Speaking the Lingo...Still a Gringo

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I've been looking through some other blogs on this site (and of course, the discussion forums), trying to glean any information that I can about good places to visit, where to stay, what to pack - even what level of spanish proficiency other travellers have had when setting out.

As a first time traveller, this is all totally new to me. What type of luggage should I use? Should I take my DSLR camera? What about my iPod? Grrrr, a billion questions.

So I thought that it might be useful to post occasionally with the lowdown on how I'm preparing for this trip. Hopefully if there is anybody setting out on a similar journey with similar levels of experience, you might find these posts useful. As an added bonus it will help to convince my family that I have actually done some research before diving into this adventure!

So today I'm starting where it began for me - a crazy dream and a resolve to do something about it.

I guess that my preparations for this journey started maybe a year ago in my head. I knew that this was a trip that I wanted to make and I knew that the single biggest thing that would improve my experience would be to have a decent-ish grasp of the language. I'm not a seasoned traveller. But I've been to enough places to know that any traveling experience is enhanced enormously by an ability to mix it with the locals.

I had previously learned Italian to a level whereby I could get by. I thought that this would help me in my quest to learn Spanish. And it did...a bit. It's also a bit of a hindrance - the languages are so close that it's sometimes difficult for me to separate out which vocabulary belongs to which language. I'm slowly forgetting my Italian but still it crops up in the middle of Spanish sentences - much to the amusement of my Spanish teacher.

Anyway, my Spanish is basically at a level whereby I'm confident that I'll get by. It's taken me about 9 months to get here. This is how I did it:

* Little and often: The key, I've found, with getting to grips with any foreign language (or anything else for that matter) is to do it EVERY day. Without fail. It's tough after a hard days work to face more brain strain in the lingo gym. But it has to be done if you're going to get anywhere. Thirty minutes 7 days a week is so much more productive than three and a half hours in one stint.
* A small investment: I enrolled in a beginners Spanish course at the City Lit. This was a great thing to do simply because it forced me to be disciplined in my approach to studying - if I did nothing else that week, I HAD to do the homework or look like a fool in front of the rest of the class! It also introduced me to Analía - who was to become my private Spanish teacher when the course had finished. Having a private Spanish teacher has really made all the difference for me in my studies. I do LOADS of stuff that is not covered in the class but having the opportunity to speak to a native Spanish speaker every week and to work through questions or problems is an absolute god-send.
* Making the most of wasted hours: In conjunction with the City Lit course, I downloaded the Michel Thomas Foundation Spanish Course and got it onto my iPod. Every morning on the train into work I would listen to 30 minutes of the course. This is not ideal because you should really be SPEAKING - not really an option on public transport. So in the evenings I would review what I'd listened to in the morning and actually do the speaking too.
* Freebies: I also downloaded the BBC Mundo podcast. This is 15 minutes of news in Spanish every day. Of course, it was gobbledegook when I first started listening to it. But I wanted to train my ears to listen to real Spanish spoken at a real speed. My intention wasn't to understand it all, but rather to try to catch words that I knew or phrases that were repeated frequently. BBC Mundo is a really great way to help to learn the language AND to learn something about Latin American news at the same time.
* Mixing it up: I try to learn from lots of different sources - it keeps it interesting and often offers a different perspective on certain topics that are not clear elsewhere. I've been working through the Spanish courses from Learning Like Crazy recently. There's also a fairly good verb conjugation trainer that you can download there. I tried 200 Words a Day. I found this OK and it's helpful for picking up lots of vocabulary quickly. But I'm not a huge fan of the actual software. One of the best books that I've found (ever!) is Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish. The reviews on amazon say it all so I won't bore you with the details - but it's worth checking out!

So there you go. It's possible to go from zero to having some degree of confidence in the language in less than a year. Now I'm not working and my focus is solely on my trip - so I'm stepping up the language learning. I really see preparing for my trip as my job for the next month. Every day practice practice practice. I hope that it pays off! I'll let you know 😱

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