Learn Spanish - Response to Benefits of Learning Spanish

In response to an article titled Benefits of Learning Spanish, Miguel is right - learning Spanish can be very difficult. I began learning small phrases and basic vocabulary words in Kindergarten. Spanish was one of our elective courses for years in elementary school. By 5th grade, our Spanish teacher had us counting to 100, reciting the colors, saying greetings, having ABCs races, and recalling animal terms and such. In middle school, Spanish was not offered, but in high school I immediately enrolled. I was finally learning grammar rules and how to properly put sentences together. I never knew there was such things as future tenses, conditional tenses, etc. Although, we do have the same rules in English.

The best advice I can give someone who wants to learn Spanish is for him/her to think about their own language. For English-speakers, think about sentence structure and tenses. Spanish language contains the same concepts. If you have a good grip on English, THEN you should start with a second language. Don't begin a second language without first knowing your own!

I finished 3 years of Spanish in high school, took a conversation course my first year of college, then decided to major in the language at UNC-Wilmington. I graduated in 2005 cum laude with a bachelor's degree in Spanish, along with K-12 licensure to teach the language.

Spanish is a lot of memorization. You practice and repeat verb forms over and over until eventually they just stick in your memory. Writing paragraphs and sentences helps in gaining a better grasp on grammar structure. One easy thing to remember is that each sentence needs a subject and a verb, just like English. When you can do that, then you can add adjectives and form longer more detailed sentences. After you can do that, you are well on your way to communicating in Spanish!