Rapping all day long

I'm still here, happily doing my daily SRS reps, watching telenovelas (no, they're not just for chicas or mujeres) and listening music. Listening A LOT of music, each and every day, for hours and hours. To be honest: I just can't listen to audiobooks or podcasts while commuting. I like reading newspapers, or just staring out of the window while sitting in the train or bus. Not thinking about anything.

So, podcasts are no real option, nor are audiobooks. I have to think too much, and I just want to relax. And music simply helps me to relax, especially Spanish music. I've written more regarding this a while ago, and in the meanwhile I've listened hours and hours to reggaeton, bachata, rock, (latin)rap and more. The last few weeks I've been discovering Spanish rap. At first I was just enjoying the beats and lyrics, so far I could understand them. But then something cool happened.

I have the weird ability to listen to a CD for weeks and weeks, hours and hours per day. And the cool thing is that even after three weeks a CD doesn't bore me. It takes at least 4 - 5 weeks before a CD really starts to bore me. This way I can absorb the lyrics, giving me some new neat vocab to work with, but it also helps me understanding something said at 500 miles per minute. For example: there are quite some natives in the classes I attend, and after school we often continue to speak Spanish, but mostly they speak at 500 miles per minute which was quite difficult for me. Was difficult for me, because now I can understand them without a problem. Sure, sometimes I need a second or two before I fully understand what they've just said, but I can understand it. All because of rap and reggaeton.

Another neat thing that happened is that is influenced my pronounciation. So far I developed an Iberian accent which I really like. I had to work hard to get this accent, but eventually I developed one. It's a pity I didn't find out earlier how music can help to build your accent. For example: I got a CD with some cool reggaeton. As common in parts of Latin-America some singers pronounced the jota as a 'h' - hota. After a while I began saying things like muher, hente, caha, etc., etc. Now, this is something I didn't want to happen because of my Iberian accent.

It took some effort not using it anymore, but it proves that music strongly influences your pronounciation. Instead, I'm listening rap now, from Spain. And it really helps with my pronounciation, both maintaining and building it to perfection.

Studying grammar CAN help

At first, I was all for the 'input before output', 'output will come automatically', etc., etc. And I must say it has worked for me, it has worked wonderfully. BUT! As soon as I had to study the verb endings for class and the irregular verb forms, my study progress went even faster. At first I thought this was only because I was getting more input, but in Spain I noticed that my grammar studies were actually VERY fruitful.

Although at times I didn't know what tense to use, I eventually became more familiar with 'when to use what' and because of my grammar studies earlier I knew the correct verb form. Later on, it became part of my intuition and I knew exactly what to use when, something very exciting. Also, everytime I read a book, and I see a certain verb, I know exactly in what tense it is and therefore knowing the endings helps me understanding more and adding more and more to my natural intuition.

A while ago I was reading some articles regarding language acquisition. One article was about the theories of Stephen Krashen (the man who 'came up' with the input = out method) and it stated that students who had a massive amount of input with some grammar study were eventually on a higher level than students who only got input without grammar study. Unfortunately the article is in Dutch, otherwise I'd posted it here. But the main thought is that studying grammar is not a waste of time, as long as you don't spend too much time on it. Studying grammar won't learn you Spanish, input does. That doesn't take away that studying grammar can boost your progress.

So what to do? I suggest buying a good grammar book, especially one which explains the verbs. Don't rush the use of a grammar book, I suggest plain beginners to stick to easy input, even courses (FSI, SpanishPod), to get familiar with the Spanish language. Read children's books, even better; use bilingual texts (if audio is available: USE IT!). It will help you getting a good foundation, after which you can start studying grammar (concentrate on the verbs first). Believe me, it will boost your progress.

Cuentos en Español

Stories in Spanish. This is something I wanted to share with you earlier, but simple didn't have the chance to do so. Remember me writing about children's books, and how important they're for beginners? Right, I gave some tips for books, but unfortunately it's quite difficult to get them if you're not a member of Instituto Cervantes. Luckily enough there are some neat resources, of which I'd like to discuss one in this post.

