I’ve spent two years learning spanish every day on Duolingo. Should I...
July 6, 2020 5:59 PM Subscribe
Try to do media immersion or is it still too early for that?
I’ve learned tons over the past two years and can generally read Spanish and put together basic phrases and sentences. Is it a good time to try immersion via films etc? Would that even help?
Also if you have any tips to hit my education from another angle that would be awesome.
Jumping straight into movies might be too much, but there are lots of resources aimed at learners:
-Destinos is a video series for intermediate learners. I haven't used it but it is recommended often.
-Lupa is an app where you can practice listening to slowed down Spanish and read along at the same time. The content is advanced (it's media for native speakers), and the accents can be tricky but I really enjoy it.
-News in Slow Spanish is another listening resource for learners.
If you do want to jump into media, the 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome extension allows you to display both English and Spanish subs at the same time, which is handy. There are also chrome extensions that allow you to slow netflix and other videos down-- if you're interested and want a recommendation let me know and I'll look at what the one I used was called-- don't know off the top of my head.
Practicing with native speakers is super important but logistically challenging particularly in a pandemic. A few ideas-- if you're not averse to paying you can find affordable skype tutors on italki. If you want something more casual I'd recommend hellotalk to chat with native speakers and maybe meet language partners.
¡Buena suerte!
posted by geegollygosh at 6:13 PM on July 6, 2020 [9 favorites]
-Destinos is a video series for intermediate learners. I haven't used it but it is recommended often.
-Lupa is an app where you can practice listening to slowed down Spanish and read along at the same time. The content is advanced (it's media for native speakers), and the accents can be tricky but I really enjoy it.
-News in Slow Spanish is another listening resource for learners.
If you do want to jump into media, the 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome extension allows you to display both English and Spanish subs at the same time, which is handy. There are also chrome extensions that allow you to slow netflix and other videos down-- if you're interested and want a recommendation let me know and I'll look at what the one I used was called-- don't know off the top of my head.
Practicing with native speakers is super important but logistically challenging particularly in a pandemic. A few ideas-- if you're not averse to paying you can find affordable skype tutors on italki. If you want something more casual I'd recommend hellotalk to chat with native speakers and maybe meet language partners.
¡Buena suerte!
posted by geegollygosh at 6:13 PM on July 6, 2020 [9 favorites]
Video is not going to hurt you. Try it and see how it goes.
In my experience, though, movies and TV are about the most advanced imaginable test of your language abilities. A real-life conversation is easier, since you control half the conversation and can ask people to slow down or repeat things.
It can help to know the basic situation, so you can fill in details you can't quite hear. So maybe try watching a movie you've already seen in English.
Something I've tried in French is watching a Twitch streamer. They're likely to talk about what you see them doing, which is an enormous help.
posted by zompist at 6:31 PM on July 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
In my experience, though, movies and TV are about the most advanced imaginable test of your language abilities. A real-life conversation is easier, since you control half the conversation and can ask people to slow down or repeat things.
It can help to know the basic situation, so you can fill in details you can't quite hear. So maybe try watching a movie you've already seen in English.
Something I've tried in French is watching a Twitch streamer. They're likely to talk about what you see them doing, which is an enormous help.
posted by zompist at 6:31 PM on July 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
Films are hard. People speak quickly and indistinctly and use slang and regionalisms. Try "News in Slow Spanish" as a stepping stone, maybe?
posted by less of course at 6:57 PM on July 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by less of course at 6:57 PM on July 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I recommend music and finding someone to chat with. If you’re going to watch anything, watch Spanish language children’s media. In effect you are a child.
posted by Automocar at 7:17 PM on July 6, 2020
posted by Automocar at 7:17 PM on July 6, 2020
I agree with the suggestions to watch films you are already familiar with, in my case I watched a couple with the subtitles on in Spanish not English, and figured out the context. I also had some Italki lessons from a tutor in Colombia who had a nice clear accent and where the exchange rate was more favourable, making it more affordable to have a weekly lesson than with someone in Spain (I'm in Europe). As for Netflix some things like the Casa de Papel get recommended but despite having had quite a few lessons I had the humbling experience of being more on the level of Peppa Pig lol, though South Park was fun too though except of course it had too many cuss words that I couldn't use in real life without offence. I admire your patience to stick with Duolingo so long so you must have made a fair bit of progress by now. Another option is to watch online news from a 24 hour station in either Spain or Mexico and see how much you can understand from the context - the images on the screen and the little rolling headlines underneath help give you the gist of things and you definitely get more used to the pronunciation and intonations.
