{"id":295,"date":"2009-02-01T21:44:51","date_gmt":"2009-02-01T21:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/?p=295"},"modified":"2009-02-02T12:32:57","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T12:32:57","slug":"learning-spanish-quickly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/archives\/2009\/02\/learning-spanish-quickly\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Spanish quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I studied Spanish for about 5 weeks before arriving in Paraguay, a few hours each day, starting with absolutely no knowledge of the language. While I&#8217;m still unable to understand most conversations (mostly due to the speed of speech), I&#8217;m making a lot of progress each day. Here are the resources I have been using to learn, most of them for free:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.prospanish.co.uk\">ProSpanish<\/a> has a couple of free lessons, which act as a great introduction to the very basics.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/spanishdict.com\/learn\">SpanishDict<\/a> has about 25 video lessons available. These are good, if you can stand the horrible American accent of la profesora!! And there are some interactive activities after each lesson.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/languages\/spanish\/lj\/\">BBC Spanish Steps<\/a> complements the above nicely, with some good practice for listening.\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.livemocha.com\">LiveMocha<\/a> is a fascinating website combining language learning with social networking. After completing some interactive learning exercises, you are tested on writing (answering a short essay question) and speaking (recording into the microphone). The magic part is that your work is then handed off to a native Spanish speaker (another community member, who might, for example, be using the site to learn English), who provides feedback and corrections.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.notesinspanish.com\">NotesInSpanish<\/a> is a useful podcast to complement the above, which we listen to in the car.<\/li>\n<li>I bought the book &#8220;Spanish Verb Tenses&#8221; by D. Richmond. Very useful, it&#8217;s a textbook which includes many exercises that drill the verb conjugations into your head.<\/li>\n<li>I also had a few private lessons at my house before leaving.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I studied Spanish for about 5 weeks before arriving in Paraguay, a few hours each day, starting with absolutely no knowledge of the language. While I&#8217;m still unable to understand most conversations (mostly due to the speed of speech), I&#8217;m making a lot of progress each day. Here are the resources I have been using [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}