Go back to: LAC Department | Spanish help | ESL help | International Friends Group
No matter what your level is in the language you're studying, the more you use the language in your life, the faster you will progress. By seeking outside uses for your new language, you also have a chance to learn real-life expressions from native speakers and not just from your teacher. Your new language can be integrated into your life much more than you would think from just using it in class. The question is how to find opportunities.
Visit places/events where you can meet and talk to native speakers: International Friends Group (YTC), International House (Charlotte), international festivals (UNCC, USC-Columbia), International Student Fellowships (Rock Hill/Charlotte),
Tiendas Latinas,
Latin clubs, etc.
Check YellowPages (and PaginasAmarillas, available from some Tiendas Latinas) for churches with services in Spanish, as well as social organizations, etc.
Order in Spanish next time you’re in a Mexican restaurant ... don’t forget polite expressions, ¡por favor!
Visit the Alphabet Museum and Mexico Museum at JAARS,
near Waxhaw, NC.
RADIO: 1030-and
980 AM broadcast in Spanish regularly.
(Try the WWW also: http://www.comfm.com
or search by language using the station directories in your WindowsMediaPlayer, RealAudio Player,
or http://launch.com.)
MUSIC: Most large media stores
(even WalMart) sell CDs/tapes with lyrics in Spanish. Big book/music stores
like Borders and others also have a good selection in French.
If you’re not sure about your favorite styles of music in your new
language, try to go to a store where you can listen before you buy. Buy
compilations or “hits of the year” albums to get to know a variety of
artists and styles. Watch the Latin Grammy awards or listen to Spanish-language
radio to know the new hits.
Also try to buy albums with lyrics texts included, or go to the artist's
official website and read the lyrics. This is a huge help in understanding
the songs!
(You can also try your favorite MP3 download program, to
hear songs for free before buying albums.)
TV: If you have cable or dish service, you may already receive one or more Spanish-language channels without knowing it. Channel-surf and see what you find. (Examples: even local cable packages may have Univisión or Telemundo, and the HBO package includes HBO Latino. PBS and other network channels show Spanish-Education shows late at night.)
VIDEO: Blockbuster and some
other video-rental places have a pretty good selection of foreign movies. The
advantage (or disadvantage) here is that you get subtitles to read. If possible,
try watching once while reading subtitles and re-watching with the translations
covered up, trying this time to recognize more words.
With DVDs, you often have the option of watching without subtitles, with English
titles, or with titles in the original language.
This last option can lead to interesting results because often the
subtitles seem to originate in another country than the movie … but on the
other hand, simultaneously hearing and reading two different versions of the
same phrase can aid in comprehension.
PRINTED MATTER:
• La Noticia http://www.lanoticia.com/
(and other free newspapers targeting the
Spanish-speaking population of the Carolinas) are available in most Mexican
stores and restaurants, Bi-Lo, and many other places as well.
• Check grocery stores for
magazines in Spanish.
• Dover Books specializes in nice but cheap ($1 and up) paperback
books. They sell many Foreign Language books and even several bilingual titles,
including some bilingual poetry books with cassette: Great for listening and
comprehension practice!
http://doverpublications.com
or Dover Publications - 31 East 2nd St. - Mineola, NY 11501-3582
• Borders Bookstore in Charlotte (near SouthPark Mall) has a huge
selection (by American standards) of FL books, magazines, music, etc. French and
Spanish are well represented, as well as German, Italian, Russian, and many
other languages. This is also a great place to go when you need a really good
dictionary. Try children’s’ FL books for new and fun reading matter.
(yes, they sell Harry Potter translations!)
• Books-A-Million (there's one in
the new shopping center in Rock Hill) now has a really good selection of
dictionaries.
• Speaking of dictionaries, you should get one (Oxford, Vox and
Larousse are among the best), as well as the indispensable 501
Conjugated Verbs (or similar) for the appropriate language. Almost all bookstores
(including the YTC bookstore) carry dictionaries in their reference section. To
choose a dictionary: Look for the greatest number of entries (words or phrases
translated) for the amount you are prepared to spend. Also make sure you can
read and understand the different notations in the definitions: parts of speech,
alternate meanings, etc.
• Also in YTC bookstore, you can buy laminated fold-out reference sheets for
Spanish grammar and vocabulary. These
can be great for review.
• If you are out of money for reference books, try local and college
libraries -- you may be surprised at the variety you find.
• Try our dictionaries page for more free
options!
You truly have access to nearly any
country in the whole world. You can access Internet from various places on
campus, if not from home. Here are just some ideas:
• Bring your dictionary along (or keep open a window with
www.wordreference.com), to use if a word you don’t recognize
is repeated many times or seems important. (Often you can infer meanings of
words without looking them up.)
A good place to begin is with a search engine or directory. At www.yahoo.com
(and others) you will find they have at least one "branch" in your
language. French: one for France and one for Canada, including Quebec. Spanish:
one for the Spanish-speaking world, one for Mexico, and one for Spain. There are
also other North-American, European and Asian Yahoo sites.
For a change, try http://terra.com/:
Spanish-language, Hispanic-oriented web directory.
NEW NEWS SITES: International versions of Google News
available in:
• Hotbot http://hotbot.com,
Google http://google.com and others let you search for
results in whichever language you specify. Google also has one or more
Spanish-language search sites.
