Free Spanish lesson

With this free Spanish lesson I want to show you how anyone can learn a new language. All you need to succeed is some motivation and a little bit of time.

This is the first lesson of what will be an Easy Guide to Spanish which I will publish here, at Hubpages, over the next few weeks and months. It will be a practical guide for learning to speak and understand Spanish using everyday words and expressions.

What are my credentials? I'm an experienced native Spanish teacher and a learner of foreign languages. So far I've published two Spanish learning courses: a book with cds and a cdrom, plus several podcasts; apart from preparing lessons for my students on a regular basis.

Through this Easy Guide to Spanish I want to bring you my experience and hopefully inspire you to learn Spanish. If you follow this lesson through, by the time you finish reading it you will have learned:

• 7 Spanish language learning tips
• 22 Spanish words and their English translation
• Some useful Spanish expressions
• How to greet people in Spanish
• How to ask people their name and introduce yourself
• Numbers 1 to 5

To practise the new words and expressions, you can read and hear the three short dialogs at the end.

Are you ready? Let's start!

Knowing how to approach a new language will not only help you learn better and faster, but it will also allow you to enjoy it. Here are some tips that have helped me and my students:

• Always learn with audio material. Languages come alive when you hear them. Just a book or a mute webpage will be of little help, especially to beginners.
• When learning new words, expressions, dialogs, etc., listen the audio material BEFORE reading the Spanish text or its English translation. That way you'll develop your listening skills fast.
• Read the new words and dialogs along with the native speakers. This can be hard at first, but it will help you acquire a great accent. To guarantee your success, start with single words or short phrases, and then move on to whole dialogs.
• Read the dialogs in your lessons out loud, not quietly or in your head. Allow your tongue and mouth to get used to the new language too, not just your brain. At first it'll feel like your IQ has shrunk, but it won't be long before you can read them through.
• Study regularly. Set aside fifteen or twenty minutes every day for learning Spanish, rather than a couple of hours every two weeks.
• Review constantly. When you're learning a new language, you forget at least once everything you learn the first time round, even if you're a prodigy. What makes it stick is reviewing what you learned yesterday or a week ago.
• Never, ever, allow anyone to disencourage you, including yourself.

To learn these Spanish words fast and easily, you can listen to them on my free Spanish podcast. (Note: I haven't found a way of embedding sound on HubPages. If you know how it could be done, please let me know!)

Say each word twice and then read its English translation. Don't worry if you can't remember all of them when you've finished this lesson. As I hinted before, learning a new language involves a lot of forgetting and reviewing, no matter how good your memory is!

1. la playa
2. las vacaciones
3. el amigo
4. el hotel
5. el sol
6. eres
7. presento
8. estás
9. adiós
10. de
11. dónde
12. en
13. encantado
14. entonces
15. gracias
16. hola
17. Inglaterra
18. mi
19. sí
20. también
21. tú
22. y

Like with the list of Spanish words we've just seen, you can hear these greetings and expressions on the link above. Hearing native Spanish speakers say these expressions will dramatically improve your accent, it will help you avoid bad pronunciation habits, and it will also help you develop your listening skills fast.

Read these expressions out loud and check their English translation to make sure you know what they mean:

1. buenas noches
2. buenas tardes
3. buenos días
4. ¿cómo te llamas?
5. ¿de dónde eres?
6. hasta la vista
7. hasta pronto
8. me llamo Ricardo
9. ¿qué tal estás?
10. yo también

Now that you've been introduced to some useful Spanish words and phrases, here are three dialogs where you can practise them. You can hear these dialogs in my interactive multimedia pdf and on the podcasts mentioned above.

Listen to these dialogs several times. The first time you might not understand very much and they will sound fast. Soon, however, you'll start to recognize the words and expressions you've learned and the dialogs will become much easier to follow.

Diálogo 1

María: Buenos días, Ana, ¿qué tal estás?

Ana: Bien, gracias, ¿y tú?

María: Bien.

Diálogo 2

Juan: Hola, buenas tardes.

Ricardo: Hola, me llamo Ricardo, y tú ¿cómo te llamas?

Juan: Juan. ¿De dónde eres?

Ricardo: De Inglaterra.

Diálogo 3

José: Hola, buenas noches, te presento a mi amigo Pedro.

Margarita: Encantada.

Pedro: Encantado.

Margarita: ¿Estás de vacaciones?

Pedro: Sí.

Margarita: ¿En qué hotel estás?

Pedro: En el "Sol y Playa".

Margarita: ¡Yo también!

Pedro: Entonces, ¡hasta pronto!

Margarita: ¡Hasta la vista!

José: ¡Adiós!

Throughout this Easy Guide to Spanish we'll learn and practise the numbers. Knowing the numbers well will help you communicate successfully with native speakers in many situations. You'll be able to understand prices, write down phone numbers, get the right bus, say your clothe and shoe sizes, etc.

Like before, you can hear these five numbers on the pdf mentioned above.

• 1 - uno
• 2 - dos
• 3 - tres
• 4 - cuatro
• 5 - cinco

If you're looking for good and free Spanish lessons, you can find plenty at Spanish Bookworld. There you can get free Spanish podcasts for beginners, and you can also download their transcripts in pdf. If you're looking for free Spanish lessons for kids, you'll find them there too.

I have used many different Spanish language courses with my students and reviewed plenty of products. Some are very disappointing, in spite of their author or publisher, and are simply a waste of money. Here are eight courses that work and I can recommend.