Learning difficulties

[sulayman]

I've been taking Spanish for about 2 years at school and during the summer I went to Italy for about two months (to visit family) and learnt more Italian in those two months than the two years of Spanish classes.

Maybe it's my class, but it's just so... robotic. I feel more like I'm memorizing Spanish than actually learning it and this is bad because I have a final to do and I don't feel ready at all; I don't understand anything. Learning a language is about making mistakes when you speak, pronouncing things the wrong way. In those two months in Italy I made plenty of mistakes but I was understood nonetheless and improved on my mistakes. Yet in classes, when you do make mistakes, you are punished which I think is extremely wrong.

[oavani]

You probably had an easier time with Italian because you were immersed in the culture. It's much easier to pick up a language when you're surrounded by people who speak it constantly. I always had trouble learning a language in a classroom.

[petesede]

A lot of it is just based on you as an individual.

I am a bit the opposite.  I am a very structured learner.. I would much rather have a long list of words to memorize and have that basic vocabulary in place before I get immersed in conversation.

The problem for me is that so much of conversation, especially among friends, is basically slang or shortcuts and while you can learn a phrase that way like ´what´s up´  it dosn´t really translate well into branching off to learn other things based on that phrase.  For instance, if a foreigner learns ´what´s up´.. as a greeting to a friend, they aren´t going to know that ´up´ is ´up´..  But if they learn ´how are you today' .. those words are all transferable into future learning.

[True2marie]

Immersion is one method of learning a language. It's actually very effective because you get used to hearing the enunciation of words and situations in which they are used. What you need to do is befriend Italians and spend time with them. After a while, learning Italian will be easier.