How Hard Will I Have To Work?

In order to keep up with such an accelerated schedule, you’ll have to put in an absolute minimum of one hour per day, every day, no exceptions.  Yes, this includes weekends and holidays.  If you don’t consider yourself to be “good” with languages, you might even have to put in closer to two hours per day.  It sounds like a lot, and it is, but you’ll get out of it what you put in.  Just think of the sense of accomplishment you’ll have when you’re able to discuss current events with the natives in South America barely three months from now!

How Much Will I Have To Spend?

I’m not going to lie, you’re going to have to spend some money if you want to learn this quickly.  The gold standard would be to travel to a Spanish-speaking country and hire a private tutor for three months.  While this would undoubtedly be the most effective way to learn, I’m going to assume most of you have neither the money nor the time off work to do something like that (I sure don’t!).  If you can swing it, I can unhesitatingly say you should go for it.

The less-well-connected among us will need an effective substitute for in-country learning.  Once again, I find myself coming back to my two favorite learning programs:  Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone.  All three levels of Pimsleur can be purchased for around $300-350 total from Amazon and you can pick up Rosetta Stone used for around $450.  If you can’t afford to spend more than $100, you should check out FSI Spanish.  It’s not quite as effective as Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone, in my opinion, but in terms of bang-for-the-buck it’s quite a bargain.

Additionally, you’ll need two excellent (but very inexpensive) grammar books that come highly recommended and a set of vocabulary cards.  Altogether, you can expect to spend anywhere from $100-$550 depending on which route you want to take.  If it were me, I’d go with the most expensive package that includes Rosetta Stone because I’m a visible learner.  Aural learners will probably want to go with the all-audio Pimsleur program.  FSI will suffice if you’re on a budget, but the more you spend upfront, the quicker you’ll learn.  FSI is very effective, but it’s boring and can be quite a headache to deal with.

Are There Any Other Tools I Will Need?

Yes, there are two excellent grammar books I think you absolutely can’t go without:  Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses and Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Pronouns And Prepositions, both by Dorothy Richmond.  These are by far the best two Spanish grammar books on the market and cost a measly $8 each.

You’ll also need a set of good Spanish vocabulary cards.  There are plenty to choose from, but pretty much any set out there will do because they mostly contain the same common words.  I’ve used Modern Spanish: Bilingual Vocabulary Cards and I don’t have anything bad to say about this particular set.

How Do I Do It?

Once you’ve got your tools, the methodology is simple.

• Start Your Flagship Program – Whether you chose Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, or FSI, start working through your chosen program for between 30 minutes to an hour-and-a-half per day.  Some days will probably be longer than others.  If you’re working with Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur, each level will take you approximately 30 days to complete, give or take a few days (the first level of Rosetta Stone goes by a bit quicker, but quickly becomes more difficult).  With FSI, each of the two levels will take more like 45 days to complete.  It is important to make sure you completely master each section before moving on.  If you rush through a unit without really understanding it, you’ll only impede your progress later on.
• Practice Makes Perfect – Methodically work your way through both of the Practice Makes Perfect grammar workbooks for approximately 15-30 minutes every day after completing work on your flagship program for the day.  While the above programs will teach you to listen and speak, they won’t teach you much in the way of grammar.  That’s where these workbooks come in.  Working 15-30 minutes per day on these workbooks will put you on course to finish right around the 100 day mark.  Personally, I’d start with the Verb Tenses book but that’s totally up to you.
• Learn 10 New Vocabulary Words Per Day – Since the 1000 most common Spanish words make up approximately 80% of everyday speech, its imperative that you ramp up your vocabulary as quickly as possible.  Following my tips for learning Spanish vocabulary, you should find this task relatively eash to accomplish.  As little as 15-20 minutes scattered throughout the day should be more than adequate to learn 10 new words most days.

Rinse And Repeat

If you follow my advice and work consistently for 1-2 hours each and every day, you’ll find it’s much easier than you think to reach your goals.  Once you’ve succeeded, the most important thing is to keep working towards fluency.  If you take a break to reward yourself for a job well done, you risk losing motivation and never starting again.  Keep at it and good luck!