Eleena of Voices en Español came up with the great idea of posting Spanish [translations of] children's stories on the web, with the exact audio done by a native speaker. The accent of the speaker may vary, as the speakers vary. Nonetheless it's a great source of reading-listening, next to the nice and simple (although real enough) language. Copying the audio to your mp3-player and printing out the text is a great way to learn while commuting. I'm actually planning to do so and just bring a marker with me so I can colour the unknown words and add the sentences to Anki.

The plan is to add one story per week, so there should be plenty of materials soon enough!

Click here for Cody's Cuentos.

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!

How difficult is it to study Spanish?

People often ask me if it's hard to study Spanish, or they simply say it is a tricky language to learn. However, the biggest problem for them is that they see this 'wall' (an unknown language) and think it's almost impossible for them to get around it, or that only smart people can learn Spanish or another language. The truth is, however, that Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn, if your native tongue is a European language. But even if it isn't; you already know English (otherwise you wouldn't understand this post) and English and Spanish share the same alphabet and other nice things (the spelling of Spanish is nothing compared to English; they came up with a 'concept' where you spell the things how you say them. [sarcasm]WOW![/sarcasm]). According to Khatzumoto (yeah, sorry, I like the way he thinks. And he is just right regarding a lot of things) it's possible for everyone to learn Japanese, so why wouldn't you be able to learn Spanish?

So how is it possible that people study Spanish for years and years, and that they're still not able to have even the simplest conversations? It's just a matter of choosing the wrong approach. A lot of people use textbooks with artificial conversations, old words, boring content, etc., etc. Textbooks are expecting someone to know a rule by heart by just seeing three examples, or force people to learn out-of-context words. So it's not that Spanish is difficult, that's what some people want you to believe. Just look to some of the advantages you have as a speaker of the English language:

It has the same alphabet, is spelled phonetically, has some of the easiest sounds to produce, has a clear grammar, not many hard-to-pronounce words, etc., etc. So far I can see it's pretty easy to study Spanish. The only thing that lacks most of the time, is that people believe they can't do it. Why would say if it's impossible if you didn't even try?

So, the biggest hurdle to take is to say to yourself: I. Can. Do. It. NOW! And instead of just saying it and then doing nothing, start acting like you can do it. Gather materials, USE them and you'll see Spanish really is one of the easlier languages to master. "Ahhhhh, sure Ramses. I can start studying Spanish, but my accent will suck anyway, I will never master the grammar or idioms and I will NEVER have a big vocabulary" you might say. Nonsense, I will say. Just go, study, enjoy the language. Enjoy your progress, enjoy hanging out with Spanish people. Enjoy each and every thing you do in Spanish, enjoy using Spanish. Just say to yourself: I can do it, and I WILL succeed and master Spanish to the point where I can say it's my second (or third) native language. It's not that hard, it's perfectly possible.

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!

The importance of liking your music

I know a lot of people who tend to say that music has really helped their language learning experience in a positive way or is helping them to get a grip on their target language. I agree with them, although I must say that you must not rely too much on songs for language learning. Usually words are changed in a way that they sound nice, but they're not necessary correct when used in the songs. However, songs can be really good to get used to the sound of the language and to boost your love for the language.

I've been struggling with finding music that I really like for long. The Spanish language comes with a list of music genres which are typical for the language. The truth is however, that merengue and bachata music can be nice, but they're not really my type of music. I really like rock music and punk rock in particular. That said, it has been a real drag for me to find some bands I really like. "It doesn't matter if you like the music or not, just listen to Spanish music for the sake of listening" lots of people tend to say. This is not true, you will find out when time passes and you study more and more. You WANT to like the music, otherwise it will just negatively affect your progress.

My search for music that I really like led me to situations I prefer not be in anymore. Because of the lack of music I like, I started listening to some pop music and bachata music. Instead of helping me learning Spanish and increasing my love for the language, it began to break down the love I already had for Spanish. Every minute I listened to music I didn't really like, the more I began to hate the sounds of Spanish itself. I know, maybe I was overreacting, but that was how I felt.

