Best Ways to Improve Spanish Skills?

<p>Do you have any recommendations of books, tapes, videos, whatever? I am particularly clueless about approaching this. My old language teacher has suggested I watch telenovelas, taking notes as I "study" the intricacies of a twisted romantic relationship. </p>

<p>The extent of my preparation materials include TeleMundo access, Swift's Gulliver's Travels in Spanish, outdated high school-level Spanish textbooks, and HBJ's Spanish Grammar, (a book from its own 'College Outline Series'). </p>

<p>I am particularly clueless about my approach and whether or not I will be prepared enough for the AP exam (this is largely self-study, if that was implied enough). </p>

<p>Any help is desired. Thanks in advance.</p>

<p>Get some prep books like Barron's and Arco and compile a list of vocab words that are most common. You may be able to find one by googling also. Do as many practice exams as you can. You will see the same questions popping up over and over again (if clauses, preposition use, passive voice) and study your weak areas. Also, it is important to practice speaking skills because there are two sections on this... one answering questions and one telling a story. My prep book came with a CD for this (I think its the Arco one, although it didn't come from Amazon until the day before the test). You can come up with some stock responses for any question and have a list of transition phrases in mind for the story. Each question is asked with a specific verb tense in mind and it is important to learn to listen for this.</p>

<p>when you go to college, spend a semester in spain and you will become more fluent in spanish than you did in all your high school preparation</p>

<p>Talk to yourself in Spanish. A lot. It is fun and somewhat addictive!</p>

<p>I'm getting scared; should I be?</p>

<p>Yeah, I would be scared too. But I'm only in Spanish 4 next year, so what do I know.</p>

<p>Anyways, one thing I enjoy doing is meeting and talking to spanish native speakers. It really helps. I'm not telling you to go up to strangers-but people that you know who are bilingual. Also try to get some spanish culture by going to parades, concerts-listen to the music, etc. Write a journal..in spanish?? As long as you know that your grammar isnt weak and you can look at a sentence and tell what grammar/conjugate of a verb its using-you will do fine. </p>

<p>other books to include:
501 Spanish Verbs
Spanish idioms book</p>

<p>I think the best way is to see Spanish tv or music on the radio</p>

<p>I agree with sarazlig...talk to yourself in spanish a lot. in the car or whatever. It will help you correct your own grammar mistakes and you will find that you know more vocab than you thought. It helps me a ton.</p>

<p>oh and listen to Juanes....good music and pretty easy to understand</p>

<p>you can get editions of your favorite magazines in spanish, I'm not sure if you are a girl, but if you are, the gossip magazines are like ten times more hilarious in spanish. I read through them with a dictionary and i wrote down EVERY word that i didn't recognize on a flashcard. flashcards are the most amazing things in the world because you can seriously work through them anywhere, including your boring classes or while waiting in line or something. When I did this, it raised my SATII score 90 points.</p>

<p>the way my ap spanish teacher taught us was to expose us to the language substanially
you have to listen to spoken spanish alot and read some spanish novels to increase ur vocab
the most important tool on the ap (from experience) is vocab</p>

<p>tv, magazines, music. All will help and are free or very cheap. Do not waste the money on tapes. If you do want tapes go to the library and they should have an enormous amount of them. I just got one from the library and loaed it into my ipod.</p>

<p>Watch soccer on spanish channels.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.studyspanish.com/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.studyspanish.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
oh and listen to Juanes

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That's right!</p>