posted by AuroraSky at 7:56 PM on July 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by AuroraSky at 7:56 PM on July 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
The Duolingo podcast is great for this.
posted by egeanin at 7:58 PM on July 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by egeanin at 7:58 PM on July 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
Your local library might have subscriptions to online Spanish learning resources.
If you can tolerate a (charming) kids tv show, Poco Yo(Ex) Is on youtube.
Regarding films (and tv shows) I suggest starting by watching spanish dubs of media that you already know.
In addition, you may be ready to (attempt to) read certain comic strips or news paper articles.
posted by oceano at 9:02 PM on July 6, 2020
If you can tolerate a (charming) kids tv show, Poco Yo(Ex) Is on youtube.
Regarding films (and tv shows) I suggest starting by watching spanish dubs of media that you already know.
In addition, you may be ready to (attempt to) read certain comic strips or news paper articles.
posted by oceano at 9:02 PM on July 6, 2020
Oh have you seen the resources suggested at open culture?
Have you come across the subjunctive tense yet? If you have’t, you may want to study it outside DuoLingo soon, because a lack of knowledge on this may make it challenging to comprehend “real world” Spanish. (Besides being conceptually tricky, the subjunctive creates some spelling changes in the verb stem).
posted by oceano at 10:09 PM on July 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
Have you come across the subjunctive tense yet? If you have’t, you may want to study it outside DuoLingo soon, because a lack of knowledge on this may make it challenging to comprehend “real world” Spanish. (Besides being conceptually tricky, the subjunctive creates some spelling changes in the verb stem).
posted by oceano at 10:09 PM on July 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I’ve always found it helped to watch movies/ tv that I already knew in English. My brain didn’t feel quite so lost.
posted by kitten magic at 11:10 PM on July 6, 2020
posted by kitten magic at 11:10 PM on July 6, 2020
If you are a fan of a sport which you can get with Spanish commentary this can be quite encouraging as the vocabulary will be repetitive once you learn what the Spanish is for "that's a rough tackle, he'll be booked for that" or whatever. You actually understand what's going on because you can follow the sport no problem, and they sometimes use funny or interesting turns of phrase. If you get super into this you can then also read Spanish language media coverage of the match you watched, see if there are podcasts which cover that same match etc.
posted by Lluvia at 12:33 AM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Lluvia at 12:33 AM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Films are hard. People speak quickly and indistinctly and use slang and regionalisms.
True - but they can be great teaching tools. As an intermedia/advanced French speaker I take part in a class where we watch films and then talk about them in French. Trying to follow a full length film without subtitles is indeed very hard. But what is a really good exercise is to talk in a group about a film you have just seen - long or short, with English or (Spanish) subtitles or without - according to your level. Films bring up all kinds of interesting subjects in terms of culture, idiomatic expressions and dialect. They also provide some good linguistic tests: can you summarise what happened? What was the director trying to achieve... etc. Sometimes you can watch initially with subtitles and then later some extracts without.
So - you could search around for classes that do this - or even try to set one up. At present our class meets on Zoom - we've been concentrating on short films which we watch together online and then talk about. We probably spend about a third of the time watching films and the rest on follow up sessions where we talk about them.
posted by rongorongo at 12:36 AM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
True - but they can be great teaching tools. As an intermedia/advanced French speaker I take part in a class where we watch films and then talk about them in French. Trying to follow a full length film without subtitles is indeed very hard. But what is a really good exercise is to talk in a group about a film you have just seen - long or short, with English or (Spanish) subtitles or without - according to your level. Films bring up all kinds of interesting subjects in terms of culture, idiomatic expressions and dialect. They also provide some good linguistic tests: can you summarise what happened? What was the director trying to achieve... etc. Sometimes you can watch initially with subtitles and then later some extracts without.
