The teacher was called Ana Ortiz, and was from Madrid. The first lesson was the basics, greetings and some numbers, and then the class was over. Our first homework was to greet our parents in Spanish as soon as we got home. My mum was surprised when I opened my mouth and said 'hola, ¿cómo estás? . She asked me what it meant, and I told her 'hello, how are you?'.
I can also remember thinking that the homework from our second class was very hard for eleven year olds: the task was to memorize the names of all the Spanish speaking countries and their capital cities. As the years went by, I became more and more of a Spanish fanatic, and passed all my exams with very high marks. My passion for Spain and Spanish was so great I vowed to visit Spain for longer than a few weeks, which was how long I went on family holidays for with my parents and sister. I got to know many parts of Spain, and visited Santander, and other places on the Costa Verde (Spain's northern Green Coast, Noja, Castro Uridiales and Santillana del Mar on a school trip when I was 12 , and I visited Girona (Cataluña) and the Valencia region with my family and their friends. I saw most of Barcelona on a whirlwind trip with my grandmother, and also visited Menorca and Tenerife on other holdiays. I saw Madrid once on a weekend family trip to celebrate my birthday, and, four years later, found myself accepting a language assistant job through the British Council in London. I was in Madrid less than a moth later, and am still here.
That is how I became interested in Spain and Spanish. Here is how you can learn it effortlessly Before following the steps here, you should get hold of a map of Spain and familiarise yourself with where each region is, and perhaps start collecting images you associate with Spain, like paella or a Spanish beach. After all, you want to know about the country who's language you will be learning. This will also help you picture where you are geographically when you visit Spain, and you will identify more with the area. The regions of Spain are all very different.
1) Buy a book and CD pack off the Internet or raid the shelves of your local library/ bookshop. The library is an alternative if you don't want to spend money as language learning packs tend to be expensive.
2) Buy a Spanish-English picture dictionary. This may seem childish, but picture dictionaries are a great way to learn a language effectively as you can relate the pictures with the words, and they can be worked through methodically or skipped through to the parts you want to work on.
3) Write down words you don't understand, with the English translations, in a notebook, or on Post It notes (I stuck them everywhere, and my mum used this technique when she was learning Soanish too.)
4) Use online dictionaries likeSpandict – Google translate is not very effective, as it leaves some English words badly translated, or misinterprets the context of what you're trying to say.
6) look at Spanish words for everyday objects in the dictionary. add them to your notebook everytime you see in the world.
7) Buy a pocket translator. This is a quick and easy way of translating words on the go. These are great for bringing with you when you go on holiday as they can be carried in a rucksack or handbag and are lightweight. They often have quite a large database of every day words, phrases and expressions.
8)search for an online course or do an evening class.
9) Practise speaking Spanish with people in your evening class or record yourself speaking. Either way is a great way to listen to what you sound like.
10)Practise makes perfect, so keep practising
11) It is important to immerse yourself in the culture however you can, so take a trip to a Spanish restaurant you might know. Study the menu for words you know and practise asking for the food, trying to make your pronunciation as Spanish-sounding as possible. I can remember talking to the waiters in Spanish as I ordered my food at my local branch of La Tasca during my universiy years in Reading, and before thwt whenever aI was near a Spanish restaurant, ! Some of the waiters and waitresses wre Spanish and were really surprised and pleased, to hear me
12) another way to immerse yourself in the culture even though you aren't in Spain is to read online newspapers to see what words and phrases you can pick up from the news articles : two of the big ones are El País and El Mundo. Some newsagents (like WHSmith) often sell copies of European newspapers.
13)Buy yourself a Spanish phrase book.
14)Makeyourself some flashcards with essential phrases on them and keep going over them and tell you how memorised what's on them.
14)Book yourself a holiday to somewhere in Spain and practice your language skills.
Learning a language is not easy, and you don't automatically have to have a gift for languages to be able to learn them. I hope that my guide helps you some way in learning Spanish. You never know, the fact you know Spanish may help you more in life than you think. It has helped me a lot, and I even fell in love with a Peruvian I met who is now my fiancé.
Good luck! ¡Buena suerte!
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