Quote:
Originally Posted by dc_publius
Can anyone share any personal or 2nd hand experiences taking any intensive Spanish classes/programs?
Just wanted to comment on the spanish thing, since it seems like a ton of people feel like they'll get by fine with english or confident they will learn spanish in like their first month here by taking a class, which is just so lol. (not singling out dc at all, you seem dedicated and I think you will pick things up much quicker than me or most people)
Live in spanish until it hurts your brain. I guess it's the same as physical muscle growth, but for a long time my brain would literally be sore and I would be insanely tired at the end of the day when I lived in spanish.
Fwiw I took 5-6 semesters of spanish classes when I was younger (kept moving and repeated spanish 1 for 3 years, lol), and seriously learned wayyyy more in hanging out with buddies for 2 weekends going snowboarding in Spain, because not a single person knew a single word of english. God it hurt so much at the end of each of those weekends, but I'm not kidding when I say I learned more in those like 6-7 days than I did in 5 semesters, but each day was like 16 hours of classes and having to figure things out bit by bit.
The classes helped for learning stuff like verb conjugation, a bit of vocab words... but for me it was just memorizing 'x' list of words, taking a test, getting a good grade, and forgetting it.
If you guys want to learn spanish seriously I would suggest living with Colombians and not putting yourself in an environment where its even possible to speak english. When I first moved here I lived with a guy from Spain for 6 months and far and away that's where I learned the most. It's just 100% different than going to a class for 2 hours a day. Compartoapto.com is a great site where normal people, students, professionals...are looking for roommates.
anyways, I ramble and I've beat that horse enough.
enjoy locombia gents