3 Things I Tried to Learn Spanish
The first two were fine, but the third method worked the best
1. Free Apps
- Learned a couple words
- Very basic introduction to grammar
- Became repetitive and boring.
- Didn’t help with actual conversations.
Good for getting a feel for the language but won’t build actually fluency on it’s own. Most free language models aren’t efficient and don’t teach a language as fast as other methods can.
2. Memorizing Vocabulary Lists
- Felt productive initially.
- Easy to forget words without context.
- Doesn’t build fluency
- Won’t build understanding of real world use on it’s own
I could recognize random words… but I still couldn’t confidently understand or speak Spanish naturally. Knowing words here and there isn’t useful if you don’t know how to best apply them.
I would say build a foundation, learn the grammar, and then learn vocabulary using frequency based dictionaries and spaced repetition after you have a better idea of how the language works.
3. A Structured Learning System
This is what worked the best for me! Investing in a good software really makes the difference. I have personally been using Rocket Language as my main language learning software and then supplement my Spanish with YouTube (EasySpanish and Podcasts) and frequency dictionaries to help with vocab! All in all, can’t recommend Rocket Language enough!
Here’s a link to look into the software yourself!