That changed when I found music that I DO like. I started to love the language again, and the sound of Spanish now sound cooler than ever. This shows how important it is that you like the music of the target language you listen to. Maybe the music you like doesn't help you with building vocabulary or getting a better understanding of the grammar, but it can help you gaining a bigger 'liking factor'. On the other hand; listening to music you don't like can seriously damage your progress. In the end you will start studying less and less because you start hating some parts of the language, and the things you want to happen is that you start loving almost every part of it.

Another fun thing to do is to learn the lyrics by heart. This can look dull, but if you're really into a song it can be a really good thing to do. You will get used to the sound, maybe even the particular accent of the singer (if that's an accent you want to learn). Lots of sites which prove lyrics often give the translation of Spanish songs, so you can get a gist of the meaning of the words and sentences (remember: you don't want to translate word-by-word, simply because it doesn't work).

Why sentences are so damn important

If you have been reading Khatzumoto's blog, you probably have read enough about sentences. But it doesn't hurt to just talk about it again. To be honest; I've been really sceptic about this method for a long time, until I decided to just pick up the idea and put it in practice myself. And I have to say, it just skyrocketed my progress in Spanish.

I'm surrounded by native speakers of Spanish in college, and we all just prefer to discuss our daily things in Spanish instead of in Dutch or English. In the beginning this was kinda hard because my vocabulary sucked in Spanish and my feeling for the structure of the language was just dramatic. This resulted in some pretty funny situations. Funny for the native speakers. I just felt depressed at some times and had a headache every day the first three or four weeks. Now I can discuss a lot of subjects with a fairly high level of confidence, just after five months or so. Still, my vocabulary isn't even near that of a native speaker, but I've grown an intuition for the structure of Spanish.

So what has helped me to get this? Simple; sentences. Adding new sentences every day, saying them out loud and decipher the meaning of the words and the structure of the sentence. Instead of learning I just read them, and it worked. It has been working since the first week I began to use my growing sentence database and it still works months after. I don't have the feeling that I'm actually learning something (which will be awkward for you and can result in a minor depression in the beginning), but I am learning something. A few weeks ago I had a presentation about a subject I never talked about before. But I was able to pull it off with just a few minutes of time to prepare, and the words flew out of my mouth. Afterwards I got some compliments about how my Spanish has grown in such a short time. It's not that I'm looking for compliments, but they're always nice.

My sentence database isn't that big at the moment, but I'm always looking for things I might need in the near future. It's handy to have a thematic dictionary because you can pick things you want to learn at that moment. I've been in Spain for almost a month last December. I knew that I'd go to bars and clubs with friends who are native speakers, so the things I wanted to learn involved names of drinks, youth slang and so on. That's why I've been looking for sentences which covered that particular subjects and added them to Anki. The people I went out with were suprised I knew some neat slang words and I was able to understand them when they used sub-culture words themselves. It certainly boosted my 'liking factor' of Spanish, and thinking back about it just makes me happy (something you'll need, because you want to remember yourself why you are learning Spanish - to communicate with cool people).

So start building you own personal sentence database NOW. Don't do excercises now and then but do them every day. It doesn't matter if you do 10 sentences of 100 per day, as long as you keep you Spanish alive and growing. Remember; this isn't time I've come up myself. I've just read a lot of posts of Khatzumoto who got his ideas from the great guys of Antimoon.com. If it has worked for them, and if it's working for me. Why wouldn't it work for YOU?

Introduction

Welcome to the brand new weblog called "Spanish Only". To be honest; this is not my first weblog about learning Spanish. It's actually my second one, but I just started over because I didn't like my previous host.

As the title states this weblog is about learning Spanish. I'm currently in my fifth month majoring Spanish in college and I must say I love the culture and the language! I've been struggling with beginning with the language in the past, that's why I decided to just go for it and choose it as my major. My goal is to become a Spanish teacher, either in the Netherlands (where I currently live) or in Spain.

This weblog is, of course, not only about learning Spanish. In the past twelve months I tried a lot of methods more or less with success. Even now I'm majoring Spanish I keep studying on my own with methods I found useful to me. The methods I found useful are easy to use for other languages aswell.

The languages I've studied so far are: English, German, French (without any success due to the high level of suckage of high school classes), Russian and a bit of Chinese. However, my current goal is to just spend as much time as possible on Spanish.

Welcome again! Just relax and have a nice time reading and discussing language learning.