Best way to learn Spanish

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SoyRicoSuave

SoyRicoSuave

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Seeing as I intend on practicing medicine in California I'm thinking I should probably speak Spanish. Any recommendations (aside from going to another country) for learning Spanish over the summer before med school?
 
USC does a summer Medical Spanish program between 1st and 2nd years. Lots of folks swear by Rosetta. During test week, somebody was giving away a free medical Spanish online learning membership (McGraw-Hill?) Might want to see if you can still get on that.
 
SoyRicoSuave said:
Seeing as I intend on practicing medicine in California I'm thinking I should probably speak Spanish. Any recommendations (aside from going to another country) for learning Spanish over the summer before med school?
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Go to Mexico for the summer 👍

Seriously though I feel the same way. I have forgotten all of the Spanish I knew as a kid. I'm sure someone will say Rosetta Stone but I think I need to live amongst the people to really get it.
 
First thing ill say is stay away from rosetta stone IMO. I started learning Korean about a month ago, and everyone told me that rosetta stone wasnt good, but i wanted to try it still since i got it for free. its interesting at first, but you really don't learn a language from it. Since i didn't really like rosetta stone i downloaded pimsleur, and that has worked a lot better for me, and i recommend you try it. You will learn a lot of useful words/phrases/sentences, and the method works very well for remembering words. you wont really learn grammer and all that from pimsleur, so you will need something else for that, but i feel its a good start, it was for me atleast. You can download pimsleur by the lesson on itunes if your not into torrents and all that. Honestly though i don't really think learning spanish is that important when becoming a doctor, but thats just my opinion. maybe thats just because i took spanish and didnt enjoy it at all. good luck!
 
I'm from a pretty diverse area, and growing up two of my best friends were South American. I just hung out at their house all the time and listened, as well as taking classes in school. So, I suppose I'm just reiterating what others have said about immersion. My point being, if you have any friends that are fluent in Spanish you could learn from them and their families. There's always Univision with Sra.Laura (Latina version of Jerry Springer) as well...
 
I swear by Pimsleur, at least for Italian. I put it all on my old iPod and would listen to it while driving. I tried using Rosetta Stone a few times but all it does is teach you how to associate pictures with words. You'll learn how to say 'the boy is sitting on the chair' in a few hours, but never 'the boy is trying to balance himself on the chair' or anything with some complexity. Therefore I'd avoid Rosetta Stone.

In some area of CA, especially near LA or SD, you can find areas or business where Spanish is the main language spoken. Maybe try getting a job there, or just hang out in those areas to pick up the language.

I don't think it is a big deal to not know it. In my experience, all major departments in hospitals have a full time translator on hand. You can't make money if the patient can't give consent.
 
Kevin Baker said:
I swear by Pimsleur, at least for Italian. I put it all on my old iPod and would listen to it while driving. I tried using Rosetta Stone a few times but all it does is teach you how to associate pictures with words. You'll learn how to say 'the boy is sitting on the chair' in a few hours, but never 'the boy is trying to balance himself on the chair' or anything with some complexity. Therefore I'd avoid Rosetta Stone.

In some area of CA, especially near LA or SD, you can find areas or business where Spanish is the main language spoken. Maybe try getting a job there, or just hang out in those areas to pick up the language.

I don't think it is a big deal to not know it. In my experience, all major departments in hospitals have a full time translator on hand. You can't make money if the patient can't give consent.
Click to expand...
Yeah, pimsleur is awesome, i guess the only downside is that it can be boring if your not doing anything with it, but i listen to it while i drive to school and then when i walk, so its great for me.
 
Kevin Baker said:
I swear by Pimsleur, at least for Italian. I put it all on my old iPod and would listen to it while driving. I tried using Rosetta Stone a few times but all it does is teach you how to associate pictures with words. You'll learn how to say 'the boy is sitting on the chair' in a few hours, but never 'the boy is trying to balance himself on the chair' or anything with some complexity. Therefore I'd avoid Rosetta Stone.

In some area of CA, especially near LA or SD, you can find areas or business where Spanish is the main language spoken. Maybe try getting a job there, or just hang out in those areas to pick up the language.

I don't think it is a big deal to not know it. In my experience, all major departments in hospitals have a full time translator on hand. You can't make money if the patient can't give consent.
Click to expand...

This as well. Where I worked in Orlando 80% of my customers were Spanish-speaking and half of them as their only language. Definitely helps when you get to practice 5x a week. Also, it's fun to see their surprise when a very Scandinavian looking person speaks Spanish to them :laugh:.
 
If you have the resources and the opportunity, go to a country that speaks only or mainly Spanish and if possible, do a Spanish course there. It can be quite expensive, I don't really know what the price ranges are today but it is definitely the best way to learn.