The Mechanics

The RR is formed by flapping the tongue against the front roof of your mouth.  The mechanics of it are really quite simple, it just requires a lot of practice to get right.

• Imagine your tongue flapping flapping like a flag in a strong wind
• Now try purring like a cat with your tongue flapping like that flag

A Challenging Practice Phrase

Once you can kinda-sorta form the proper sound with your tongue, there’s nothing left to do but practice.  Following is a Spanish tongue twister with practically every word containing a trilled rr sound.  If you can manage to recite this phrase correctly, you’ve no doubt mastered the trill.  Good luck and remember, it will take hours of practice to master.

Erre con Erre Cigarro
Erre con Erre Barril
Rápido corre el carro
Repleto de ferro en el ferrocarril

Keep On Keepin’ On

As with most skills, improvement in Spanish competency tends to come in quantum leaps, not incremental gains.  It is important to try to force yourself to remain focused when it seems like you aren’t making any forward progress.  Rest assured, your brain is absorbing information every bit as rapidly as before, it just hasn’t managed to put all the various pieces together yet.  Eventually, probably sooner than you think (especially if you follow my advice on pushing through learning plateaus) something will click in your brain and all of a sudden, out of the blue, you’ll see dramatic improvements in a very short period of time.  Topics that seemed impossible to master just a few weeks earlier will now seem insanely simple.  You’ll probably find look back and wonder why you had so much trouble to begin with.

1. Spanish is usually spoken very quickly
2. Native speakers tend to slur words together, blurring their boundaries

That said, there are several steps you can take that will dramatically improve your listening skills over time.

How To Develop Spanish Listening Skills

Of course, the best way to improve your listening skills is to engage in actual conversations with native Spanish speakers.  Unfortunately, most of us don’t have a lot of opportunities to do that on a daily basis (although you probably do have some opportunities).  Barring real-life interaction, here are a few ways to improve your comprehension.

• Watching Spanish Talk Shows On Television – Most major cities have at least one Spanish television station.  Talk shows in particular offer excellent listening practice because they tend to feature real people speaking naturally, in contrast to the exaggerated speech on most soap operas.
• Watching Spanish Movies – Watching Spanish movies is a great way to hear a variety of accents spoken in a (mostly) natural manner.
• Listening To Spanish Radio – Okay, most disc jockey’s take care to speak slowly and clearly enough to be easily understood by everybody, so the radio isn’t the best way to hear Spanish spoken in its natural setting.  However, the radio is also the most available source of listening practice since you can do it every day on your way to work.

Spanish Language Immersion Class

Spanish immersion classes are among the very best, and most expensive, methods of learning Spanish.  A good immersion class forces you to learn to actually think and converse in the language rather than just memorize vocabulary and grammar rules.  Immersion classes are generally small and led by an instructor who communicates in only the target language, in this case Spanish.  While grammar is of course covered, the focus of the program is on verbal communication.  At first, you will probably find yourself struggling to understand what’s going on, but you will quickly acclimate to the fast-paced learning environment and make huge advances in less time than you thought possible.

What To Look For In An Immersion Class

Since immersion classes are so expensive (often $100-200 per week, plus airfare and accommodations), it is important to shop around.  The only school I have direct experience with is Enforex, which I can highly recommend and has many schools scattered throughout Spain and Latin America, but there are literally dozens of reputable schools in almost any Spanish-speaking city you’d care to visit.  It’s really up to you and exactly what you really want out of the program, but there are a few characteristics you should look for to make sure you get the most for your money.

