Re: what's the best way to learn an additional language
Hello,
I have been working on getting better at my Spanish. If you are looking for a podcast to help you, might I suggest Language Transfer? Each lesson is around 10 minutes, and they mostly teach grammar. They try to make the lessons memorable. English speakers have an advantage when trying to learn a language like Spanish since English borrowed a lot of words from Latin, which Spanish descends from. They don't really teach you to memorize all the words. Instead, the instructor shows you how to go through the process to remember a word if you've forgotten it. They teach all the verb tenses and proper sentence structure as well. They start out with converting words from English, so they're not throwing you in the deep end right away. For example, the first lesson starts out by telling you that most words ending with -al can be directly converted to Spanish and have the same meaning. There are exceptions, of course, but this generally holds true.
Another idea is to use a spaced repetition system like Anki to study vocabulary. I recently created a couple decks, and I feel like they're helping me. I use AnkiWeb since the installed application isn't very accessible. To help me remember, I mainly use the close card type, which makes me fill in the word missing from a Spanish sentence. To help the words stick in my head, I try to keep my sentences short and memorable.
If you're learning Spanish, spelling shouldn't be a big issue since it is a very phonetic language. For instance, the letter 'a' will always sound like 'ah' no matter what. The same goes for every other letter. French is a lot more tricky. The only thing I can suggest is to learn the spelling rules. Even a language like French has some method to the madness, or so I hear.
There are websites where you can practice writing in your chosen language and get feedback from native speakers in return for money or correcting their English writing. However, I haven't used any of these websites so I can't really say much about them. Along the same line, there are websites where you can talk to native speakers over Skype or other VoIP software. They will help you with your Spanish in exchange for help with their English. I've thought about trying this once I improve my listening comprehension some more.
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