Learning/retaining Spanish
 

I took Spanish for the past two years in school because I needed to in order to graduate. I hated it and didn't really want to be in the classes, but nevertheless I got good grades and tried decently hard because I didn't want it to mess up my GPA.

Anyway, I now have a two year background in Spanish and I've decided that I want to try and learn more/retain what I have in case it can help me later in life. Also, so that the roughly 15k I paid for all those classes doesn't go to waste.

How can I go about it? I don't really want to take any more Spanish classes, although I might take one or two.

Re: Learning/retaining Spanish
 

Take an extended vacation around South and Central America.

Re: Learning/retaining Spanish
 

find other people who speak spanish, talk to them in spanish

watch tv in spanish

you can buy those ghey tapes or CDs too but meh

Re: Learning/retaining Spanish
 

Get into Spanish cinema. There's so much good stuff coming out of there right now.

Re: Learning/retaining Spanish
 

Go live in a spanish speaking country for a while.
I spent about a year living in Venezuela and I can hold my own in conversations now. You can also make your online poker winnings go a lot farther if you move somewhere like Argentina that has a very weak currency.

Re: Learning/retaining Spanish
 

So many people learn another language, even starting from scratch, by watching t.v. Should work for you too.

Re: Learning/retaining Spanish
 

Living in a spanish speaking country is not going to happen for me at this point in my life.

I am very interested in watching spanish TV. We had to watch spanish telenovelas for the lab component of class, and I enjoyed them immensely. We watched La Jaula de Oro and La Usurpadora, if you have heard of those.

Recommend some spanish TV shows to watch! (Or should I just turn on Univision and hope for the best?)

Re: Learning/retaining Spanish
 

Mexico doesn't allow women on t.v. who don't have big t*ts. Just grab a sweatsock and pick whichever show is winning the boob wars that night.

Re: Learning/retaining Spanish
 

If you actually like the Spanish soaps then just watch them.

I don't understand spanish well enough to have any clue what's going on thus I think they're absolutely ridiculous. But in a funny sort of way.

My GF and her Mom are absolutely hooked on those silly things.

Re: Learning/retaining Spanish
 

Move to california, you hear more spanish then english here.