Learning Spanish on YouTube

Learning Spanish (or any foreign language) can be as easy as opening an Internet browser.

The full potential of the Internet for learning is pretty awesome. Sites like LiveMocha offer online chat groups and social networking to allow users to meet and practice with each other. You can find and order textbooks online, access posted college lectures and learning materials, and tune into online radio programs.

But the site that I’ve used most often to practice my Spanish has been YouTube, where for the past four years I’ve been learning and relearning Spanish by listening to music from throughout Spain and Latin America.

There’s an intimidating amount of diversity to music from these regions. YouTube allows you to access this diverse pool anytime, and if you’re brave enough to venture in, the rewards can be wonderful.

I’ve found three advantages by learning a language through its music:

• If you can find a genre or artist you like, you’ll enjoy listening to it, and be more likely to make a habit of listening
• You can listen to music everywhere, making it easy to incorporate music into your daily routine
• Listening to a song works well for language learners of all levels: beginners can try to pick out individual words and then work on understanding the chorus, while more advanced learners can work on understanding the verses line by line (searching for “letras,” or lyrics, can help you find the words to a song).

To help get you started, here are a few videos that I’ve enjoyed that have (relatively) simple lyrics. (You may also want to check out my  “awesome music around the world” series, which has music from Spain, Mexico, Colombia, and other countries.

Manu Chao – Me Gustas Tu

Elmo – Es Musica

Kumbia All Starz – Speedy Gonzales

Does anyone else have any ways they’ve used YouTube or other online resources to learn a new language?

Learning (or relearning) a new language

You don’t need classes to learn (or relearn) a foreign language.

I’ve been studying and practicing Spanish on my own for the past four years. Since then, I’ve gone from reading Dr. Seuss with difficulty to finishing Cien Años de Soledad, and have gone from having difficulty pronouncing basic words to being able to comfortably converse in Spanish while traveling to Uruguay for work and Nicaragua for pleasure.

While I’m not particularly great with foreign languages, I’m proud of my progress. Over my next few blog entries, I’ll discuss how you can learn Spanish with a library card, a mp3 player, and an Internet connection.

I’ve benefitted from the a set of audio lessons as a review of the basics, but learning on my own has taken me farther and deeper than that or any other packaged learning program (I’ve tried several, which have ranged from decent to awful).

Parts of the strategy I’ll be setting out over my next few entries should apply pretty well to any foreign language, but similarities between Spanish and English, and the convenience of Spanish-language materials and Spanish-speaking people in the U.S. make this a lot easier, though French would probably be relatively easy as well.

Here are a few tips for starting out:

Preparation
If there’s one tip I can offer with confidence, it is to commit yourself. Learning a foreign language is a lot like exercise. The benefits are great, but they only last as long as you commit the time.

If you want to be able to speak Spanish well five years from now, you’re going to need to practice every week (or nearly every week) for the next five years.

I estimate that I need two to three hours a week of practice to steadily improve, and 60 to 90 minutes to not lose anything. That said, there are ways to work on your Spanish (listening, not reading) while doing other activities such as driving or exercising: I’ll discuss some of those methods shortly.

Learn (or re-learn) the basics
I really benefited by having the basic rules of grammar and conjugation down. Learning Spanish is relatively easy compared to some other foreign languages because almost all of the tenses match.

Fortunately, my local library had an old copy of the “Living Language” Spanish lessons on CDs; by listening to these and practicing again and again for weeks, I was able to gradually build vocabulary and re-learn the verb conjugations.

Has anyone else had a similar experience or have any tips you’d like to share?

Read about learning Spanish on YouTube.