Is it worth me continuing my Spanish studies...?!
I've been learning Spanish for 8 years now and have failed in a spectacular fashion. I really wanted to speak it at a native like level (some of my family are native speakers). While I have a very extensive vocabulary, sadly it has been learnt in school via hundreds of vocabulary lists, as such I use a lot of words in the wrong context. I learnt the grammar out of textbooks and have to think of it when I speak. I make a quite a lot of mistakes, especially with regards to the past tenses and some uses of the subjunctive. I have a terrible accent that apparently sounds German (even though I'm not). I speak Spanish almost every day and have done for years. Is there really any chance for me to learn a native accent and learn Spanish properly, or has nearly a decade of internalizing my own mistakes pretty much screwed it up? Please be honest with me! If you have any advice on unlearning mistakes I'd love to hear it!
Yours, desperately
Steven
Try these tips
a. Get "advanced" level recordings and shadow them. Listen to them once or twice, then start speaking along with them. Then record your version alone and compare to the recordings. You are only doing this to improve the way you speak, but you will probably start to sound more natural in Spanish.
(If you sound German, are you pausing a lot between words?)
b. Get a review book like the old Schaum Spanish Grammar or the newer "The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice book" and do a page a day for a year.
c. Listen to Spanish TV for fifteen minutes a day for a year. What spoken grammar do you notice? Take notes on usage, phrases that you hear.
d. Go to a Spanish-speaking country for the summer, a month, or two weeks and take an intermediate course (not advanced).
e. Listen to Spanish podcasts. "The Linguist" has some that you can listen to over the internet. You don't have to have an MP3.
You will improve. I don't know if you will sound native or not, but you should sound better. I think a lot of success in language is related to a musical ear or an ear that can recognize how a sentence sings in another language. The other people who improve can figure out grammar and use it properly.
Do you like Spanish? I think you should ask yourself this. Why do I want to improve? Is there anything that has been holding me back? Did I have an experience that made me ambivalent about Spanish? Sorry, to be so Dr. Phil with you, but I find that a lot of people have psychological hangups/issues/problems related to their learning experiences in a language or their perception of the people or culture.
If you are a native English speaker, to learn other languages and even more to worry to sound native is a big waste of time and energy.
Hmmm... I definitely want to improve, but after reading about the Antimoon Method and how grammar study is bad, (which I agree with, I have definitely internalised my own mistakes) I'm not sure that it will be so easy. I mean, I don't want to spend 20 years trying to get to a level I could have got to in 5 if I had learnt it properly to start with. Almost everyone I know is a Spanish speaker, including family members and good friends, so I use it a lot. When I'm out with friends, I'm like the odd one out. I guess I'd like for them to think of me as one of them, so to speak, and not the guy with the foreign accent who says things like "It is nice for to have meet you!" There's no real mental block for me to improve other than that fact that I've learnt so much incorrectly that it will be a huge up hill battle. Just how easy is it to delete mistakes from the memory? Sorry that this sounds like a desperate tale of woe, but I've wanted to speak Spanish to a native like level since I was 7, and it is a huge part of my life, I'd like to do it well.
I gave you a lot of tips. I think you need to get to work.
I'm the guest who gave you the tips, and I will tell you this. I have had to relearn things (outside of languages) and I've had to go back to beginning books in languages to check things. If you are having trouble with the subjunctive, get that Ultimate book and do the exercises related to the subjunctive forms in Spanish.
"If you are a native English speaker, to learn other languages and even more to worry to sound native is a big waste of time and energy."
You're not native to English, are you?
Yes, it's a waste for some people, but not for others. I've never seen that show where people run around the world (The Amazing Race? Great Race), but I've seen clips of it. Those folks could use some language skills.
I have had so many tips, gifts, etc., just because I speak languages. It borders on great fun to shock people when you destroy their assumptions about English speakers. The other night I heard a joke that isn't even funny and more. The punch line is "an American" and the question is "What is a person who speaks one language?" The person who told the joke is a female in her twenties who speaks Cantonese and knows some Spanish. She should know better. We were at a table where most of the people were polyglots.
Are you a procrastinator by any chance? Just go lock yourself away in a room and study for 3 hours unbroken. Do the same for a year or until you improve.
Hey! That's even better advice than mine! I don't think he needs three hours a day. If he does fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the afternoon, he'll see progress in about fifteen days.
Steven... could you write a paragraph to see how much Spanish you know?
Heya again! Thanks for the tips. Sorry, I wasn't clear with my question, I think I just came across as a procrastinator or a whiner... :S I do study a lot; I learn vocab every day. I should have asked is it possible for me to develop this language intuition that the Antimoon guys achieved, now that I've studied Spanish grammar for so long? I wasn't just here to moan! Sorry if it seemed that way!
I think you should try that paragraph for us. That's a great idea.
I'd like to know HOW you study. How do you choose your vocabulary?
What sources are you using to study grammar and do you use recordings and shadowing at all?
Esto es un párrafo para enseñarles mi español. Llevo 8 años estudiando español, pero mis amigos mi dicen que todavía hablo como un auténtico extranjero. Me cuesta hablar porque tengo que pensar mucho en la gramática y suelo hacer muchos errores. No creo que sean errores grandes, pero son errores que hacen que lo que diga no suena normal osea un poco raro.