So - you could search around for classes that do this - or even try to set one up. At present our class meets on Zoom - we've been concentrating on short films which we watch together online and then talk about. We probably spend about a third of the time watching films and the rest on follow up sessions where we talk about them.
posted by rongorongo at 12:36 AM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Best answer: imo it is never too soon to be exposing yourself to real spoken Spanish via real -- as opposed to pedagogical -- media: television, radio and movies. You won't understand everything, or even much at all, when you first start watching and listening, but in addition to what you consciously attend to, your unconscious mind will be wrestling with the stimulus and eventually things will be more and more comprehensible. TV news shows are really great for this because 1) the announcers speak very clearly and 2) you will quite often know a lot of the stories (f you are watching domestic shows, or follow international news) which makes comprehension of the Spanish easier. If Castilian Spanish is okay for you (Spanish from Spain) I highly recommend the news offerings of the RTVE and the Basque EITB. Both are available online but also through apps so you can access them through your smart TV or other device. Online, RTVE has more content than through the app, like dramas and telenovelas. I watched several seasons of the Spanish historical telenovela Amar en tiempos reveultos on RTVE when I was learning and this was totally critical in my internalizing an everday Castilian lexicon and its conversational idioms. Amar is also in itself great television and a magnificent work of art; depending on where you are, you might have to use a VPN to access via the RTVE site; it would be worth it, again, if Castilian Spanish is okay for your goals. (Many other RTVE series do not require a VPN.) If you are in the US, there are Latin American telenovelas to watch off the air in many areas. I would guess there are digital apps, etc., for Latin American TV networks, especially state-owned TV but I don't have personal experience with them. Google research would find them, I wager. Netflix is also a fine source of many Spanish TV shows and movies from both sides of the Atlantic.
If you want to practice speaking just by yourself, I love the freely available FSI audio-based courses, like their Spanish Basic. They are more or less a vast collection of progressive aural grammar and vocabulary drills. Some people don't like them because they are culturally somewhat out-of-date, teaching old-fashioned expressions. I find the thoroughness of the audio drills to more than make up for this defect. Some of the grammar will be familiar to you after duo-lingo, but the experience of using the course will be quite different -- and, unlike in other domains of learning, in language learning over-learning is beneficial. So revisiting grammar, etc., is always okay! The dialect of Spanish FSI teaches is educated Mexican.
If you go the audio-lingual route, playing your drill mp3s on an audio editor like the free Audacity rather than a simple player makes pausing, repeating and moving around in the file much easier.
To really get comfortable speaking you need to actually have the experience of speaking Spanish with other people. Skype (or Zoom) tutors are a good way to go for this when you are starting; you'll be speaking imperfectly at first, and tutors are more tolerant of this and also will, of course, be able to give you helpful correction and instruction. They are often less expensive than you'd imagine. You can memail me if you'd like to have the contact info of the tutor who helped me learn to speak. She uses a conversational method that centers on communication rather than abstract learning of grammar.
But, yeah, watch and listen to as much real Spanish-language media as you can. It's totally okay to sit there and look at the images and feel like you are understanding nothing: you will be absorbing the music and cadences of the language and making narrative connections between words and images and dramatic scenes. More active study you do via other modalities will find echo and reinforcement in your viewing and slowly but surely you will come to understand what's being said.
I've studied several languages, and of them Spanish is, for me, the most fun. Enjoy!
posted by bertran at 12:39 AM on July 7, 2020 [8 favorites]
If you want to practice speaking just by yourself, I love the freely available FSI audio-based courses, like their Spanish Basic. They are more or less a vast collection of progressive aural grammar and vocabulary drills. Some people don't like them because they are culturally somewhat out-of-date, teaching old-fashioned expressions. I find the thoroughness of the audio drills to more than make up for this defect. Some of the grammar will be familiar to you after duo-lingo, but the experience of using the course will be quite different -- and, unlike in other domains of learning, in language learning over-learning is beneficial. So revisiting grammar, etc., is always okay! The dialect of Spanish FSI teaches is educated Mexican.
If you go the audio-lingual route, playing your drill mp3s on an audio editor like the free Audacity rather than a simple player makes pausing, repeating and moving around in the file much easier.