1. A maximum of 4-6 students per class – The smaller the class size, the more individual attention you’ll get.  While one-on-one tutoring is best, it’s also prohibitively expensive.  Classes of 2-3 students represent the best value for your money with 6 students being the upper limit.  Any more than that and the instruction starts to suffer.
2. At least 4 hours of class per day – Since you’re going to spend all this money to travel to a foreign country to learn Spanish, you should commit a serious chunk of your time to the task.  Four hours per day of intensive immersion classes will be enough to dramatically improve your Spanish language skills in just one or two weeks’ time whereas two hours per day probably won’t be.  In fact, if you are already at a relatively advanced level, four hours per day for two weeks is probably enough to get you at or at least very close to fluency.
3. Located in a Spanish-speaking city – It’s probably possible to find a good Spanish language immersion class in the U.S., but you will get so much more out of the experience if you study overseas since it will give you practically unlimited practice time after class to solidify what you’ve learned.  Obviously, it’s better to leave class for a Spanish-speaking bar than an English-speaking one if the goal is to learn Spanish.  Besides, a vacation never hurt anyone!
4. Multiple locations with references listed – This may just be me being paranoid, but I feel more comfortable sticking to the larger, more-reputable companies like Enforex.  I’m certain there are plenty of quality mom-and-pop schools out there, but there are probably also plenty of rip-offs.  A good rule of thumb is if they don’t have any former students listed as references (with contact information), it’s probably best to give it a pass.  Most of the more reputable schools will be happy to provide references, so there’s no point skipping this step.

Oh sure, by that point I knew the grammar and a decent amount of “standard” vocabulary, but I couldn’t string them together to utter a coherent sentence for the life of me.  As it turns out, my experience was far from unique.  In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever met a single person who managed to learn any language fluently  in a classroom.

Why Spanish Language Classes Are A Waste Of Money

Since Spanish language classes are far from cheap, it makes sense to seriously weigh the benefits and pitfalls of learning Spanish in a classroom before shelling out your hard-earned money.  As it turns out, there are tons of pitfalls, including…

• Not enough individual attention – Most Spanish classes in school have between 20-30 students.  Obviously, there is no way the teacher is going to be able to give anybody individual attention during the few hours per week the class is in session.
• You go at the slowest person’s pace – In a class-room setting, you are limited to advancing at the pace of the slowest learner in the room, or at least a pace the majority of students can follow.  That’s fine if you happen to be the slowest learner, but otherwise it will impede your progress.  Eventually, you’ll get bored by the lack of challenging material and tune everything out.  Once this happens, you can pretty much guarantee you aren’t going to learn anything.  Smaller classes limited to just 4 or 5 people can mitigate this problem to a large extent, but will obviously be much more expensive.
• Most class time is wasted on unimportant details – Sure grammar is important, but it shouldn’t comprise 90% of your learning effort like it does in most Spanish classes these days.  An effective class would focus 80% on conversational ability, 10% on grammar, and 10% on vocabulary.  These are just rough estimates, but it illustrates the point that while grammar is nice, it won’t help you speak.  My own experience proves this:  after 3 years of Spanish, I had an advanced knowledge of Spanish grammar but only a beginners ability to converse in the language.  Additionally, out of a 1 hour class period, how much of that time is actually spent learning and not on administrative concerns such as taking roll, handing out papers, etc?  I’d guess less than 40 minutes.
• Simply not enough exposure to the language – The biggest problem with Spanish language classes is that they only meet for 3-5 hours per week, with perhaps another 1-2 hours or so of homework in between.  That simply isn’t enough exposure to learn the language effectively and advance at a decent pace.  And as mentioned above, most of the time you are in class is wasted on things that won’t actually help you speak the language.

In my opinion, the quickest and most effective way to learn Spanish is on your own time using high-quality Spanish language courses such Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur, or FSI.  For those on a budget or who just don’t want to invest that much money, it’s still possible, albeit much more difficult, to learn Spanish for less than $50 without ever stepping foot in a classroom.

Context Is Important

The primary reason  you can’t learn Spanish using the phrase method alone is that it lacks context.  The human brain is amazingly adept at retaining information that has some meaning in relation to something else.  That is, remembering the phrase “¿Donde está el baño?” is going to be far easier if you really, really have to pee or the phrase appears within the context of a funny anecdote.  That way, whenever you have to use the restroom you will associate that experience with the correct Spanish phrase and vice versa.  This is a stupidly-simple example, but the principle is clear, I think.

