I'm interesting in some really good language learning programs, ones that are easy to follow/learn from and that I can go at my own pace (as my Spanish class in school is kinda slow). My brother's roommate had Rosetta Stone and said it really worked well; but I do not have the money to buy a copy myself. Any good cheap or free alternatives? Mostly, I'm interested in Spanish.
j. c
Favorite Answer
Web pages to learn and practice Spanish:
http://babelanmicroblog.blogspot.com.es/2010/08/web-pages-to-learn-and-practice-spanish.html
Anonymous
If you want to discover Spanish from a native then select a on-line course since the ideal way to learn excellent Spanish is from a native speaker.
Silly Turtle [Dont forget about the avocados]
Check your local library :) My library has a very fair amount of language learning books/audio cassettes to try out.
Aside from that, the internet can be a pretty neat tool.
I use RhinoSpike http://rhinospike.com/1/ from time to time to listen to pronunciations of Japanese words spoken by natives. There's also a wide selection of other languages to skim through. If you log in, you can just click on 'Browse by language' for a bunch of audio of words/phrases, or you can request that a certain word/phrase be pronounced and someone may get around to it. Listening to native speakers can help your confidence with listening/picking up words and speaking them yourself.
Also, there's this program called Anki that I think is really neat. It's like a flashcard program of vocabulary with a method that can help you remember what you study. Anki is SRS, Spaced Repitition Software, to be specific.
"Spaced repetition is a learning technique that incorporates increasing intervals of time between subsequent review of previously learned material in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect... Although the principle is useful in many contexts, spaced repetition is commonly applied in contexts in which a learner must acquire a large number of items and retain them indefinitely in memory. It is therefore well suited for the problem of vocabulary acquisition in the course of second language learning, due to the size of the target language's inventory of open-class words."
When you download Anki on your computer ( it's free at http://ankisrs.net/ ), you can download a bunch of different things into it. When you open it, you'll see a download button. And it has mostly language stuff. I just searched 'Spanish' on Anki and it has a ton of Spanish study material. I use Anki for studying Japanese, and I think it works fairly well. Of course, you gotta be somewhat dedicated to it.
Now with internet sources - you can find a lot of material, though it may not be 100% reliable. Still, you can find some pretty good stuff. Like on YouTube, I found a video that helped me learn how to pronounce sounds not used in the English language =)
There's a spanish.about.com ( http://spanish.about.com/ ). I've used the Japanese about.com, and it's had some useful tidbits of information here and there concerning grammar. This Spanish one seems pretty similar in layout, so you may find it helpful :3
Got any movies you can watch in Spanish with subtitles? Or television shows? YouTube can help with this too :D Familiarizing yourself with the language can help your studies and you may pick up on more words. Watching subbed anime, I've even picked up on a couple grammar concepts. Language is not just learning. It's also getting used to the language. So think of opportunities in which you can practice Spanish. One piece of valuable advice I've learned was to 'Think in the language you're trying to learn." Counting in Spanish, thinking of the time/date in Spanish, putting up Spanish posters in your room - stuff like that.
Also, there's probably a site where you could sign up to email and help someone learn English while they help you learn Spanish. There's a language exchange site like that for Japanese. As far as I know, there's probably one for a bunch of other languages. Plus, it'd be a neat way to make a friend :)
I hope that helps :D Sorry, I ended up kinda just throwing tips at you xD But they could also help you learn Spanish as well :3
Anonymous
Alternatives To Rosetta Stone Spanish
John Johncool
practice with a native speaker of your language your learining!