To really get comfortable speaking you need to actually have the experience of speaking Spanish with other people. Skype (or Zoom) tutors are a good way to go for this when you are starting; you'll be speaking imperfectly at first, and tutors are more tolerant of this and also will, of course, be able to give you helpful correction and instruction. They are often less expensive than you'd imagine. You can memail me if you'd like to have the contact info of the tutor who helped me learn to speak. She uses a conversational method that centers on communication rather than abstract learning of grammar.
But, yeah, watch and listen to as much real Spanish-language media as you can. It's totally okay to sit there and look at the images and feel like you are understanding nothing: you will be absorbing the music and cadences of the language and making narrative connections between words and images and dramatic scenes. More active study you do via other modalities will find echo and reinforcement in your viewing and slowly but surely you will come to understand what's being said.
I've studied several languages, and of them Spanish is, for me, the most fun. Enjoy!
posted by bertran at 12:39 AM on July 7, 2020 [8 favorites]
For something easy try Destinos or Extra - narrative content but simplified and geared towards learners.
Check out the Easy Spanish Youtube channel which features a lot of 'man on the street' style interviews, captioned in both Spanish and English. Try to just listen, then read the Spanish if you can't understand, then only read the English if you can't understand that.
There's no harm in trying out a few things, finding out they're too advanced for you and putting them away for now. Check if your favourite Netflix shows have a Spanish dub available. Dubbed cartoons are fun - pop on a beloved childhood Disney movie or something, and see how much you can catch.
I've started watching a Colombian Netflix series called Siempre Bruja - it has Spanish closed captioning, so I can read what I can't understand by ear. It also has a Spanish-language audio description track, to cram as much listening practice as I can into each episode.
Another fun type of native media to engage with is music. Find a band you love, and the lyrics will worm their way into your mind. There's vocabulary and grammar I've learned that I will never, never forget, because it's part of a song I've listened to a hundred times.
posted by Glier's Goetta at 3:19 AM on July 7, 2020 [4 favorites]
Check out the Easy Spanish Youtube channel which features a lot of 'man on the street' style interviews, captioned in both Spanish and English. Try to just listen, then read the Spanish if you can't understand, then only read the English if you can't understand that.
There's no harm in trying out a few things, finding out they're too advanced for you and putting them away for now. Check if your favourite Netflix shows have a Spanish dub available. Dubbed cartoons are fun - pop on a beloved childhood Disney movie or something, and see how much you can catch.
I've started watching a Colombian Netflix series called Siempre Bruja - it has Spanish closed captioning, so I can read what I can't understand by ear. It also has a Spanish-language audio description track, to cram as much listening practice as I can into each episode.
Another fun type of native media to engage with is music. Find a band you love, and the lyrics will worm their way into your mind. There's vocabulary and grammar I've learned that I will never, never forget, because it's part of a song I've listened to a hundred times.
posted by Glier's Goetta at 3:19 AM on July 7, 2020 [4 favorites]
Lots of good recommendations here! I'm about where you are in my Spanish studies, but due to circumstances don't really have access to a lot of real-life immersion opportunities, so media is it. I like Netflix for dubbed American series and cartoons, so there's something familiar to hang to. My best discovery has been Democracy Now! en español, it's somehow easier for my brain to receive Trump news if it's dubbed over in Spanish.
posted by Freyja at 7:19 AM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Freyja at 7:19 AM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
I love Lupa - the stories are so engaging, and the ability to slow down the audio and read the transcript while listening help a lot. I also like the free podcasts from Spanishland School - Españolistas (~30 min topical conversations between Colombian wife and American husband) and 10 Minute Spanish Tips (focused grammar lessons, often based on listener questions).
posted by kuma440 at 5:58 PM on July 8, 2020
posted by kuma440 at 5:58 PM on July 8, 2020
If you're on Instagram, find Spanish speaking people to follow. If the French language learning scene is any indication there should be lots of learn Spanish accounts of various levels. YouTube as well. I've found using a platform I'm already scrolling to get some extra language learning in is good for some daily immersion doses.
posted by theRussian at 6:28 AM on July 9, 2020
posted by theRussian at 6:28 AM on July 9, 2020
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posted by turkeyphant at 6:00 PM on July 6, 2020