Suggestions for Intermediate Spanish Learning

Question

Hi, I'm wondering if I could get some feedback on my method of learning Spanish.

I started using Google Translate...nothing serious...just typing in random simple sentences to learn the sentence structure. After quickly hearing from others how inaccurate it was, I ditched that effort and started using Anki Droid, Duolingo and watching YouTube videos like Gringo Espanol.

Over many months, I built myself a base of vocabulary / verbs, and then began learning basic sentence structure, using those words. After a while I started watching movies with English subtitles and started to pay more attention to sentence structure. When I was living in Mexico City I started to talk to strangers at work or while waiting in line somewhere...learning to get over the fear of making mistakes. I'm back home in Canada now.I began focusing on learning how to use the past and future tenses.

Lately I have gotten to the point where I read CNN Espanol articles and I only have to translate 2 to 5 words per paragraph and I can understand most of what is said. I can also "see" differences in speaking styles, because when I was reading a Wikipedia article about Morocco, it had this touristy speaking style that was different from the opinion/emotion-neutral style that we'd come to expect from Wikipedia - they were saying something along the lines of "You'll find many exciting stores in the streets" or "You'll be led to experience the joys of -- " etc...then I realized that it was because I was on this sub-portal of Wikipedia for Travel ( https://es.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Página_principal ).

As it stands now, I don't have much money to afford private tutoring, and I'd really like to make my learning more efficient but I just don't know what else I can do. Unless I get some helpful feedback, my plan is to keep doing the following:

• Don't lose my daily streak on Duolingo
• Use Anki Droid (flashcards) regularly
• Read news and Wikipedia articles every day
• Keep translating any news / Wikipedia words that I don't understand
• Keep my Windows language in Spanish
• Keep Google search results in Spanish
• When thinking to myself, try to think in Spanish
• Post questions in forums like this

Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks very much.

Welcome to spanishdict. We ask that all new members complete their profiles with their native language, and what level of Spanish you feel you are, like, beginner, intermediate, etc. as well as gender. - ray76, Nov 6, 2016

Answer 1

Hi Pizzaholic

I'm not a native speaker, but you sound like you would be at a high intermediate level of Spanish. I'm taking it for granted that English is your first language. These are two reasons we ask that you complete your profile, and as I'm sure you realize when learning Spanish, gender is important. So, please do complete it.

We have lessons in Spanish, Flashcards, a grammar section, a Phrasebook and many other resources right here on the site. What is great about that is that it's all free!

Here are some helpful links while waiting for others to give their input.

Where to find the Phrasebook and other resources

Spanish Lessons

On that first link, you will find a lot of other links that are very helpful, done mostly by the members of this site.

Buena suerte

Well said oh wondrous one , a good idea ,I sincerely hope that it works :) - ray76, Nov 6, 2016

I apologize for the avatar problems we are having presently. They should be fixed soon. - rac1, Nov 6, 2016

Thanks rac1, I didn't realize that Spanish Dict had their own tests. I'll start working on these. - TryNewLangs77, Nov 6, 2016