A side note on learning a new language

There's a forum online for expat gringos who have moved, or are planning to move, to Costa Rica.  The forum offers online peer support for how to get by here, as well as points folks to information about local laws, especially those related to immigration.

I saw a post there today from somebody asking about programs for learning Spanish.  At first, I thought they meant social programs (i.e. classes and whatnot), but it turned out they just meant software.  At any rate, it turns out that I've spent a lot of time talking about and learning about this particular subject, and it happens that I have a lot to say, based on my collected knowledge from people who've done this successfully before. 

I figured it was worth sharing, just in case any of my friends or family ever finds themselves in a situation where they want to learn a new language, but don't know how to go about it.  So... here goes:


I have two suggestions that really worked well for me (and which were originally suggested by my partner Jimena, who is fully bilingual and bicultural).

1) Read Harry Potter in Spanish.  Even just the first book.  Why?  Odds are, you have already both read the story and seen the movie in English.  So, you know where it's going, and you have a LOT of basis for context.  But also, the story is written with grammatic simplicity suitable for 11 year old children, yet the story is complex and engaging enough to maintain the attention and interest of adults.  As you read the book, do NOT have a dictionary nearby.  It's important to try to get as much as you can from context. This method takes advantage of your brains ability to make associations and solve puzzles, and the resulting answers will therefore stick MUCH better in your head than if you had looked things up.  If you find you're seeing the same word over and over again, and you still can't get it, then yeah, go ahead and look it up on google translate.  But by then, you will have already struggled with it, so it will still stick better. 

As an example, I did exactly this process myself.  At the beginning of the book, I was reading at about 1/3 my normal reading speed, and understanding at BEST 40% of the words.  By the end of that first book, without looking up ANYTHING, and just getting it all from context and from my previous experience with the story, I was reading at my normal reading speed, and understanding at least 90%.  Miraculously, this also translated directly to my ability to recognize spoken spanish as well.  Maybe that's partly a result of me reading out loud in my head, as it were, so that I was listening internally to myself reading the book.  Or maybe it's just that now my brain had better formed the pathways necessary to recognize the words and phrases easier, so I could do it however they got to me.  Either way, it improved both my reading AND my listening comprehension.  This was huge for me.  You might say it was the critical mass for me to go from a guy who could pass vocabulary tests to a guy who could actually conduct basic conversation.  I'm still FAR from fluent, but reading this book made a huge leap for me.

2) Find a native speaker on craigslist to trade Spanish practice for English practice.  I did this also.  The guy I met was trying to learn English while I was trying to learn Spanish.  As it happened, we were at very similar levels. How we worked it was, we would meet up at the mall (Mall San Pedro) in the foodcourt, have lunch, and spend an hour and a half speaking nothing but Spanish, and then an hour and a half speaking nothing but English.  Since we were both there to learn from each other, and since neither of us was fluent, we both had infinite patience with each other, and a really good attitude in general about the whole thing. 

So yeah,... the conversation was a bit stunted, and proceeded in fits and starts sometimes, but we had a blast, and it improved BOTH of our conversational abilities a TON.  That practice ended up being the critical mass for my ability to hold up my own end of a conversation.  The listening comprehension lets me keep up with where the conversations are going, and the speaking practice, even as minimal as it still is at this point, at least gives me some opportunities to chime in.  As a side note, the guy and I ended up having a lot else in common, and he ended up being one of my first real friends here that wasn't bequeathed to me by my partner.

Another option which doesn't address learning, but does address assimilation, is to have each person just speak in their own language.  As it happens, it's always easier to understand than it is to speak.  So, what you'll find is a lot of people here who understand English very well, but just can't respond in kind.  Since you're likely to be in the same boat, going in the opposite direction for a while, a good short-term compromise for everybody is to just speak to each other in your native languages.  It lets you communicate more, and it lets you get to know people, and it lets you live your life while you're still learning the language.

Pura Vida,

-Alex-