The art of learning a new language

Dedicated to all the people who want to experiment new learning experiences in a new language.

Fundamentally the most important and necessary thing to do when learning a language is the will, tenacity, and to put effort into it.

Personally I speak German, English and Italian, of course there is as well my mother tongue Spanish. I learnt all this languages by myself without any teacher and I was never in any of those countries before. I just remember my will of learning and communicating with other people in other languages. I was also lucky to work in a hotel as a waiter and then as a receptionist so I had the chance to practice a lot.

If somebody asked me about the secret behind learning a language I would say that basically you have to forget your fear. Most people just don't learn because they're afraid. They don't want to make mistakes when they try to speak. Having the experience of teaching languages (I work for an academy that you could know if you visit http://www.academia-peter.com.ve ) I saw that one of the principal reasons that stops someone to speak is the fear to make a mistake and say something wrong. When someone, who is a natural speaker approaches them. They start to think about the best way to answer, but instead the just say nothing, because they're afraid. They also loose time thinking about saying anything right but no my friend they will not.

I remember when I was working in hotels that a lot of people made fun of me when I said those funny things. But as I always say it is just a matter of attitude, I had options: the first one to get mad and the second one to make fun of myself. Luckily I always choose the second one and I learnt a lot because after the fun came mostly the correction.

So the first thing to get trough with, is the fear of speaking, after that everything just go easier. Then we should practice a lot. I remember I got obsessed with the German language when I was learning it. And thanks to that I could learn it pretty fast, in less than four months. Sure I still lack some vocabulary but that'll come in time.

In the academy I work for this moment, I use intimidation, pain and pressure to help my students when learning a new language. Perhaps some people disagree with those techniques and I can understand them, that's because not everybody reacts the same way when they are under pressure, but its really works. Its seems incredible to me that there are people who pay an indeterminate amount to learn a language and don't go classes, they don't do any homework and they don't practice. These are the cases where I use my magic techniques to make them talk.

When people are intimated they normally have two ways:

Exit number one: Say something like…."Woo…and who do you think you are to talk to me in this way?" and probably this person won't come anymore to classes.

Exit number two: Say something like… "Woo… it won't happen again, I'll try to do it better".

See? As I said before it is just a matter of attitude. Normally the people who don't want to learn leave and the ones who do stay. I think that a good teacher has the ability to create good students. As teacher you have to find a way to make all your students learn.

Finally I would like to say that learning a language depends on the will that you have, to learn, if your will is strong enough you'll learn easily if not then it would become more difficult.

kind regards

I can’t see any relevance in the article posted by derkanzler, as it does not give any tips in the usage of ser and estar. It seems more like a personal praise. But well…..
Personally I have found that the best way to explain the difference between ser and estar is to tell your students that “ser” is used to describe permanent situations and characteristics of people and objects. “Estar” is used to describe temporary situations.
Él “es” un hombre gordo. He is a fat man. There is no point in arguing that he might lose that weight in the future. It is characteristical of that man to be fat.
La mesa “está” sucia. The table is dirty. This is a temporary situation. It is NOT characteristical for the table to be dirty.

I hope this will shine some light on the usage of ser and estar for the doubters among you.

Greetings to all interested in the Spanish language.

this is a sentence that i made description of ser.mi madre casa herrmoso is it correct

how about going the other way (from spanish to english) with translating the verb hacer? I had quite a few of my students today write on sentences that said 'I am doing a snowman' but I couldn't think of a rule to differentiate between to do and to make...

"Doing" should be translated as "make up", "setting up" =temporary
"making" should be "preparing", "confectionate"=more permanent
I hope this helps you

Hi! thanks for the diff examples with ser and estar, it was really helpful! But this is relating to the eskimo comment. There aren't many different words for "SNOW" in their language. They have the same amount. I.E in english we have "Sleet" "Hail" "Flurries"
So the amount of words is around the same.