Learning materials provided by the Spanish state

Well, not exactly. But they ARE offering their television programs over the internet from now on. For free, gratis, gratuito. Some days ago I was reading the web edition of El País, like I do once in a while, when I came across this article. I appears that RTVE changed their website and added a feature which ables people from all over the world (yes, not only Spain, like a lot of Spanish television stations tend to do) to watch the programs broadcast the last 7 days.

In the past they only offered a 24 hour news service (which they still offer, but frankly: it's dull as ****), where you now can watch telenovelas and more. Fullscreen, good quality, YouTube-like (you MUST love YouTube. So get your *** over to RTVE.es, now!

Oh, besides, I'm still terribly busy with school. I'm still here, checking comments and answering them when possible or needed. Just give me some time and stick around.

Gathering your materials

I've given quite some tips on how to begin, how to keep momentum, etc., etc. The thing I haven't discussed is what I think are the best materials. Sure, sentences are a important part of my learning routine (and should be important for you aswell), but it's not the only thing. I use some very handy (and often cheap or free) resources to get exposure from. That's what I want to do today; some resources I think are necesarry for you all or which will boost your learning progress.

Get exposure/input
Language learning is all about getting yourself enough exposure. Textbooks want to let you believe this can only be done by artificial dialogues and stupid work lists. Bull**** I say, that's not how natives learned Spanish. Spaniards learned Spanish from hearing and seeing a lot of Spanish, that's why they're so good at it. So the tip I want to give you, is this: Get. Native. Materials. NOW! It's that simple. Buy Spanish books from Amazon.com or get them from a Cervantes library near your place. Although Amazon doesn't have much DVD's for Spaniards, there are plenty other good (Spanish) companies around which sell them at good prices (again, if there's a Instituto Cervantes near your house, you might get them there aswell).

Me for example: I love watching Friends. And although I used to hate dubbed series and movies (which is not good if you want to learn Spanish, so you'd better get over it), I got muself two seasons of it on DVD and searched the internet for transcripts in Spanish. Although I only use the audio for understanding (yes, I don't use the subtitles), I can use the transcripts if I misunderstand something or for acquiring more sentences.

Another thing you should consider, is getting yourself a satellite dish. Yeah, be like a foreigner in your own country, but if you don't live in a country where there are a lot of Spanish channels on cable tv (like in the U.S.) you might want to buy a satellite dish. They can be a bit expensive, but if you can tune in on hundreds of Spanish channels, it's work every dime. You could also try WWITV of course, but there are only a few good channels and buffering a channel can take ages.

SpanishPod
If you were going to spend money on Spanish learning materials (other than native materials), you'd better spend it on SpanishPod. The first 7 days of your account you have access to all the premium materials, which are really good. Not only you have a nice podcast to listen to, you also have a PDF file with the dialogue transcript, a vocabulary list (brrrr, word list), expansion (THIS is what you need. Ready-to-copy sentences. Personally I translate the English part to Dutch, but it's still good) and some good exercises to train and measure the learned language. After the 7 days it can get ugly, because a premium membership is $30 a month. If you can't miss that amount of money, consider the basic membership, which gives you the dialogue PDF and mp3 in CD quality. But better get the premium content, because it's a great source of sentences (the first 90+ lessons will give you over 1500 sentences).

So what's the best way to use SpanishPod? Of course to listen to the podcasts, but try to listen to the ones you like (subjects you like, of course) and things you think you may need in the near future, and listen to them often. The podcasts aren't linked together liked normal lessons, so you can pick out the ones you want to do first. Also, find out what's the highest level you can take at the moment. The first few levels are in English, but later on (the higher levels) they're entirely in Spanish (which is good, because you want to have a lot exposure. Believe me, you want to get to it quickly). Listen every podcast a few times and read along with the dialogue. Also try to mine sentences from the dialogue to add to Anki.

Next thing to do is (if you have a premium account, or when you're still in the trial period) to copy the sentences from the expansion part to Anki. This won't take much time, and you're even learning from quickly seeing the sentences. As Anki supports audio, it might be a nice idea to download and edit the fix (this comes with every podcast, but is premium content) to add the audio of the sentence to the written sentence. The fix contains the loose vocabulary, but it also has each and every example sentence from the expansion tab as audio.

So not a member? Sign up NOW! (Yeah, some blatant advertising from my side, but I mean each and every word of it).

Stay tuned for more b*d-*ss material tips!

Colour your words

Previously I wrote about word lists and that I believe they don't work. Don't worry, I still think they don't work, but I had some discussions the last few days about it with some people. They find sentences way too confusing to learn the most important words. Also, I've noticed something in my own learning method which should boost your learning progress aswell. But first I'll tell you how I used to create my sentences in Anki.

