day but I haven't tried it yet. Sounds very similar to the Duolingo idea.

GC