im planning on going to costa rica to tach english as an ESL teacher for 6 months to 1 year. I also really want to learn the spanish language to the point that I become fluent. what is the best way to become fluent in the spanish language?
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If you really want to speak fluent the best way is to live with a Costa Rica family, that way you live and breath Spanish almost 24/7. You will learn the accents, grammar, the slang etc etc. Depending on your learning skills, you should be able to start speaking “somewhat” fluent after 6-8 months.
If you are going as a ESL teacher the school should have and know families that would be more and willing to take you as a guest. However, expect to pay a few bucks (it is cheap to help them cover costs, like food)
Read the local newspapers. Not books, not the opinion pages, not even most magazines, just the news stories. You will quickly see that Spanish and ENglish have a lot in common. Get the U of CHicago English SPanish dictionary, not an idiotic electronic translator that is so appealing but inconvenient- everybody buys them, nobody uses them.
Avoid contact with English speakers which is now close to impossible in C.R.
Take a class in any subject you like that is given in Spanish. You may flunk the course but you will learn a lot of Spanish quickly. THere are lots of private schools teaching everything imaginable, hair cutting, car repair, electronics and air conditioning maintenance. Doesn’t really matter what you take but try to pick something you like.
Avoid taking any private language lessons, all the ones I’ve seen are rip-offs.
Watch television, again, especially the news.
If you drink, have a drink or two- it eases the inhibition of making an *** of yourself publicly, which is necessary for a few months as you start to babble in a foreign language.( I suppose I could have phrased that more gracefully.)
Good luck.
Take classes at the UCR! They have an excellent language course for foreigners.