Spanish was at a higher level than their English people would want to take the opportunity to practice or show off. Stick with it and answer back in Spanish as best you can. 3. Formal classes – many people disagree, but to me it’s still one of the best ways to learn the basics. Teaching is an art and being talented in a subject is a very different skill to being a good teacher. Your own experiences are likely to be shaped by the quality of the teacher you find. There are also some incredibly reasonably priced adult education courses around. I found that the structure and group-work involved in a structured learning environment was really helpful. Not to mention the tips and encouragement from other people learning who are about the same level as you. 4. Watch films in Spanish, with the (Spanish) subtitles on. It’s a good way to develop your listening comprehension. It also works watching films you’ve seen before – that way you already know what they’re going to say and These are words that have been proven to be useful and genuinely appearing in day-to-day life. Just the act of physically writing down the word will make it stick in the memory a little better. 14. On the subject of vocabulary, don’t ‘waste’ your time learning obscure words and phrases as I did when I started out. Some of these come back to me years later, so it may not be a total waste of time, but in the beginning you’re best off focusing on the (or ) most common words. Find a list and learn them. You’ll get plenty of bang for your learning buck. In the same way, learning a few stock phrases that you can use regularly (copy what others say!) will help you out a lot more than knowing the word for ‘coffin’. The point is that you don’t need a large vocabulary for general conversation and you can pick up the less common words later on. 15. Stick with it. If you put in the time and the effort, you will get there: Enjoy the journey! What are your tips for learning a newlanguage? What worked for you, and what didn’t?