www.CostaRicaTicas.com

I think I've posted this in a couple of threads related to learning Spanish, but I did want to separately plug a Spanish language series that I've just completed for a second time that I thought was pretty amazing. Plus, my plane to SJO doesn't leave for another 12 hours, so I'm pretty bored.

http://www.languagetransfer.org/#!complete-spanish/c1313

The full course is available as YouTube videos or downloadable as MP3. The YouTube videos have no video content, just audio.

Here's the premise:

The entire course is a dialog between an instructor and a student. They focus on teaching spanish with little to no memorization, starting from a collection of cognates between English and Spanish. From the cognates, they begin to add a few more verbs. The instruction is based around learning to think what you are trying to say, break it down into pieces, and use what you know to break it down. Within just a few lessons, the instructor has you saying what look like fairly complex sentences, and breaking via rules that you learn, rather than rules that you memorize. I've been through the full audio course a couple times now, and it has helped immensely with my understanding of Spanish. It's weak on how many Spanish words you actually learn (it relies heavily on the cognates), but this worked very well in conjunction with something like https://www.duolingo.com, which takes a more traditional approach to teaching vocabulary, but did a crappy job of explaining grammar.

My conversational spanish remains poor, simply because I don't practice enough, but I can read reasonably well, and can communicate with anyone who is willing to slow down to my conversation speed.

LanguageTransfer and Duolingo are both completely free (though I have donated to LanguageTransfer simply because I thought what they created was fairly awesome).

You don't need Spanish to be able to monger in CR, but you'll almost certainly have a better experience if you've got some grasp of the language.

I learn by the grammar rules first, but I'm at a point where listening is necessary. My problem is without video, I tune out the 'chatter' and my mind wanders.

To build vocabulary use http://www.quizlet.com. It's free, and you can use thousands of other people's lists to study. Send me a PM and I will dump dozens of custom lists on you.

For grammar, check out the following:

http://www.drlemon.com/Grammar/basics.html

http://www.studyspanish.com/tutorial.htm

For verb practice, try: http://www.conjuguemos.com

To find a practice partner, use: http://www.italki.com

With my very limited vocab, I can chatter in present tense fairly well. Pronoun usage is a bitch, and this is where the 'they speak backwards' stereotype comes from. The language is pretty simple, actually.

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bypassin' kinky, and usin' the whole chicken!!!

There's no such thing as memorization-free language learning system. I heard Rosetta Stone advertise the same thing. How would one learn a new language without memorizing grammar rules, irregular verbs, or vocabulary...

Vocab for sure, but most people learn languages by usage, and don't actually understand the grammar. They just learn that they must say it in a certain way: they don't understand why. Many don't even understand that they are conjugating verbs (or declining nouns in some languages).

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bypassin' kinky, and usin' the whole chicken!!!

So that is memorization when you "learn" to say something specific a certain way. These program that promise no memorization are really misleading.

A friend of mine once said "the best kind of diet is one that tells you you can eat as much as you want, but tricks you into eating less". I think the "memorization-free" learning systems work largely the same way. "You don't have to memorize things, but we'll trick you into remembering".

Haha, that's probably true.

Big difference between remembering, and memorizing.

_________________
bypassin' kinky, and usin' the whole chicken!!!