Practice To Improve.
Practice, practice, practice is always the response when you ask someone how to improve your Spanish.
But I find if I read a newspaper, I can read what I know and not what I don't and it really doesn't seem to improve my vocabulary even though I look up the words that I don't know. I won't know the word next time as it is probably not used that much.
Watching TV isn't going to improve your vocabulary as if you don't know what a word means you are unlikely to learn it. It does help with listening as I understand a lot more with a slow speaker than a fast speaker - so if they are using similar vocabulary I should with practice be able to get more words the more I become accustomed to the faster speaker.
Learning from flash cards, I just don't have the patience and if I learn them on Monday I don't know them next Monday.
What is your most effective way to progress ?
3 Answers
If you like being around other people you might get into a Spanish conversation group that meets at least once a week. This is something I do and it is conveniently provided at my public library. You might check to see if there is a group available through "Meetup" a group resource you can join. It's not very invasive or annoying.
Right now the conversation group and this site are my most effective ways to progress. I find that being older hinders my remembering vocabulary so I don't know what to do about that, but I keep plugging away.
I hope it works out for you!
Yo tengo la culpa.(It's my fault) I always say practice, practice and more practice. Whenever I learned a new word or construction in Spanish or English, I would try to say it or them in as many ways as possible. I would even play schizophrenic and would ask myself a question in English and answer it in Spanish and then comment on it in French. I would try to speak to as many people as I possibly could for my French, English or even Spanish. But If no one was available. I would do the schizophrenic thing again. In person I am very shy. I work very hard at my language leaning, but my methods are not for everybody. I do like the audio-only methods such as the Pimsleur Approach which can be obtained easily online. I am slowly gettihg Hebrew by this method-- I say slowly because I am not practicing enough. Txustaboy is right. The best way is to go to a Spanish-speaking country. I would love to go to Israel, but can't afford it right now, so I'll stay with Pimsleur until the opportunity arises.
The best way is patient, you can´t learn a language in one or one year. If you want to improve your Spanish quicker, you must go to live to a Spanish speaker country.
