How to learn Spanish Online for FREE

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By CaitieJade
User-Submitted Article

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Where Spanish Came From

Being bilingual is a useful skill for both travel and business. Spanish is a language that most people from the U.S. should have at least a working knowledge of, but may not want to pay the price. Why spend hundreds of dollars on expensive programs or classes when you can get the same effect by combining several online resources? All for FREE!

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

computer
internet connection
about an hour per day

Step 1

I would start with studyspanish.com and go through the grammar tutorial one by one from the beginning. They also have free vocabulary lessons with matching games, flash cards, and quizzes. Go through at your own pace and throw in practice with a verb drill every once in a while. They do have "premium" content and a cd set for a price, but it's not necessary.
Step 2

Another great resource is spanishpod.com. When you sign up you get a 2 week trial to the premium services, but after that you can continue to listen to the podcasts just by going to the website and searching for them. The lessons span from newbie-advanced and last less than 15 minutes each. Listen to one per day and make sure to take notes. A way to get a little extra information is to read the discussion boards of each episode, and even ask questions yourself.
Step 3

Go to learner.org and search under foreign languages for "Destinos". It's an older video program that follows a lawyer trying to solve a mystery as she travels through the spanish speaking world. It's boring at first, but it picks up and can help you learn spanish.
A new, interactive video series that is really fun is at bbc.co.uk/languages. It's called Mi Vida Loca, and it makes you feel like you are the main character of the story travelling to Spain and learning Spanish along the way.
Step 4

Write down grammar rules and vocabulary in a notebook or on flashcards and practice them. Also practice whole sentences and phrases that are important. Practice every form of the most important verbs (especially those irregular ones) on a regular basis in sentences. Some of the most important verbs are tener, haber, ir, ser, estar, hablar...and the list goes on.
Step 5

Watch the Spanish stations on TV for news reports and telenovelas (soap operas) and try to understand just the basic story and listen for the vocabulary you've picked up. Also listen to Spanish music when ever possible. Turn on spanish or english subtitles when your watching all your T.V. and movies.
Step 6

UPDATE:::
Spanishpod.com now only offers the newbie and elementary lessons for free, so it may be somewhat limited now. But I have found some other resources I like even better. One is SpanishDict.com...it has a great translation tool, dictionary, and tons of audio files (particularly "notesinspanish" which has a website of it's own.
The other resource I stumbled on today is ESaudio.net. Tons of newsletters and lessons plus a very interesting audio project where normal people from different spanish countries submit audio files that you can then listen to.
I have also started looking up videos on youtube where there are quite a few things for spanish learning...
okay just wanted to let you know the new things i've discovered!