Month: March 2024

Welcome my fellow bloggers. I hope everyone is finding great progress in their journey in whatever they may be learning. As mentioned in my previous post, I am finding it harder and harder to find a reliable online resource to help progress my Spanish. However, this week I stumbled upon a resource called “Coursera”.

Coursera provides access to online courses from universities and institutions all around the world. Coursera provides courses for a variety of topics that one may want to learn, including 21 different languages. Typically, topics are taught by professors and experts in their respected fields. Obviously, I was there in my quest to learning more Spanish. The specific courses that I explored was taught by Dr. Robert Blake at the University of California, Davis.

Being on week 9 of my journey of learning Spanish, I feel like I am progressively learning more and more Spanish everyday. Because of this, I feel like I am also becoming pickier on the resources I use. Being able to identify what works and what doesn’t pretty quickly. Coursera offers both free and paid courses. While free courses are available, gaining access to graded assignments, certificates, and choice of specific areas often require the paid subscription. And as many of my fellow students are in the same boat as me, being a university student is EXPENSIVE! Which means, no thanks to the paid subscriptions. Another aspect I wasn’t crazy about was the lack of interaction Coursera had to offer. Some other resources I explore had a great variety of discussion forums and community features, allowing the user to get instant feedback from peers and feel a sense of community among other Spanish speaking people. Lastly, I found this resource difficult to stay self motivated. In my opinion. Completing online courses takes a great level of self-discipline and without having any strict deadlines or in-person classes, I found it difficult to stay on top of lectures and assignments.

Now, Coursera is not all bad. There are a few things I really like about the resource as well. First off, there was a wide range of course options available. This caters to all levels of Spanish speaking students, from beginner to experts. The other aspect that was very apparent, was the structure that was laid out for learners. It was clear that these courses are taught by professionals and experts from top universities and institutions, ensuring that there are high-quality instructions. While I did harp on Coursera in the paragraph above for not being very self-motivating, I did find a silver lining in that. It allowed the user to become more flexible while learning. I could access course material, assignments, and quizzes all at my own pace, allowing me to be learning at my own convenience.

Overall, I found Coursera to be a decent online resource. Signing up for the free trail, I could tell why so many users would be driven towards the site. If it wasn’t for the subscription, I would most likely explore Coursera in more depth. Thanks for reading friends!

Zach

Buenas tardes todo! (Good afternoon everyone!)

I’m not sure you about you all, but I am getting to the point where I am starting to struggle to find good, reliable, online resources to continue my journey of learning Spanish. This week took me a bit longer than regular to find the resource I was going to use. But, nonetheless, I found one that might just be my favourite one yet! I present, Coffee Break Spanish.

For the ones who are not familiar with Coffee Break Spanish, it is a podcast that has mini lessons that you can listen to. I listened to these podcasts through the app Spotify. I found that Coffee Break Spanish has been the most convenient and accessible resource I have used thus far. It was so easy for me to plug in my headphones and just listen. Whether I was commuting to work or being at the gym, this kind of accessibility was unmatched. I didn’t need to set time aside just to learn Spanish, rather I would learn Spanish while doing something else. The other aspect I really like was how it had a structured lessons easy to follow, making it ideal for beginners/intermediates like me. Each lesson would focus on a specific topic such as greetings, restaurants, everyday conversations, and much more. The last thing that I loved about Coffee Break Spanish was in addition to the lessons, they also had quizzes. This was a great way for me to track my progress through my listening.

Some things that I didn’t overly like about the app was while Coffee Break Spanish was great for beginners and intermediates, I could tell it lacked advanced content. As I am continuing to improve on the language week by week, I could already sense that I would hit a plateau fairly quickly using this app. Another thing I noticed was while this resource provides a solid foundation, there were additional resources needed. The app did not go into great detail about grammar, comprehension, and conversations of the language.

Overall, as a starting point, this is my favourite online resource yet. As mentioned before, nothing can beat the accessibility that this app provides. Not having to set a specific time out of my day to learn Spanish saved me a lot of time and stress.

Thanks for listening!!

