Any tips on a first year Spanish exam without studying very much?

Question

Please help! I didn't mean to hold off studying. It happened!

Welcome to the forum , we want to help you so fill out your profile If you have a problem PM a mod Bienvenido al foro. Queremos ayudarle, entonces hay que llenar su perfil. Si hay un problema, envíe un mensaje personal (PM) - ray76, Jun 7, 2015

When you find out let me know. - ray76, Jun 8, 2015

It's just like anything else. If you don't study and learn about something, how do you expect to pass? - rac1, Jun 8, 2015

Answer 1

When I was at school and uni I often had to 'cram' for exams. I'm not sure if the word 'cram' is universal, but it means studying a subject very intensively over a short period of time. If you cram well, you can produce results in terms of passing exams, but cramming is an extremely poor and inadvisable study technique for long-term memory retention. It can make you a quasi-expert for a few days, but you'll forget the subject afterwards in almost the same little time that you spent cramming it.

As for cramming Spanish, when I first started learning I listened to the entire Michel Thomas audio course (beginner & 'advanced' levels) over a couple of weeks. It takes only about 12 hours. By coincidence almost immediately after I'd finished this process I found myself in the company of three Italians and one Spaniard in a bar in Scotland. I introduced myself and spent an entire evening with them. Bizarrely I found I was able to converse with them by speaking Spanish. They understood almost everything I tried to say, and I got the gist of most of what they were saying to me, even when the Italians were speaking Italian, which wasn't the language I'd studied (I couldn't understand them when they were speaking among themselves). This is a tribute to cramming. If I hadn't crammed that course, I wouldn't have been able to converse at all.

However, if I'd satisfied myself with that, I'm pretty sure my Spanish would've withered and died on the vine.

So, if you need to learn a lot of Spanish quickly, get yourself a suitable audio course. Michel Thomas is excellent for covering a lot of ground very, very fast, including most verb forms, a lot of grammar, and a lot of useful vocab. Pimsleur is also excellent, but takes much, much more time. I've never tried Rosetta Stone myself, but I've heard a lot of tales saying it's rubbish.

Do the audio first, then use a good grammar guide to brush up your reading and writing skills, 'Punto por Punto' is a very good publication for this available in the UK. I don't know if it's available elsewhere.

Buena suerte

Great advice, Falda, especially accurate point that cramming is a poor technique for long term memory retention . Rosetta Stone is very expensive , and although I have never personally used it, (I have often used Pimsleur) I am convinced that - FELIZ77, Jun 8, 2015

Rosetta Stone is overpriced and overrated! - FELIZ77, Jun 8, 2015

I've watched a number of reviews on RS, none very +ve. many very -ve, and some MT/Pimsleur fans thinks it's rubbish... - Faldaesque, Jun 9, 2015

The feature than means you can use your RS resource on only one device seems particularly antiquated... ;-) - Faldaesque, Jun 9, 2015