What is the best way to learn Spanish?

[tfm2007]

I am a MA in a doctors office, and there are many times when I am at work and because I look spanish, I am called upon to translate spanish for a patient. I don't speak spanish or any other language for that matter. One of my parents is Hispanic, but I was never taught the language. Now I am interested in learning Spanish. I know a few words here and there. I can say take off your shoes, or sit down, or even sit still for 1 minute. But that is as far as I get. Even that little spanish confuses people because then they assume I speak spanish and end up speaking spanish to me.. I want to know if anyone learned spanish for work and how did you do it? I attempted to take a spanish for beginners class but it was soo boring that I never completed the course. I also have books like spanish for dummies. Please help..

[swedishcornrolls]

What about the "Before you know it" series online? Can that help with learning Spanish fluently?

[blueyesue]

If cost is a factor, look into your public library. Sometimes they have expensive and extensive programs you can "check out" for free.

[lady_db_programmer]

Move to Texas and go work in an ER.

No seriously, the Rosetta Stone has the best software and program I've ever seen. Rosetta Stone: Language Learning Software: Learn a Foreign Language It is used by a lot of organizations.

Destinos is another good at-home program. If you can take a Spanish for Professionals class at your local community college, it would give you enough of the basics to feel comfortable continuing with a program.

They advertise Rosetta Stone on TV here in the UK; is it any good? They never say how much it costs, so I fear it's expensive. I can speak Spanish but I'm guessing there are other immigrant communities in need in Texas besides the Spanish-speaking one. I wonder how useful it would be to learn something like Tagolog, Arabic, an Indian language like Punjabi, Gujarati, etc.

Prmenrs had the best advice IMHO...I used a lot of those same methods to acquire and maintain fluency in different languages and I've never lived in a non-English-speaking country. I would just say this, though...pronunciation is important, but it's not as important as building your vocabulary and using proper grammar. Spanish is relatively easy to pronounce, aside from the trilled R sound, and the vowels usually only ever have one sound...unlike French, which has 15 vowel sounds, and English which has even more. The things that trip up people in Spanish are ser/estar, noun genders, and using the preterite verb tense which exists in English but is not often used. Those are the problems that kept cropping up in my Spanish classes. Also I found that a lot of the students would learn present and past tenses and use 'ir a' instead of any future tenses, for example 'voy a salir'. This is fine since that's how a lot of Spanish speakers talk, but not all of them do. Embrace verb tenses; they carry nuances that cannot be expressed any other way.

[blueyesue]

That was a mouthful. :)