Category Archives: Language Learning

More Cheap & Useful Resources for Learning Spanish

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Simon getting a haircut in Paraguay
Even getting a haircut in Paraguay is a good chance to practice Spanish.

Our first post on Cheap & Useful Resources for Learning Spanish was written before we came to South America and since then we have learned a lot. Our approach to language learning has changed considerably, and we have discovered many more useful resources.

Language Hacking Guide

Our first Spanish resources post recommended Benny’s Fluent in 3 Months blog, and since then he has released the very useful Language Hacking Guide outlining his unconventional approach to language learning. The focus is on communicating in the language from Day 1 and it is packed with tips on exactly how to do this. The guide has become our Bible and is a huge inspiration. Many of the tips below originally came from Benny.

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Nomadic Interviews: Benny Lewis, Author of the Language Hacking Guide

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benny_rio

Our Nomadic Interviews series aims to introduce you to people who have chosen an alternative path and decided to live a nomadic life for many years. Last month we discussed food, photography and Latin America with Uncornered Market and this month we bring you Benny Lewis who has taken a different approach to permanent travel.

Benny is the author of the Language Hacking Guide and blogs at Fluent in 3 Months. He learns a new language every three months and can speak eight languages fluently, even though he didn’t start learning languages until he was 21. He has been hugely inspirational to us as we learn Spanish, and his guide gave us a new approach to language learning which we tried out with our own Language Hacking Challenge.

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Ways to Learn Spanish in Buenos Aires

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20
Simon's Spanish class at Ibero
Simon's Spanish class at Ibero

In our Cheap & Useful Resources for Learning Spanish post we shared the methods we used to study Spanish before we came to South America. Although I still think these are useful tools I now realise we were missing an essential element – actually speaking in Spanish with native speakers. We had no actual practical experience so were completely unprepared for the fast and accented language spoken by locals in Buenos Aires.

Two months later and we have improved immensely. We have a long way to go to fluency but we can communicate in most situations, which is essential now that we are travelling in Paraguay where hardly any English is spoken.

These are the Spanish learning methods that we used during our two months in Buenos Aires.

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Language Hacking Challenge

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13
Speaking lots of Spanish at Spanglish
Speaking lots of Spanish at Spanglish

A week without speaking English? Is it possible?

Last week we reviewed the Language Hacking Guide by Benny Lewis from Fluent in 3 Months. Reading the guide changed our attitude to our Spanish learning and we realised we needed to step up our game. In the last week we’ve been doing our own 7 Day Language Hacking Challenge where we’ve tried out many of the techniques in the guide.

These are the main areas we have focused on:

No English!

To learn another language quickly, the Guide advised us to stop speaking our native language so for this week our aim was to speak to each other in Spanish as much as possible and to try not to let conversations revert back to English with other people.

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The Language Hacking Guide Review

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15
Language Hacking Guide

Who doesn’t want to speak another language?

We English speakers are generally rubbish at learning languages –while Europeans (and Asians and Africans) often speak three, four or more languages we struggle with simply ordering a coffee in Paris.

Why is this?

There are many reasons – It’s hard to learn a language. We don’t have the time. We can’t afford a teacher or a language course. We have no one to practice with. Everyone in the world speaks English anyway.

The Language Hacking Guide shows you why all of these excuses are just that – excuses. It gives you all the advice and resources you need to stop procrastinating and start speaking.

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