Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Technical Setup
- Your Weekly Study Routine
- Your Core Content
- Flashcards
- Pimsleur Audio Lessons
- Grammar Book/Course
- Input
- Torrent Sites
- LingQ
- Final Notes
Introduction
If you’d like to skip to the tutorial, continue below. If you’d like to read my introduction click the button:
Tutorial
Technical Setup
Before you get started, you will need to do some technical setup on your computer. Please follow the steps in this guide: Torrenting – Technical Setup.
Weekly Study Routine
I’ve organized a weekly study routine for you. Please see Weekly Study Routine – Beginner Spanish
Homework Tracker
If you download Evernote, you can use my homework tracker document: AnkiMaster Homework Checklist – Beginner Spanish
Flashcards
Fluent Forever Pronunciation Trainer Flashcards
These flashcards are SUPER important because they will teach you how to pronounce the language. (See: Why you should study English pronunciation. It’s about English pronunciation but applies to learning pronunciation for any language) These flashcards are not free but they are not expensive either (only $12!).
DOWNLOAD:
Purchase and download at the Fluent Forever website. Instructions are included in the downloaded files. Select the English->Spanish (Latin American) option.
IMPORTANT: Watch these videos on this page to learn how to use these flashcards
AnkiMaster Flashcards
This is my secret weapon for learning languages. I developed this technology for my students and me. It’s a customized flashcard system built specifically for learning Spanish through input-based learning.
To learn more about the flashcards go to: A QUICKSTART GUIDE TO LEARNING WITH ANKIMASTER
Pimsleur Audio Lessons
This audio course consists of 90 30-minute audio lessons. It takes 1-2 days to finish one lesson and pass to the next. Although very difficult, you could finish the course in three months. A more realistic timeframe would be 4-6 months.
The course is very straightforward. Just follow the instructions included in the download.
DOWNLOAD:
Grammar Book/Course
The Pimsleur course will teach you a lot of grammar but it doesn’t teach you everything. A grammar course or book can walk you through the basics of Spanish grammar.
There are TONS of Spanish courses out there but you only need one. Choose one and stick with it. As an effective, free option, I am recommending Easy Spanish Step-By-Step by Barbara Bregstein.
DOWNLOAD:
Warning about grammar books
Follow the information in your grammar book normally but don’t do ALL the exercises and activities in the book. Grammar books are good as reference material or to get an overview of certain grammatical concepts in Spanish, but not as your main course of study.
Just to give you some perspective, I had a grammar book when I studied Spanish but I didn’t use it very much and I never finished reading it. It’s hard to actually retain all of the detailed information in a grammar book. It’s too overwhelming. It was reading and listening to a lot to Spanish that allowed me to internalize the grammar and actually use it in a conversation.
Always remember, your grammar book is your least important resource and will become less and less important as you progress through the language. The flashcards and Pimsleur audio course will always take priority over your grammar book/course.
Input
In terms of input, the best things that will work for you as a beginner are graded readers and other content designed for your level. Graded readers are books written for specific levels. The vocabulary and grammar are simplified to make it easy for you to understand.
Where to get graded readers
Rutracker.org
Rutracker is a Russian website. You’ll need to use Google Translate to navigate these pages. Download the Google Translate Chrome extension.
You’ll find all the graded readers on this page. As you can see, everything is in Russian.
Use google translate to change the page to English.
Here I can see some A1 level books. Let’s check out this book called Amnesia.
Click on the magnet link to download the book.
When it is finished downloading, you will see the book appear in your designated downloads folder.
Piratebay
Check out these pages for some massive collections of graded readers and other content.
You don’t have to download all the files. Just download the graded readers if you want.
LingQ
Those torrent sites have enough content to keep you busy for a lifetime, but if you’d like to try something different, LingQ is a great website that provides all kinds of audio content with transcripts. You won’t need the word-tracking or flashcard features of this website because you already have the AnkiMaster flashcard system which works much better. Just use LingQ to find interesting input that you can read and listen to. You will use AnkiMaster flashcards to learn new vocabulary.
Visit their website to get started: LingQ.com
Final Notes
That’s basically everything you need to learn Spanish to a pretty intermediate level all by yourself. Learning a new language costs time most of all. Most of this time is spent consuming content that is relevant to your level and interests. Here on this page, you can find all of that content. There’s no library or university that could arm you with a better set of resources to help you learn Spanish. If they did they would charge you hundreds or thousands of dollars for it! So please enjoy this massive collection of FREE tailored resources just for you!
Leave a Reply