phillip’s last blog post: Mel Gibson Doesn’t Give a Fuck.

– They are cheaper than private tutors
– They go above and beyond just simple listening and repeating. You actually have lessons and tests to ensure that you are progressing.
– You can go at your own pace and constantly review the content.

Learning a foreign language is extremely hard and people shouldn’t tell you otherwise. In my personal experience there are no shortcuts. If you really want to become fluent, which is truly rewarding, then take a course.

A couple of other activities help as well:

– Watch Spanish TV shows. You may not understand what they’re saying at first, but it will help.
– Go to a Spanish speaking country and start speaking with the locals. You’ll learn how they talk and pick up some slang you might not learn in a classroom.

I truly do believe though that the first step is starting with some basics. Here is some more info:

http://www.teachyourselfspanishnow.net/

Ramses’s last blog post: Immersion is the way to go (and stop looking for excuses).

As for fourth generation hispanics, I still have never encountered one that doesn’t speak English, and I know a boatload of immigrants. I’ve never even encountered a second generation older than 5 who didn’t have a grasp of basic english. Hell, half the americans in Virginia don’t even have a basic grasp.

You can “immerse” yourself by living in a different country physically, but unless you immerse yourself in the culture and the people (and I mean more than going to 7-11 and asking for cigarettes), you can’t really consider that full immersion. They live in their enclaves, have their DISH Latino, get their necessities from bodegas, and find Americans, like me, to help them with the things they need to do in English. The average Mexican has no need to speak English to live in this country. Even LESS in places like Texas and California. The biggest disservice I am doing is not forcing them to speak English with me.

Anyway, I truly do congratulate any person who takes on a second or third language, no matter how they do it. The world is getting smaller and languages are so important.

you’ve attributed a false premise to me.
the majority of recent spanish-speaking immigrants aren’t living in socially isolated linguistic ghettos (although So Cal has some notoriously isolated hoods) yet still are not picking up english from immersion in the predominant US culture. the latest census has 1st wave immigrants speaking english in a useable manner in the 10-20% range. these are the people for whom immersion seems to be doing nothing. and these are the people who are most similar in circumstance to an american traveling overseas to spend 6 months or more in a foreign land learning another language.

it is not a data point in favor of immersion as a policy to teach language to large numbers of people, though it will work for motivated lone travelers.
thus, there have to be other factors in play besides cultural immersion — the immigrants’ willingness to learn, for instance, and incentives to encourage them.
or, at the very least, avoiding disincentives that discourage them from learning english.

Thus immersion works, but like any stress people will avoid it if they can.

I’m still curious about these 4th generation latinos that don’t speak English. That’s some pretty hardcore isolation. I’ve never encountered it.

Also, Rajia sounds like you might jut be good with languages. Most people past the age of seven cannot learn a language with as much ease as you describe.

Pero yo sujero que si quieres apprender Espanol, no escuches reggaeton. Seria como trater de apprender Ingles escuchando Jay-Z (or cualquier rapero).

If you want anecdotal evidence for immersion. I was born in MO, but grew up in Chile until I was 5 . I came to the US never having been exposed to English. Before I was 6, I was reading chapter books like Across Five Aprils, which I remember being painfully long. Plus, I got punished in school, because I finished the entire spelling book in a week as retaliation for them getting me in trouble with my parents for not doing homework.

I still wonder how that made any sense.

in those cloistered spanish-speaking enclaves you will find generations of spanish speakers that have not grasped more than a rudimentary use of english. restaurants, post offices, and schools now have signs in spanish along with english to accommodate large swaths of the US population. then there is the growing market proliferation of spanish language TV. this is a national trend.

the percentages of immigrant non-english speakers in the US obviously get smaller with each generation (although not as small nor as quickly as other immigrant groups have in the past) but this gets to my point that immersion as a language learning tool seems not to work on first generation immigrants (whose experiences are similar to a traveler going to south america for 6 months) who’ve been here for years and are either incapable of learning, uninterested in doing so, or disincentivized from doing so by government-sponsored bilingualism. children of immigrants born here pick up english relatively quickly because children in general pick up any language they are exposed to quickly.

i contend that immersion worked for you because you wanted it to work, and you had no other choice. but as a policy for teaching second languages to the masses, it may not live up to the hype.

Most of the Spanish speakers in this country that do not speak english do NOT interact with english speaking people. They live in their enclaves of other spanish speaking people.

my guess is that immersion works when you are young and your brain more pliable and when you have the inclination plus the smarts to learn. all avenues where you can resort to using your native tongue must be cut off, as well. it doesn’t help spanish speakers in the US that their native language is catered to with bilingual government forms and service workers.

Spanish is not something I translate English into. It is something that comes naturally, because I never learned the language by making association with written words, but rather with objects or actions, just like a child does.

Immersion programs work with people who already know something before they start. I did the Middlebury summer Spanish program for 7 weeks after I had taken Spanish for years. I learned a ton and became fluent. The “principiantes” looked like they were utterly miserable.

Many books are useless and do only teach grammar, but others teach real language- for instance, Basic Spanish Reader.

http://wso.williams.edu/~klichtma/teachyourself.html

Why the hell would you pay $152 for Pimsleur when you can check them out of the local library for free and upload them?

Also, books (or classes) should be the main course. Real life goes way too fast for you to learn a language that you truly don’t know. Only once you’re intermediate can you pick up stuff on your own.

I’m gonna have to lift some weights and eat a steak to make up for the blow to my manliness.