Learning a Language Is Like Running a Marathon
on Nov 3, 2009 in Methods Motivation language learning process learning process learning spanish spanish Photo by Barry Yanowitz Many want to learn Spanish and they want to learn it now. No wait, they want to speak Spanish and they want to speak it NOW. They don’t want to go through the trouble of learning another language but want to speak it as soon...

Imitate, Imitate, Imitate
on Oct 16, 2009 in Listening Pronunciation Speaking intonation natural learning natural speech spanish accent After reading the blog for a while, how do you think you should learn Spanish? By reading a lot? Listening a lot? Watching TV as much as you can? Speaking? Wrong, wrong, wrong… WRONG! Sure, you should read, listen, watch TV and eventually speak, bu...

Adding Audio to Anki Made Easy
on Oct 13, 2009 in SRS Sentences Anki Listening listening comprehension sentences with audio Last week I told you guys how to get tons of real French and Spanish sentences with audio, and how to add them to Anki easily. But now it just got even easier and above all faster to add sentences to Anki, or should I say the audio? Everything in the...

How Much Spanish Is There in Your Life?
on Oct 11, 2009 in Motivation immersion immersion environment natural learning spanish People are good at looking for excuses. If I add up all the time I’ve been looking for excuses to not do something I’d be a rich guy, and fluent in French already. But that’s not the case, and many people are in exactly the same sit...

Using FrenchPod (and SpanishPod) to Get Sentences With Audio
on Oct 7, 2009 in French project SRS Sentences french A while ago I received an e-mail from a reader with the question if one should add audio to every sentence. He complained (with reason) that it isn’t easy to get good audio for sentences (you’re often forced to use lame text-to-speech sof...

Spanish Word of the Day: pedazo
on Oct 6, 2009 in Spanish Word of the Day spanish insult spanish slang Jesús, a Spanish friend of mine, is quite foul-mouthed and likes to call people pedazo de gay every now and then, just because they’re not 100 percent machista. Of course that very expression is an insult, but that’s the way he talks to...

Mandarin, French and SRSing
on Oct 4, 2009 in French project General My Mandarin adventure I wrote about some weeks ago ended before it really came off the ground (read everything about it in this and this post). I’ve learned some good things while struggling with this completely unknown (to me at least!) langua...

Cool Resource: Spanish Live Television
on Sep 16, 2009 in Materials Television Just a quick update. A while ago I stumbled upon this really cool site called Fomny, where you can watch several live streams of (web) television channels. How cool is that? The link I provided leads to the Spain page, but if you look at the top you...

Spanish Word of the Day: topar
on Sep 15, 2009 in Spanish Word of the Day topar word of the day Today a super short Word of the Day post, but one with a good word: topar. Some weeks (or was it months already?, I don’t know) I was reading my V de Vendetta graphic novel in Spanish, and saw this word topar. From context I could more or less...

Watching Television is Bad. Do it More!
on Sep 7, 2009 in Television Hi, my name is Ramses and I’m an addict. Hi Ramses! Addicted? To what? Well, watching television (the horror!). I mean, I watch television… a lot. I do it while I’m commuting, brushing my teeth, dressing myself, still half asleep...