How can I become fluent?

Question

thx

Answer 1

You can know everything there is to know, in every Spanish textbook ever written, but if you can't hear and speak the language, you will never become fluent.

Is there anyway you could befriend a Spanish speaking person?

I am currently in my twenty second month of hard self study, working on my own quest to become fluent in Spanish. I have worked unbelievably hard at this, spent untold hours listening to Spanish and speaking the language. I would never call myself fluent, but I can carry on a conversation in Spanish. I'm not talking about ¿Cómo está? Muy bien, gracias. ¿y tú? but a real conversation.

For example, tonight, I was asking a guy about his friend which I had not seen in a couple of weeks. The conversation was, his friend had cut off his finger at work, it had gotten infected, and the infection spread up his entire arm. We had much discussion about his current health, how he was recuperating and such. All of this and not a word of English. For only two years of study, experiences like this make me very happy.

My point is, nothing has helped me as much as using the language for real conversations. I encourage you to find someone, or a group of people that you can talk with.

Answer 2

Talking to someone has got to be the best answer and I see some suggestions above.

One thing you can do to make it easier is to imagine and practice your conversation in your head well before you start. I've always found this unimaginably useful. What's more it's really good for your vocabulary because you flush out the words you need but don't know in advance and you can look them up instead of drying up halfway through a sentence.

Good luck.

Answer 3

Shan, it sounds like you need someone to talk to in order to practice your Spanish.

You can find pen pals on the internet and/or you can take lessons from a tutor via Skype.

Good luck

Answer 4

Check out these previous threads- some of them list websites to refer to:

-http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/130062/what-is-the-easiest-way-to-learn-spanish-besides-taking-classes#a161955

-http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/131995/is-there-a-spanish-internet-site-where-the-language-is-spoken-more-slowly

-http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/129414/struggling-with-my-spanish

Also, I'm not sure if this site is on there, but you can also use http://studyspanish.com/

Also, I see that you have done some of the lessons on this site. Those should help you along with the websites referred to and you asking questions in the forum... You should be able to improve considerably... But, you need to go out and speak it to people for the real practice.

Hope this helps... Good luck.