making a list of spanish phrases

i've started making a list of spanish phrases - commonly used, intro, hi, you're welcome stuff. i'll get into technical grammar in a couple/few months.

finding decent online spanish learning websites

i found a website that's for absolute spanish learning beginners. it's called E Learn Spanish Language. i particularly like it because it has a section titled "I want to Learn Spanish. Where Should I start?" it has some good, common sense tips. i was hoping for leads to other sites.

anyway, the creator has broken the beginner lesson to very easy, understandable and not overwhelming basic such as nouns, articles (definite, indefinite), article agreements and plural and singular form noun agreements, etc. also, the site has soundbites or wave files to help with pronunciation. helps me out!

online spanish learning sites

this is a tougher one b/c most good ones, you have to pay of course! the bbc language site deals with castillian spanish (i do like the site and format/design).

i'll keep hunting...

spanish learning software

alright, so there are so many options out there. i googled "spanish learning forums", "top 10 spanish learning software" and then went onto amazon for reviews. i then researched each product that came up consistently and finally, researched if they were mac compatible, able to download to ipods and most of all, if the spanish was latin american vs castillian (spain).

top spanish learning software list: fluenz, tell me more, rocket languages (coincidentally, in Los Angeles), rosetta stone, pimsleur and study spanish.

castillian spanish: fluenz, study spanish, tell me more (not mac friendly). automatically out for me.

latin american spanish: rocket languages, rosetta stone

mac version: rocket and rosetta both

mp3: transferable to ipods: rocket languages

price: rocket has downloadable price for $99 (cds 300)

method: rosetta stone is based on natural language acquisition where kids learn by images and sounds and matching them. rocket has media as well but also focuses on writing and finer points of grammar - from the reviews

what i'll purchase: rocket languages spanish (latin american)

paid spanish lessons

i found a few and researched reviews that compared the following:

rosetta stone of course
pimsleur
transparent language

RS and TL are supposed to be pretty similar as both use images and audio with flash cards. TL is much much cheaper. Pimsleur is pretty much a listen and repeat only. but, they have comprehensive packages with books that are fairly costly.

i myself have a copy of RS version 2, which is old, of Spanish Latin American. i have a copy of Spanish (Spain/Castillian) version 3.

i will purchase TL i think but am deciding on either downloading (plus u can put on mp3) or cds that are windows and mac compatible.

spanish learning update

alright, so, i've been listening to spanish radio and tv. i suppose this might be against Krashen's comprensible input because i don't know 99% of what's being said. but, Chomsky's LAD (which i haven't read yet) suggests that exposure is a key factor in picking up lang. so, i'm listening to spanish radio when i can b/c i want to get a feel for the language, pronunciations, phonetics and all.

in the meanwhile, i've found a couple of free sites that are useful to learning conversational spanish. first is BBC Languages (yes, british broadcasting corp). i like the site a lot. design-wise, say in "Spanish Steps," you start with basic words and phrases (such as in travel) of a variety of categories. pick "taxi" and in the center of the window, there's a yellow card where words and phrases will appear. to the right, there are icons/pics that indicate Spanish words, English words or just audio. click on these and the corresponding choices will present themselves. either case, you hear the spanish audio. these lessons are brief and at the end of each small lesson, there's a summary plus there are options to replay the summary and take a quiz. the quiz is comprised of a film strip with pics. to the right of it are empty boxes. to the right of these boxes are words and phrases which you can pick and drag and drop into the empty boxes that are next to the appropriate pictures. essentially, you are matching pics and words/phrases together. this is done with flash.

the other site is the Foreign Services Institute's language lessons. pick a language and the site will take you to a table of contents of lessons. click a unit number and media player with only audio plays. listen and repeat. this one is tough because the phrases get longer and faster.

rosetta stone spanish latin america

following up from yesterday's blog. really like the various stages. liking the voice recording and playback function as well as the typing function of the program. you'll be shown a picture and you have to write the object or the action and/or both.

i also like the progression of the lessons with simple to more complex vocab and syntax.