I live in Caracas, Venezuela, and I speak English all day long. Sounds strange, right? I live in a country where people speak Spanish, but I speak English all day. Well, it's my job as an English teacher, and I don't mind doing it. The only problem is that after three months here, I'm still not very good at Spanish, and that's probably being kind. I finally got a tutor, and that seems to be helping. Before I did that, though, I tried to learn Spanish on the Internet. Yes, I was that girl taking notes in her little notebook at the internet cafe. People around me, who I'm sure all spoke Spanish, would take a quick look at my computer screen or notebook and then give me strange looks. I guess I didn't get the message that it's a bit unusual to study Spanish in an internet cafe in a Spanish-speaking country.
When I decided to learn Spanish on the Internet, I did a search and found thousands of sites, most of which were useless. But after a frustrating afternoon of trying to figure out which sites were actually helpful, I found one that seems to know what it's talking about and gives a lot of free information. LearnSpanish.com has helped out a lot. Even though its main goal is to sell you something, the free information is very thorough and easy to understand. There are a lot of very good examples that are well explained, and at the end of each lesson, you can take a free quiz to see how much you've learned.
There are a lot of sites like this one, and I'm sure that some of them are just as good and useful. Most, though, will want to sell you something, probably a home study kit, and the information on the site is just there to help you enough to get you to buy the kit.
