Learning Spanish
Since I am going to be spending almost 3 months in a predominantly Spanish speaking continent I think it may be a good idea to learn a bit of Spanish before I go. My time in South America is the longest I will be spending anywhere that the same language is spoken throughout. I will be in Asia for longer, but each country that I will visiting there speaks a different language so I will need to hope I can get by with a few phrases and the Vegan Passport. In Africa I will be accompanied by a guide so there won’t be any problems there.
There are a lot of options available for learning Spanish, many books and CDs are available to buy. Rosetta Stone has been suggested as one potential resource as they provide a Latin American Spanish course, but the cost is rather high. Spanish with Michel Thomas has also been recommended as an introductory course to the language and is about half the price of the Rosetta Stone course. If anyone can recommend books, audio courses or websites that I can use to teach myself I would appreciate it.
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Definately go with Michael Thomas – Ive done both his French and Spanish courses and they’re both excellent. I was intermediate at French and found it a great boost, and a complete novice at Spanish, with ‘Ola’ probably being my only word, and found it a brilliant and approachable introduction to the language. I would def buy him again should i be feeling academic and wanting to learn a few bits of another language!!
I originally learnt from Spanish for Dummies. I chose it because it was an American book and so it had a focus on Latin American Spanish. When you’re learning the basics, though, peninsular spanish and latin american spanish are basically the same so it isn’t essential to have a latin american course.
I also really like the podcasts at http://www.notesinspanish.com, which are for Spanish learners and are done by an English guy and a Spanish girl.
http://thepiratebay.org/search/%5C%22michel%20thomas%5C%22%20spanish/0/99/0
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve got a copy of the Michel Thomas course so I’ll give that a go first. I’ll remember to look at Notes in Spanish too Roy once I’ve got a grasp of the basics.
I have “Earworms” volume 1 and 2 in Spanish. They’re really useful as they don’t require effort. You just listen to it as if it’s music and it really does work quite well. Want me to email them to you?
Yes please.