LandingPad Buenos Aires

This article sponsored by Bueno, entonces

1. Listen to music in Spanish

We’re sure this one has been said many times before, but the surefire way to have fun while learning Spanish is through music. Some artists that we recommend (and that you’ll actually have a chance of understanding) include: Mana, Julieta Venegas, Juanes, Manu Chao, Alejandro Sanz, Enrique Iglesias, Paulina Rubio, David Bisbal, Soda Estereo. Take it a step further by printing out the lyrics and see if you can follow along.

2. Watch Spanish-language movies

This is the best way you practice language comprehension. While Spanish-language commercials are hilarious, they are so short that it’s easy to get lost. If you’re lost in terms of what to watch, check out this site, that has a few of the top Spanish-language movies, ranked by US popularity, which means it’ll be more likely to be in your local rental spot, Netflix, etc.

3. Make Spanish your default language in your e-mail account

Pretty simple, and you will learn all sorts of Spanish Internet lingo in a short time, because you’re forced to navigate around. You can generally just go to your settings and change it–if you get lost, just change it back.

4. Read news in Spanish

You can either look at a North American news site in their Spanish version, or try to think more local. Maybe you want to travel to Lima – simply Google “Noticias Lima” and you’ll find a few pages that’ll lead you in the right direction. Subscribe to their RSS feed and you’ll get an update, and depending how often you want it, you can print out and read one full article a day/week. If you want to be bold, highlight the words you don’t understand and look them up later in a Spanish-English dictionary.

5. Set your phone’s language to Spanish

Like changing your e-mail language settings, it’ll be a bit confusing for the first day or two, but after that you’ll begin associating messages with ‘mensajes‘ and tools with ‘herramientos‘. Pretty cool.

Of course, this is all supplementary to actually enrolling in some sort of Spanish class. We recommend something that’ll keep your attention and that won’t require you to a) get up early, b) commute, or c) have your eyes glued to your computer for hours with no end in site. Bueno, entonces… Spanish lessons are developed for the iPod, iPhone, Smartphones, laptops, etc. so you can take it with you anywhere. A thirty minute session per day and learn to speak Spanish in five weeks!

This article sponsored by Bueno, entonces