I have started having one on one lessons on the intenet via Skype.

I generally have 4 or 5 lessons of 50 minutes from Monday to Friday and then 1 or 2 hours on a Saturday morning.

I have been doing these classes since the beginning of February so that is 5 months.

Realistically what standard should my Spanish be at, and realistically what standard should I expect to achieve after 1 year, which is my goal.

Why not test your ability by posting something in Spanish.

Estudio español desde hace cinco meses, cada día, por una hora, más o menos. ¿Qué debo saber? ¿Debo [del]ponder[/del] poder entender las notocias de televisión [del]or[/del] o leer un periódico, [del]or[/del] o solamente debo saber unos verbos y unas [del]parabalas[/del] palabras?

That's pretty good, Roger. I'm sure a native speaker can improve upon our wording, but I wanted to help you with the words you were working with.

If I may ask, could you give me an idea of how much you pay and where to find such companies? I would be interested in the quality of the instruction, and in recommending the good ones to many people who ask me about such resources.

¡Felicidades!

I am definately not advertizing here so I will name a few that I have contacted.

www.idiomax.net
www.1to1languages.com
www.avatarlanguages.com
www.acceleratedspanish.com
www.121speech.com

prices here generally range from $10 to $20 an hour.

Not wishing to start a new thread but I found this on the internet, and I have been looking for something to extend my vocabulary, this is FREE ! and on first use seems to be marvellous.

www.wordsgalore.com - only thing I would like to see is the gender of the words.

Does anyone else want to comment on where they think my Spanish should be at this stage '

Hi Guys, I use nulengua.com for tutoring in spanish. It costs between 7 and 9 dollars for 50 minutes.

Think how much money you could save by making use of ALL spanishdict´s facilities, hehe. Seriously though, there is an immense amount of teaching information on this site which I am sure remains unused by many of the members.

Wow, Roger! You must be serious about learning Spanish. Are these commercial lessons, or are you taking private lessons from an individual'

I have started having one on one lessons on the intenet via Skype.

I generally have 4 or 5 lessons of 50 minutes from Monday to Friday and then 1 or 2 hours on a Saturday morning.

I have been doing these classes since the beginning of February so that is 5 months.

Realistically what standard should my Spanish be at, and realistically what standard should I expect to achieve after 1 year, which is my goal.

Why not test your ability by posting something in Spanish.

Wow, Roger! You must be serious about learning Spanish. Are these commercial lessons, or are you taking private lessons from an individual?

Commercial on the internet but they are insanely cheap. There is quite a disparity of what you can pay for these lessons with different companies. Those out of London are very expensive but those based in Central or South America are, in my opinion, cheap but still with some price variations.

I have started having one on one lessons on the intenet via Skype.

I generally have 4 or 5 lessons of 50 minutes from Monday to Friday and then 1 or 2 hours on a Saturday morning.

I have been doing these classes since the beginning of February so that is 5 months.

Realistically what standard should my Spanish be at, and realistically what standard should I expect to achieve after 1 year, which is my goal.

Why not test your ability by posting something in Spanish.

Estudio espanol hace cinco meses, cada dia, por una hora, ma o menus. Que debo sabir ? Debo ponder entender las notocias en television or leer un periodico or solo se unos verbos y parabalas '

I have started having one on one lessons on the intenet via Skype.

I generally have 4 or 5 lessons of 50 minutes from Monday to Friday and then 1 or 2 hours on a Saturday morning.

I have been doing these classes since the beginning of February so that is 5 months.

Realistically what standard should my Spanish be at, and realistically what standard should I expect to achieve after 1 year, which is my goal.

Why not test your ability by posting something in Spanish.

Estudio español desde hace cinco meses, cada día, por una hora, más o menos. ¿Qué debo saber? ¿Debo [del]ponder[/del] poder entender las notocias de televisión [del]or[/del] o leer un periódico, [del]or[/del] o solamente debo saber unos verbos y unas [del]parabalas[/del] palabras?

That's pretty good, Roger. I'm sure a native speaker can improve upon our wording, but I wanted to help you with the words you were working with.

If I may ask, could you give me an idea of how much you pay and where to find such companies? I would be interested in the quality of the instruction, and in recommending the good ones to many people who ask me about such resources.

¡Felicidades!

If I may ask, could you give me an idea of how much you pay and where to find such companies? I would be interested in the quality of the instruction, and in recommending the good ones to many people who ask me about such resources.

I use Speak Shop (.com) for my live Spanish lessons via Skype. It's $10 per hour and the teachers, from Guatemala, are wonderful.

Thanks to you both, Marianne and Roger. This is a Spanish learning site, so I don't think that would be considered advertising. Other sites are mentioned on here from time to time.

If anyone castigates you for "advertising," I will take the "punishment," since I asked for the information.

Just a guess, but your instructor is probably from the coast somewhere in Latin America. Typically (at least from my experience in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela) the people along the coasts tend to drop the "s" at the end of words. Thus "más o menos" sounds like "ma o meno". Also costeños usually speak somewhat faster than the people in the interior of the country. I have no idea why this is, but it seems to be consistent in my part of the world.

You're getting a lot of practice, so by the end of a year you should be able to carry on a conversation with general topics. You should also be able to converse in specialized topics that are of interest to you. If you have the kind of a foundation I think you're building, you'll be able to pick up a technical vocabulary fairly quickly. The hard part is getting the basic structure and the small words in hand. You'll probably be surprised at how much Spanish you already have, because so many words are almost the same as in English.

Good luck, and keep us posted as to your progress.

CV

Thanks for the link, Roger, that's great.

I can't really tell you where you should be, however, it seems like your doing everything you can possibly do to learn Spanish thoroughly.

I use the online Spanish lessons via Skype once a week, study with a workbook about an hour a day, listen to podcasts in Spanish, and read the newspaper. I just ordered some books from the library (Harry Potter, for example) to help my reading skills and add some vocabulary. I also post text on here sometimes to ask an advanced Spanish speaker to proofread my writing.

I like the WordsGalore link. Thanks for posting it. Maybe you did start a new thread, but I don't hear anyone complaining.

I also use the Word Magic Dictionary & Tools software. I was looking for a bilingual dictionary that I could download, so I didn't have to wait for a slow internet connection. There are a number of tools, including specialized dictionaries and translation services, some quite expensive. I just use the basic Spanish/English dictionary which cost about ten bucks. It includes a verb conjugator, thesaurus, and phrase scanner, with options to add more tools. Everything is bidirectional or bilingual. I even use it to check Abuelita's English spelling.

Thanks for the link, Roger, that's great.

I can't really tell you where you should be, however, it seems like your doing everything you can possibly do to learn Spanish thoroughly.

I use the online Spanish lessons via Skype once a week, study with a workbook about an hour a day, listen to podcasts in Spanish, and read the newspaper. I just ordered some books from the library (Harry Potter, for example) to help my reading skills and add some vocabulary. I also post text on here sometimes to ask an advanced Spanish speaker to proofread my writing.

So how long have you been studying . Harry Potter in Spanish sounds pretty flippin' advanced to me.

He must of been for a long time, good luck with your commercial lessons.