I want to share a little bit about how I learn Spanish from the beginning until now; the moment I continue my study in Spain. And for sure, the lectures are fully in Spanish. All of my professors and classmates are Spanish native speakers. I can say that it's a very interesting journey to learn Spanish during my stay here, since every one has their own accent and dialect.

So I started to learn Spanish more seriously on February 2017. I already have huge interest in learning Spanish since I was studying in my first university. One day I bought a Spanish book for beginner, and it all began from there.

Actually, I don't learn Spanish only from one source. I used some additional tools which helped me so much during my process to learn Spanish. For instance, I installed some language applications and watched videos on Youtube.

I should remind you that learning new language in such old age (above twenty years old) is not easy. Once I learnt Japanese when I was in high school (because it was one of my subjects in school) for three years, but now all I can do is writing in hiragana and katakana, also reading some of them without recognizing the meaning. I didn't practice Japanese more after I graduated high school. What a loss, right?

At this moment I learn Spanish, to be honest I am still struggling to remember the tenses because they have 14 tenses (7 simple tenses and 7 compound tenses) that have different terms and use based on the time.

Books

I have several books to work on besides the books that I used during my Spanish course. I try to do the exercises everyday so I could understand better.

• Colorín Colorado is the first Spanish book that I bought years ago. It was written full in Spanish because the writer is from Spain. Fun fact: she was the one who translated my documents into Spanish when I proceed my visa application. It was a huge coincidence, because when I got her contact to translate my document, it reminded me about the book I had. When I asked her, she confirmed that she was the writer!
• Spanish Vocabulary also helps me A LOT to learn new vocabularies. The exercises are great, I have to translate from English to Spanish, then I have to write sentences in Spanish, also I have to read many passages that included in every chapter.
• 501 Spanish Verbs is a book that I use to enrich my knowledge of verbs in Spanish because learning verbs are extremely important. In summary, there are 3 main types of verbs in Spanish: -ar, -ir, -er, then depends on what tenses I use, the ending will be changed. I haven't mentioned the regular and irregular verbs, tho.
• Espanol Nivel Basicos helps me to learn tenses, new vocabulary, and to do listening comprehension because it included CD to listen to the narrator speaking in Spanish.
• Spanish Grammar. As it said on the cover, mainly it's about grammar but it also has brief explanation about tenses and verbs.
• Etapas 1. This is the nook that I got from my Spanish course in LBI UI for level A1.1. It has basic lessons for beginner (mainly it contains basic vocabularies), but trust me, it was the "foundation" for me to understand the basic Spanish.
• Aula 3: Book that I bought for my Spanish course in the CEALM, a language institute in my university. This book is for those who are already in the level B1.1.
• Collins Spanish-English Dictionary. This dictionary helps me find some words in Spanish-English and English-Spanish.

Video

I subscribe to a Youtube channel, the name is Butterfly Spanish. I'd say that I rarely subscribe to any Youtube channel. This one is the exception because it does help me to learn Spanish because she explains about nouns, tenses, verb, and vocabularies very well and very simple.

Applications

Learning language
Who doesn't know Duolingo? This famous application really helped me during my first time learning Spanish, especially to help me introducing to a lot of new vocabularies. Then I also used Memrise; the learning method on this application is kinda unique for me. They also input some videos of native speakers talking some sentences, so you can learn how they spell it.

Online Dictionary

I use spanishdict.com A LOT. Even when I am in class, I frequently use it because I really need to translate the words I never heard of before. I like this one better than Google Translate because they can recognize the words with different meaning based on the context. But I won't deny that Google translate helps me to translate some of larger sentences. I use both of them because sometimes one of them does right, sometimes not.

Listen to Podcasts

To be honest, I didn't do this one that much because I was concentrating more to add new vocabularies and tenses as many as I can into my brain. I kinda regret not to do this often because listening skill is undoubtedly important.

Speak with native speakers

This is actually one of the crucial things to improve your language skills; talking with native speakers. It will help you to practice your speaking and listening skills, also enrich your vocabularies! Well, I can meet native speakers everyday here, but how to handle this issue if you can't meet any Spanish native speakers?

Thanks to technology, you can use an application. I installed Tandem and I could find some native speakers there to talk to, so you can get used to speak/read/listen in Spanish better.

Take a Spanish course

I don't think this part is very crucial for some of you, but for me, this is actually influences my skills significantly, especially my first teacher was from Madrid; she's a native speaker and people from Madrid are known for their clarity on pronunciation. I can tell you that the people from northern Spain and southern Spain (especially Andalucía) have distinctive accent and dialect. You can read  my previous post about how people in Andalucía mostly "eat the letter".

If you are really serious to learn Spanish, I think by taking a course, it will help you to improve your skill (also if you think that learning only by yourself is not enough).

I took a Spanish course in LBI UI Salemba from April to June 2017. That time I took level A1.1, the basic course because I want to learn from the beginning. Remember, this part is not obligatory; you can take it if you really consider that taking a course is going to help you better to learn new language.

Then since my course ended on June, I started to learn Spanish by myself because I already had the basic; I did the exercises everyday from the books and applications. On September, I moved to Spain, I talked more in Spanish, and few days I just stayed in Jaén, I had to take a placement test for my Spanish course. I was extremely nervous because I only spent few times learning Spanish, plus I will have all my class in Spanish. Thankfully, after days talking in Spanish with my flatmates, I got placement in level B1.1. I think I wouldn't have made it if I didn't practice a lot before.

Now I am still in the process of learning Spanish, my class is extremely challenging because you know, language barrier is real and I have to keep up with the progress because my study here is only one year and I have to start working on my thesis this month.

You can learn new language from any devices or tools; now technology is your savior to learn new language; use them wisely and it will give you a lot of advantages. Happy learning!