Finding my most EFFICIENT leaning style

[plnelson]

I just returned from Colombia where I found that my Spanish from 45 years ago in high school was just adequate for asking where the bathroom was and ordering in a restaurant. I'm planning to go to Chile in December and I want to have much better conversational skills by then.

Different people have different learning styles and I want to identify the language learning tools that will allow me to learn with maximum efficiency, meaning to have the fastest gain per hour of study. So my question is not what tool or company to use, but more meta - how do I figure out, quickly and efficiently, what my best language learning style is?

Thanks in advance.

[rdearman]

You missed an R out of learning, and I was sorely tempted to talk about leaning.

You've got a very short time window to learn conversational Spanish. As I write this the days between Monday, August 28th, 2017 and Friday, December 1st, 2017 is 95 days. I think you'll be hard pressed to figure out a learning style. If I was you I would take a pragmatic approach and go for memorisation. For example I would buy a Spanish phrase book, like lonely planet or similar and I would memorise every phrase I thought would be useful until they just fell out of your mouth. You could then take these basic building blocks and try to add some vocabulary to increase your stock phrases.

Also in 3 months you should be able to churn through a beginners course book or two, and get a book and start reading.

I'd also narrow down what you mean by "better conversational skills" into a specific area. So you'd be able to talk about 1-2 subjects very well, 2-3 fairly well. One of the best would be to learn conversations around yourself, your family, as well as asking about them and their family.

Everyone learns differently, some prefer to watch films, some like to read books, some prefer pre-made courses so it is very hard to give you advice other than "try them all and see which one works for you". Obviously you don't have time for that so I figure the best thing is try to envision the types of conversations you'll encounter most often, and bone up on the vocabulary and phrases you'll need for that.

[DaveBee]

If I was you I would take a pragmatic approach and go for memorisation. For example I would buy a Spanish phrase book, like lonely planet or similar and I would memorise every phrase I thought would be useful until they just fell out of your mouth. You could then take these basic building blocks and try to add some vocabulary to increase your stock phrases.

An audio only course that you could repeat over and over might be a good option for that.

Some audio only English>Spanish options are: Michel Thomas Total Spanish, Linguaphone Spanish: All Talk. Check your local library.

[Xmmm]

Part of the problem is you didn't provide enough details Do you have 4+ hours a day of free time or only 30 minutes a day? Are you willing to throw money at the problem?

If you have money, your royal road to success is Italki. Get the phrasebook like rdearman suggested, starting putting phrases on flashcards and memorizing them ... and in the meantime start auditioning Italki tutors.

I did 50 hours of Italki tutoring in Russian and went from not being able to put two words together, to being able to to have hour long semi-fluent conversations in (horrible) Russian. (Of course I had done 400 hours of study prior to starting Italki ... that helped).

If you can find a good tutor (takes work), and if you can afford an hour a day of tutoring, I think your progress will be amazing. After the hour of conversation gives you a splitting headache, relax with three hours of Spanish TV.

But the only way to get better at speaking is speaking, etc.

[tarvos]

I just returned from Colombia where I found that my Spanish from 45 years ago in high school was just adequate for asking where the bathroom was and ordering in a restaurant. I'm planning to go to Chile in December and I want to have much better conversational skills by then.

Different people have different learning styles and I want to identify the language learning tools that will allow me to learn with maximum efficiency, meaning to have the fastest gain per hour of study. So my question is not what tool or company to use, but more meta - how do I figure out, quickly and efficiently, what my best language learning style is?

Thanks in advance.

You don't. These things are usually found out through trial, error, blood, sweat and tears. I have years of language study behind me and I still don't know what the most efficient method for me would be - I just know what's worked for me in the past.

If you only have three months to prepare, then the best thing to do is cram the most important words and get talking, because when you hit the ground in Chile they're gonna be jabbering away in Spanish you will have to do your best to understand. And you're on their turf, so it's you making the sacrifices.

I once was in your situation - I found out I would be going to China in five months. Sure didn't manage to learn Mandarin during that time - but everything you know that you can take with you will help you immensely.

And finding a tutor is a good idea - but make it someone who is focused on conversation and travel needs, because that's what you'll be needing - and bonus points if they're Chilean too. Because that Chilean accent's a corker, I tell ya.

[plnelson]

Thank you for all the suggestions.

Money is not a big object - I don't mind throwing some dosh at this. The local Berlitz school, for 14 one-on-one, 2hour,15minute private sessions charges $USD 2675.00, and they suggest 2 or 3 sessions a week, presumably with home study in between. I just wasn't sure if a live 2-hour,15 minute session would be too exhausting!

I've also looked at italki and similar services. There are tons of Skype-based one-on-one tutors but I don't know how to choose among them.
(any suggestions?)

I'm dating a woman who lives in Colombia, but she comes to the US, where I live, often because she has a child in college here. When I was in Colombia I was visiting her family. Also my GP is from Colombia. They both say that if I get a tutor I should get a Colombian one because Colombian Spanish is the most canonically standardised, but they would say that wouldn't they? (I wouldn't know what dialect to suggest to someone learning English - R.P.? Canadian? Probably not Australian or US-South Carolina). In the last two years I've been to Cuba, Argentina, Spain (Catalonia) and Colombia and Colombia was the easiest for me to follow, but probably out of familiarity hearing it. My next destination is Chile but it probably won't be the last one for me in the Spanish-speaking world - I'm probably going to Costa Rica next year, and if things work out well with the woman I'm dating I may be back in Colombia. Also, lots of people I interact with professionally here in the US come from Mexico or from Central America and I'd like to talk with them in Spanish, too.

[Xmmm]

I can't give any advice about Spanish itself or about Berlitz, but on the subject of choosing Italki tutors ...

First, look for people with several hundred sessions completed. They're serious tutors and not likely to flake out on you.

You want people that will help you with conversation and American accent reduction. You're not at a level where you're going to benefit from long lectures in English about fine points of grammar (I don't know if anyone is at that level). So if you sign up and tell them what you want, and they give you a 45 minute grammar lesson in English ... drop them. If they don't at least occasionally correct your pronunciation, drop them. Fortunately for Spanish, there are a zillion tutors. You really want 80% Spanish and 20% English (like if they give you homework, you want instructions you can understand).

So ... you know, sign up with five tutors and and then drop three. Trial and error.

[DaveBee]

First, look for people with several hundred sessions completed. They're serious tutors and not likely to flake out on you.

Also the ratio of students:lessons. Do their customers stick around?

[smallwhite]

Different people have different learning styles and I want to identify the language learning tools that will allow me to learn with maximum efficiency, meaning to have the fastest gain per hour of study. So my question is not what tool or company to use, but more meta - how do I figure out, quickly and efficiently, what my best language learning style is?

Can you name 5 or 6 learning styles that you have to choose between?

[Cainntear]

Different people have different learning styles

This is actually a massively controversial statement. There is no proof whatsoever for the existence of learning styles.

If you want to learn efficiently, I strongly recommend using Michel Thomas, which is the quickest way I know to learn how to build sentences. Then get yourself a private tutor, because the order Thomas teaches everything in is different from other courses, so any programmed course (Berlitz is very strictly programmed) is not going to match what you already know. Whether that's face-to-face or online isn't that important. Face-to-face is probably slightly better because of the limitations of internet audio and video, but online tutoring is much more convenient, and often cheaper.