When I first began to use sentences I was worried about the fact that I wouldn't learn individual words. So instead of just adding sentences I'd first add the infinitive or noun and then the example sentence. Something like this:

caro/a
La gasolina es más cara que el gasóleo

expensive
Petrol is more expensive than diesel

First I thought this was perfect. But I soon found out that adding the infinitive is just useless. I don't want to use Spanish like it's a programmed language. I don't like to think too much about grammar which causes me to be less fluent. I want to be able to get an intuition, just get the flow of the language and understand most of what I hear in a small amount of time. So I decided to get rid of the infinitive and make sentences like this:

La gasolina es más cara que el gasóleo

Petrol is more expensive than diesel

Ever since I've been using this format. And it works, it simply works. After a few months practicing my few hundred sentences like this I was able to have nice conversations and even pull off more complex presentations. But after a update of Anki, which enables people to add colours to their words and sentences, I've come up with the idea to colour the hard words to help them stick better. So instead of just making a word bold, you can simply add a colour to it, which (according to some studies) boosts the learning progress. And again, everything is much more clear right now, because of the extra attention to difficult words and parts. This is how my sentences look like right now:

La gasolina es más cara que el gasóleo

Petrol is more expensive than diesel

Of course this is just a simple example, most of my sentences are more complex than this. Besides, it's possible that I have only one coloured word in a sentence, or none. But the thing is that you need to analyze your sentences, read them aloud (if you're alone, of course), write them down (if that's possible, I don't do it normally), etc., etc. Giving colour to the words not only helps you with remembering them in the future, it also helps you with analyzing them because you can distinguish the coloured words easier and see their translations faster aswell.

So bring colour to your sentences and let your learning be more fruitful!

Word lists don't work (and why they don't work)

When beginning with Spanish, your first goal is probably to get a big basic vocabulary. That's a logical step, as you want to understand at least bits of the Spanish you read or hear. You probably learn a nice amount of chunks to survive in a simple Spanish conversation. That's all fine and good, but how are acquiring a new vocabulary? Word lists? Alphabetical word lists? Thematic word lists? Frequency word lists? It doesn't matter and I don't care. As long it's a word list without example sentences (sentences are gooood, because you can add them to your Spaced Repetition System) they're worthless and mostly work contra-productive.

When I started majoring Spanish in college I knew almost nothing. Ok, I knew how to say hello and ask people how they're doing. But that's nothing. So I first started with reading a lot, which I still like. I even made a word list for my tests, just to survive. The first word list was also the last one, and I used it for about 20 minutes. It just didn't like it, it was dull and gave me the feeling I wasn't learning anything. However, I've had many discussions with classmates who think word lists are the one true learning method. They learn a few hundred words before an important test, know them for about three days and then forget 95% of what they've learned. It's no surprise they've only made little progress or at least not as much as I did. The only reason I've learned so much in the past few months is because I started to learn everything in context. I got myself a thematic dictionary, but not to learn the words but to add the example sentences each word has to my SRS.

So what's the reason word lists don't work? "I'll get myself a big word list and add it to my Spaced Repetition System" you might say. Good luck... with failing, I would say. The weakness of word lists isn't just the way you use to tackle them. It's the concept itself. Loose words are useless, especially in a language like Spanish. Unless the language you're learning is Esperanto (where word order isn't that important and words stay the same most of the time - but not always) I wouldn't even consider learning loose words, it's a waste of time and energy. Almost every word in a Spanish sentence depends on a noun, subject or a specific tense. Learning words in one particular form is just useless, and again a waste of energy. You want to see everything in context, using sentences for your plain learning moments or simply watch tv or listen to the radio. It doesn't matter, as long as the words are in context.

The power of context is not only that you get a better understanding of the Spanish grammar or that you get an intuition. Every sentence tells you something, and the words you don't know will stick better if you understand what the sentence is trying to say to you. Analyze your SRS sentences, look for the unknown words and special forms of verbs and nouns. Look for the awkward things in Spanish, it'll be even funny. Each and every sentence which contains a hard to remember word will help you to remember that particular word. It will also help you with remembering most of the other words in the sentence AND the grammatical structure. So throw your word lists away, get yourself a (thematic) dictionary word LOTS of example sentences and start adding them to Anki. Don't have a computer at hand? Doesn't matter, just listen an audiobook or a podcast. Don't want to use the computer but just being plain lazy? Doesn't matter, fire up a DVD with Spanish audio (even a lot of dubbed ones are fun to watch. Me for example always enjoy Bad Boys 2, it's just funny as ****) - better not turn on the subtitles (not even the Spanish ones), they make you lazy.

It doesn't matter how you acquire vocabulary. It doesn't matter how long it takes before you feel confident (but hopefully it won't take too long either). Just do a little bit every day, in context, and you WILL build an impressive vocabulary.