I\’ve taught myself two languages in the past 4 years, Spanish and Japanese, and the most useful tool that I\’ve found for getting fluent, out of the literally hundreds that I\’ve tried, are language exchanges. The reason for this is that they allow you to find hundreds of native speakers who will gladly, for free, teach and practice with you their native language, whether it\’s Spanish or whatever else (Spanish is the easiest one to find people to practice with).

The most effective single technique to get to fluency in a language that you\’re learning is actually talking with native speakers of that language, you have to do that, the more and sooner, the better. Language exchanges allow you to do this for free, from home, in your spare time whenever you want, and to whatever extent you want (if you want to spend 4 hours every day talking with native speakers, you can). This is now possible thanks to high-speed internet connections that most people have and free services like Skype that allow you to talk to anyone else on the planet in real-time (just like a phone call) for free if you both have Skype accounts.

How to learn Spanish through language exchanges

1. Get a free Skype account and download the software (just go to skype.com and follow the instructions).

2. You\’ll need a microphone to talk to and speakers or headphones to be able to hear the other person. Many computers these days, especially laptops, come with microphones built in that you can use as a sort of speaker phone, so odds are you won\’t even have to buy any hardware to do this. If you don\’t have a microphone you can just go buy a phone-operator-style headset for $10 or so, any store that sells electronics or computer stuff will have them, in fact there are ones specifically made to work with Skype, but any one will do.

3. Get an account on a language exchange site or two, there are dozens of them out there. If you want to sign up on multiple sites to give yourself the best chance of finding the most people to talk to, just google \”language exchange\”, if you\’d just like to sign up on the best one to start with, then my personal favorite that I recommend is \”The Mixxer\” which you can find at language-exchanges.org.

4. Use the site\’s search function to find native Spanish speakers to talk to, you\’ll get pages and pages of results.

5. Send a message to a dozen or so asking them if they\’d like to talk sometime, nearly everyone will have Skype accounts. In fact, some sites allow you to enter your Skype information so that people can just click the \”Skype\” button on your profile to call you right then and there!

6. You should hear back from maybe half the people you messaged over the next few days, respond with a time that you would be free to talk to them (if they haven\’t already suggested one) and set it up.

7. Talk! You\’ll be fluent in no time. I found that once I started spending 30-60 minutes a day talking with native speakers, my abilities in Spanish increased by 3-5 times in just a single month, it made a HUGE difference.

Author Bio: If you can\’t speak Spanish at all and think you\’re not ready to talk to native speakers yet… I understand how you feel: you want to get to the point where you\’re talking with natives as soon as possible, and the system that I personally recommend for this (which can get you there in about 2 months) is learning spanish like crazy that uses native speakers and a brilliant review system.

Category: Education
Keywords: spanish,learn spanish,language exchange,how to learn spanish,teach yourself spanish,foreign language