Seal wrote:I have been studying Spanish for 9 or so months now from a book.
I've reached an intermediate level, but can't really say anything without taking at least a minute to translate and think it all through.
Cant travel right now and I don't have any Spanish speaking friends, so I was wondering, what's the best way to get fluent otherwise?
Hi Seal !
If you want to become fluent in Spanish, there's no secret, you gotta speak it ^^
So yeah, the question is how you're gonna do it if you don't know anybody who speak it ?
It depends where you live of course, but usually if you live in a big or even medium city, you should be able to find Spanish speakers somewhere. I would suggest to use mobile phone applications to find language partners like Tandem, Speaky, Hello Talk... I've tried them and they're really good, my favorite being Tandem.
It connects a person who is learning one language and is fluent in another, with another person whose languages are reversed so that you can mutually exchange your language knowledge. Like if you know English fluently and you want to learn Spanish, you will be connected with someone who knows Spanish fluently and who wants to learn English.
In fact, if you want my opinion, Tandem and Hello Talk are really similar apps, but I personally prefer Tandem because it has a great system of selecting thier users. They basically analyze your profile before validating your registration, and if you don't show enough motivation or good reason to join the app, they won't accept you. Indeed, if you only put one word to describe yourself without any picture, you're most likely not really interested or motivated to converse with people.
It's a pretty big app, so I'm sure you can find people who speak Spanish not far from you, so you can always organize face to face meet up if you prefer conversing that way.
Otherwise, I don't know if it exists in your city, but I live in Paris, and something I really enjoyed was going to a multilingual café. It's called
Polyglot Club and you can basically register in their website before a meeting the café organizes in the evening with people speaking all kinds of languages. You can make good friends and practice with them, then keep in touch with them...
I'm sure you must have these kind of events somewhere where you live, and you'll always find someone who speaks Spanish, it's such a common language.
Of course it's not easy at the beginning, you need to step out of your comfort zone, but come on, if you really want to learn Spanish, you gotta speak it right? So just go for it. It's just a question of motivation and mindset, I'm sure yo ucan do it!
Anyway, I hope I could help you a bit, good luck to find your French conversation partner!