Zach

Bienvenido mis amigos (Welcome my friends). Today I will be reviewing learning Spanish via social media. Who knew I could use Instagram for something useful other than mindlessly scrolling through my feed late at night while I should be sleeping?

While there are many different social media applications, I would have to say Instagram dominates my use. Whether it be for following professional athletes to finding new recipes for supper, I use Instagram for informational and non-informational content. So, I thought, why not try using Insta for learning Spanish?

To start on this process, I had to find the Instagram pages I would use. I found a few with a simple Google search. The three accounts that I focused on during this journey was: @SpanishDict, @Ohlalagram, and @hablomosespanol. @SpanishDict offers daily vocabulary, grammar tips, and interactive quizzes to challenge the learner. @Ohlalagram provides visually appealing infographics and a variety of language memes to make learning Spanish fun and engaging. Lastly, @hablomosespanol offers short language lessons, and cultural insights that every other resource that I have explored has yet to touch on.

To begin, the accessibility of social media is unmatched. They are free to use and accessible for all ages and levels of Spanish speaking learners. With almost everyone having a phone at their disposal, hopping on Instagram for a few minutes here and there is accessible for almost everyone. This was especially beneficial to me with having a such a busy schedule; I could get a few minutes in during my lunch break or for the few minutes while I’m laying in bed. The other aspect I like about this resource was that it was a lot more fun and engaging than other resources. With the interactive and sometimes funny videos, I was excited to move onto the next video. Lastly, as I mentioned before, this was the first resource that I explored that also taught about the culture of Latin America. This is exactly why I wanted to learn Spanish in the first place, I love the culture! They would also teach slang terminology that native speakers use in their everyday lives.

While social media was an interesting online tool there were a few cons I’d like to mention. Being on Instagram learning Spanish was a bit of a double-edged sword. I found myself getting off task quite often as I would wonder off onto another page and go down a rabbit hole of nonsense. I found it difficult to stay on task for a long period of time. Another thing that I wasn’t a fan of was the lack of structure. There was no continuity in the learning process whatsoever. For a beginner, this would be extremely difficult to navigate the complex language. For myself, having a bit more background knowledge, it was a bit easier but still challenging to say the least.

Overall learning Spanish through Instagram is something I never thought was possible. It was a pleasant and surprising experience. For quick little tidbit lessons, there worked perfectly.

I’m curious, has anyone else tried learning Spanish through social media? Let me know!

See you all soon!

Zach

Hola mis amigos! ¿Cómo están?

(Hello my friends! How are you)

We are currently on week 6 of my journey of learning Spanish. I can honestly say that I am learning more than I ever thought I would. I am starting to become comfortable with saying full sentences, knowing common phrases, and being able to respond to questions. With the variety of exploring different online resources, I am benefitting from all the strengths each application has. This week I am focusing on using Artificial Intelligence to help me learn more Spanish.

With all the different AI’s out there, I decided to explore ChatGPT. Prior to exploring ChatGPT as a language learning tool I decided I would watch a short YouTube video explaining how to use the resource properly. I found this short video being extremely beneficial in how to navigate ChatGPT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mS1dqyUu0c

I found my progression of learning Spanish was expedited using ChatGPT. I started off by telling the AI that I was trying to learn Spanish and I wanted to work on real-life conversations. I also instructed the AI to correct any grammatical errors I had before responding to the conversation. This allowed me to be more comfortable while talking about any subject I chose.

The only thing I didn’t overly like was that I was not verbally communicating. While I was still speaking to myself as I was typing out something, it wasn’t the same as truly speaking. I also was reading the responses rather than listening to them. I find one of my biggest struggles while speaking to a native Spanish speaker is understanding what they are saying especially when they begin to speak quickly. This is something that ChatGPT did not assist with in any way. In addition to this, there was also no real structure to my learning.

Overall, I really liked using the online resource as a tool to learn more Spanish. It gave me the opportunity to learn about anything I wanted to. This was beneficial because it allowed me to focus on conversations that fits my personality and something I will use in the future.

Has anyone used Artificial Intelligence to learn a new language. Comment down below!

See you all next week.

Zach