My Home Spanish Immersion Plan

Here is the outline of my home Spanish language learning immersion plan. Change the word Spanish to any other language and use it to start your own language immersion plan at home.

1. Stop reading in English, start reading “everything” in Spanish where possible. You want to get yourself out of English as much as you can.
   • Spanish novels (print and ebooks). I especially like print versions because I can mark them up with my translations and notes. Read them aloud to improve your speaking ability. Re-read them once you have translated them and discover how many of your translations you have forgotten since did them. Re-read them again and again until you can understand them without referring to the translations.
   • Spanish websites. Start using the Spanish versions instead of the English ones.
     • MSN:   msn.com/es-us
     • Google:   google.es
     • CNN:   cnnespanol.cnn.com, mexico.cnn.com
     • Wikipedia:    es.wikipedia.org
2. Label everything in the house with post-it notes in Spanish. The constant visual   associations are a great way to memorize the word meanings.
3. Listen to Spanish radio stations in the car when driving.
4. Listen to Spanish podcasts, audio books, online radio stations, and internet videos of interviews, news, etc. during the day while you are doing other things. You are passively learning even though you may not realize it.
5. Stop watching English movies and watch only Spanish movies. Most Spanish movies can be watched with or without English or Spanish subtitles. Avoid watching with English subtitles as your attention just focuses on reading the English translations and ignores the Spanish. Also the translations are often wacky anyway. Watch with Spanish subtitles first so you can figure out what the actors are saying. They may be talking too fast and slurring words together (as we do in English) so that it’s difficult to pick out the words, so the subtitles can help a lot. Some video players allow you to slow down the playback speed. This can be very useful to help you understand the individual words. As you get better at understanding the dialogue, turn off the subtitles and try to follow along and see if you can pick out the words, maybe with the speed slowed down at first.I like to use audio and video program that I have been stored as digital files on my computer. Being able to back up easily and listen to or watch a particular sentence over and over again is very useful.
6. You don’t need to focus on learning specific vocabulary as you’ll get plenty of new words by listening, reading and watching. If a particular word or phrase seems to appear again and again, write it down and look up the meaning later. The higher frequency the word or phrase, the more it will be useful to know. You don’t need to get hung up on translating every single word at first, just enough so you can follow the main gist of what is being said.
7. Focus your formal Spanish study on learning verbs, grammar concepts, and idioms. Books like Breaking out of Beginning Spanish are a good resource for learning idioms and more advanced usages of verbs, etc.
8. Once you are beginning to be able to follow radio and TV programs, consider trying to get a language exchange set up so you can practice speaking with a Spanish speaker. There are a number of sites like WeSpeke, Speaky, Tandem, and iTalki, where you can set up free language exchanges where you trade off speaking English and Spanish with a native Spanish speaker so you can each learn from each other, or you can pay for online lessons (via Skype usually) with a native speaker in a different country. The online lesson rates in some countries are a lot lower than what you’d pay for similar lessons in the U.S. You may be able to find someone locally who will be willing to do a language exchange as well.