• Comparing the English category
names with the new language ones can help you pick up new words. Notice however
that they may use different categories.
• Make sure to look at the bottom of the page (especially in Yahoo) to see what
local search engines are linked from that page.
• Search the new language words for "search" (busca[r] or [re]cherche[r])
to find more search engines.
• Most directories link to news reports. Read the world news in the
language of the place where the events happened! You can also usually access
English translations or similar accounts of the same story.
• Yahoo and MSN (as well as a multitude of other sites) have French Chat and
Spanish Chat pages. If you are familiar with chats, you should have no problem
navigating these.
Of course the same cautions apply as with chatting in English: give out
your real name or other personal info at your own risk. Be prepared to see some
‘adult’ language, depending on who’s chatting that day. You can always
chat in a private room once you find a friendly person to talk to. It’s not
too hard to find some people eager to practice their English or to educate
others about their language and their country.
• Also try various sites’ listings of international pen-pal services.
Most web directories have a section for pen-pal services.
There are both e-mail and paper-mail pen-pal opportunities. The same
cautions and benefits apply as in a chat or in the “real world”.
• Try the Foreign Language Education sub-category (under different
names in different directories, but usually find it through Education) to look
for tutorial and student-help sites. When you find anything great, please bring
it to class or e-mail it to me.
Here is one very useful site that covers most of the grammar points in
Spanish 101:
http://studyspanish.com – If you
need me to renew my teacher registration in order for you to use certain
tutorials and automatic grading services, let me know.
Sites aimed at teachers also have student resources. For example: http://www.teachspanish.com
• Learn the new language words related to subjects that interest you
and use these to search for pages about your own interests. You will almost
certainly learn something!
ELECTRONIC
TRANSLATING:
Altavista has a
free translation service (http://babelfish.altavista.com/):
you can type in a phrase and choose from a variety of languages to translate
from/into. You can also send the text of a whole web-page through the translator
by cut/pasting its URL (WWW address) into the translation window.
The quality of the resulting translations ranges from the exact to the
ridiculous … but hey, it’s free!
Newer versions of MS Word also have fairly decent translation
capabilities.
Remember these services are not a magic-bullet: they are no better and no
worse than using a dictionary with a limted vocabulary.
(It is NOT ADVISABLE to translate an English passage into the language
you're studying using this service, and expect to get a good example to practice
reading. Try a foreign-language-to-English passage and you will see why.)
WARNING: if you try this method to translate entire assignments, your
professors can tell, and we will not accept it.
My policy (for myself and for my students) is that such websites can be
used to translate words or simple phrases (though NEVER idiomatic
ones, because it just doesn’t work!), but always with caution. Some
professors will not accept any use of machine translation, so don’t assume
that your next teacher allows it.
Look
for sites that exist in various languages simultaneously. Print out a few texts
and compare them to pick up new expressions relatively effortlessly. You will
notice this kind of site by a variety of flags or language names that you can
click on to access the translations. Tourist info sites, multinational
companies, and major universities abroad tend to have this kind of web-page, but
there are also many others. Bilingual
people making a personal home-page will often write 2 versions, because they
know that there are so many English speakers on-line.
Read several reviews or summaries (written in your new language) of a favorite
film or book (regardless of what language was in). You may be surprised how much
American media is exported, often in translated versions. Many US movies even
premiere abroad at the same time as they do here.
Things to look for:
• See how many of the plot details you can recognize. Different
reviewers will give different summaries, just as is done in our media.
• Try to determine what the reviewer’s opinion was, and why. Do you
agree?
• Notice which tenses are used to tell a story. It’s not uncommon to
see present or future rather than past. The choice may depend on the
reviewer’s personal style.
• Notice specialized vocabulary, especially if it is useful or
interesting to you.
Assuming
the computer you’re using has a relatively fast connection, you can access a
wonderful variety of multimedia through the internet. This includes live radio
and TV from numerous countries! You need to download a small application (RealPlayer
or one of a few others) that will allow you to see or hear the media. The first
time you try to access a media item, you will probably be led to the site where
you can download the media player, so it’s not hard to set-up. The following
is currently my favorite directory of live international TV and radio, but
search for other pages also: more updated listings may exist. (Search under
"Media: Internet Broadcast", etc.)
http://comfm.com - Home Page, containing
some other links which look intriguing.
http://comfm.com/live/radio/ -
worldwide radio listings (almost 4,500 stations)
http://comfm.com/live/tv/ -
almost 400 TV channels
There are many cheap software
CD-ROM’s available to practice or self-study foreign languages. Spanish and
French are equally easy to find. PC
versions are still more readily available than Mac (hybrid versions are out
there, too, -- you just have to look). A
lot of foreign language programs can be found for about $10 in the "bargain
software" areas of the store. I have not seen any of these programs that
was completely useless: all the ones I have bought were well worth what they
cost, but in any case $10 is a small commitment!
Try Office Depot, computer superstores, WalMart, Ross or Marshalls (yes,
really!), bookstores ...
If you are ever interested in buying any more expensive FL programs, I can
recommend programs or show you some catalogs to comparison-shop. Listings of FL
software (and other materials) can also be found in specialized directories such
as http://agoralang.com/.
Go back to: LAC Department | Spanish help | ESL help | International Friends Group