I went to a summer camp for a month here in the US when I was 14 before I spoke English (I knew the basics: hello, where's the bathroom? lol). No-one in camp spoke my primary and only language, so I HAD to learn. By the end of the month my English had improved at least by about 80% and I was even thinking and dreaming in English lol. So if you get the opportunity to do something like that, go live for a couple of months somewhere where they only speak Spanish, then I'm sure you'll improve a whole lot.
 
Www.ecela.com.
Alright, so it's out of the country, but it's pretty cheap, very safe, and you're going into a lucrative career that has very few vacations.

Failing that:
Rosetta stone + Spanish language television online + reading in spanish. I think the reading is key. Other than the program I linked reading through the Harry potter series in Spanish was probably the most important thing I did.
 
Get a Spanish girlfriend. She'll start cursing at you in Spanish and then you will eventually learn the language.
 
Amen. I served a mission for 2 years in Argentina, its definitely the best way to learn it. If you want to be fluent, go live in another country for a year, after about a year all the missionaries I knew were either fluent or as good as they were going to get. Barring that, do a couple of summers in another country. You can usually find small local schools where they do homestays-live with a family and do everything with them. Immersion is the only way to go. Any other way is NOT going to get you fluent or give you the accent, nuances, or colloquial language of a local. Oh and if you can go somewhere farther south, say Chile or Argentina and learn the accent you'll totally get mistaken for being from that country up in the states.
 
I'm one of those who swear by rosetta stone. In fact, I think it's superior to taking a class for the basics because they teach you the material in ways that are not practical for a teacher.
 
SFO-IST said:
I'm one of those who swear by rosetta stone. In fact, I think it's superior to taking a class for the basics because they teach you the material in ways that are not practical for a teacher.
Click to expand...

I think Rosetta stone is a great program for any language that is gramatically similar to the language you already speak. It worked pretty well for me as a primer for Spanish (the language it was origionally designed for). I've never tried it for any other language, but I imagine it would actually work pretty well for any Germanic or Romantic laguage. However I have no idea how you'd learn Chinese or Arabic using their system. You're not going to get the bizarely different rules about their grammer, sentence structure, and tonality by looking at what are basically audio flashcards.
 
Michel Thomas has several CDs. They are amazing, and have given me a solid foundation.
 
Torr said:
I'm sure someone will say Rosetta Stone but I think I need to live amongst the people to really get it.
Click to expand...

I used rosetta stone to help with a class I had in high school, it wasn't spanish though it was german. It really does help, because its more than memorization, its a gradual experience where you have to talk into the computer as if you were talking to someone. It helps me go from just memorizing words to comprehending them.
 
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/11/09/115-promising-to-learn-a-new-language/

En serio, as these many posts have indicated, you have to immerse yourself. You have to actively shove Spanish into your brain day in and day out. There's a reason why Middlebury's awesome summer language program carries the motto "No English spoken here."

Start with the basics, scaffold yourself up, focus on basic interactions and simple present/past tense conjugations, perhaps emphasize some medical vocabulary, but above all - immerse.
 
Kevin Baker said:
I swear by Pimsleur, at least for Italian. I put it all on my old iPod and would listen to it while driving. I tried using Rosetta Stone a few times but all it does is teach you how to associate pictures with words. You'll learn how to say 'the boy is sitting on the chair' in a few hours, but never 'the boy is trying to balance himself on the chair' or anything with some complexity. Therefore I'd avoid Rosetta Stone.

In some area of CA, especially near LA or SD, you can find areas or business where Spanish is the main language spoken. Maybe try getting a job there, or just hang out in those areas to pick up the language.

I don't think it is a big deal to not know it. In my experience, all major departments in hospitals have a full time translator on hand. You can't make money if the patient can't give consent.
Click to expand...

Practicing while driving was really useful for me as well, because otherwise I would have just spent time listening to dumb podcasts or talk radio. If you already have some foundation of Spanish, you can probably get some benefit from listening to Spanish podcasts that interest you, Spanish radio stations, or Spanish music. (Remember, you'll never pick up a language from passive listening alone, you need some active participation, but this is a good way to reinforce the skills you're already learning).

If you have no foundation, you can look into one of the many audiobooks designed specifically for Spanish learners, they are great for long car rides. There are even some Spanish learning apps specially designed for commuters, like these.
 
Listen to it all the time. Listen to music, radio, television. Practice speaking it to other people, native speakers, your parents, your dogs. Try and find a time/place where you can interact with native speakers. Learning another language is hard work and takes a long time.
 
Try watching about 1000 hours of telenovelas. Awesome stuff!!! Side order of reggaeton. El. Clon 2010 is crazy. So is el reina del sur. I am starting to understand what I hear....oh and get or trade up to a Caribbean s.o. While you are at it.


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