Don’t get me wrong, I highly recommend the phrase method as a great way to expand your Spanish vocabulary on the side, but it should not be your primary method of study.  Your primary method should ideally be a structured program such as FSI, Pimsleur, or Rosetta Stone that guides you all the way from a beginner to the advanced stages.  After all, you aren’t the first person to want to learn Spanish.  It’s been done before, and there are certain techniques that have been shown to be more effective than others.  Basing your studies around a good, well-researched, structured program will save you both time and money over the long run.  Contrast this with the haphazard nature of the phrase method.  Sure, you’ll learn a little bit and may even be impressed by your progress at first.  But there is nothing at the core of this method to help you put it all together.  How do you relate one phrase to another and form new, abstract thoughts if all you’ve ever done is rote memorization?  You probably can’t.

That said, I do recommend getting yourself a good, inexpensive phrase book as a way to expand your vocabulary.  You might also want to try vocabulary cards, which have advantages of their own.

In fact, the quality of a Spanish learning program is probably inversely proportional to the ridiculousness of its claims.  Quality programs like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur confidently state what they think their respective programs can do for you, but avoid making any outlandish claims.  Other programs, which shall remain nameless to avoid giving them publicity, make such ridiculous marketing claims you’d think their products could cure cancer.

There Are No Shortcuts

Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to learning Spanish.  Intensive drilling is still the most effective way to learn any language.  Fancy audio and computer programs make the drilling seem less like work, but in the end that’s exactly what you’re doing:  drills.  Vocabulary drills, grammar drills, listening drills, speaking drills…they are all essential to solidify the language in your mind.  FSI Spanish may be boring, but it is also amazingly effective and represents probably the best value for the money of any Spanish learning program out there.  Why?  It’s composed almost entirely of drills.  By the time you’re finished with it, you WILL speak Spanish.

The moral of the story is to be wary of outlandish claims.  It will take months of hard study (an hour per day at least) to get to an advanced level and many months after that to reach something approaching fluency.  Sure, watching Spanish movies and reading Spanish news online are great ways to practice what you’ve learned, but in the end it’s the drills that will make or break you.

Graduated Interval Recall

Graduated interval recall is merely the spaced repetition of a word of phrase in such a way to maximize future recall.  When a new word, phrase, or grammar concept is first introduced, it is repeated more often.  Over time, the interval between repetitions becomes further and further apart as the learning becomes more familiar with its use.  Pimsleur’s published intervals are 5 seconds, 25 seconds, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, 1 day, 5 days, 25 days, 4 months, and 2 years.  That is, after initially learning a new phrase in the Pimsleur program, it will be repeated after 5 seconds, 25 seconds, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, etc so on and so forth until you finish the entire 90 day course (obviously, intervals beyond that 90 day period are pretty much impossible to implement in real life).

The Pimsleur Approach

The pimsleur approach is merely a real-world application of this theory.  If you were to time the Pimsleur program with a stop watch, you would find the interval between repetitions to more-or-less (although not exactly, obviously) match the above intervals.  Since each lesson is only 30 minutes long, some liberty must be taken with how the longer intervals are managed in order to get an actual product out the door, but the basic theory is followed quite closely and hasn’t changed for many years.  In fact, competing products like Rosetta Stone Spanish use similar concepts in their products.  Although Rosetta Stone focuses more on images than audio, the basic concept of the Pimsleur interval remains.

Read my full Pimsleur Spanish Review or buy Pimsleur Spanish from Amazon today!

Advantages

• It’s Free – An obvious advantage, but that’s about it

Caveats

• You Can’t Listen And Repeat – Repeating after a native speaker is a great way to perfect your pronunciation.  Unfortunately, libraries usually prefer if you keep silent.
• You Can’t Use The Voice Recognition Feature - Rosetta Stone’s best feature, the voice recognition module, is rendered useless in a public library.
• Time Limit – It would be difficult to get much quality study-time in with somebody always waiting impatiently in the background.

All in all, this obviously isn’t an ideal solution.  Sure it’s free, but there are plenty of other ways to learn Spanish for very little money.  At most, I’d consider combining this with those other methods.