I don’t know about online, but the best language learning system is to date someone who speaks that language, and not a word of English.
Are you married? Find a hot Latina and learn Spanish OnHer.
Phone apps work best. Duolingo is free and has a lot of languages.
I would suggest looking into Spanish music, too. It could be very useful, especially if you sing along.
We had a French person working with us whose English was very, very good. He said that he was in a French choir which sang American songs.
My local library offers Rosetta Stone online for free. All you need is a library card and you can access it from home. Mixed feeling on the software, started to learn Russian using it, but I do better when I’m with people who speak it.
Bookmarking
I have tried in class learning and intensive learning (several hours a day). Intensive was far better. Some of the suggestions here are good. I did learn a lot from a one on one vacation trip where my partner spoke only spanish. This will work best after you have learned how to speak about things. What is that? How does it work? What is it for? How do you spell that, how do you say?
Finally, the advanced subjunctive mood is very important and not usually taught until later in a course. (Thi is where you use phrases like I would like to see, or To me, this seems pleasant.
Buena suerte
Where, SoCal, S. Texas?
My high school son was an exchange student to Spain for a year. He had 2 years of Spanish under his belt. He was placed in a home (right on a Med beach!) with a family who had no English. In his school there, the only English speaker was one teacher. It took him about 3 months of this total immersion before he could understand and speak half decently. By the end of the year, he was fluent. If you really want to learn Spanish, total immersion is the way to go.
Watch some Spanish cable or Mexican soap operas with English closed captioning. This will give you excelent phonetics, the rhythm of the language, some intuitive sentence structure, and a good working vocabulary. While you’ll still need an academic grounding in grammar, you can get that from a book.
Moving to China helped me learn Chinese
Duolingo is free and worth looking into. Download it to your smart phone and have it with you wherever you go.
Spanish language YouTube videos are helpfulas well.
Look for the movies with English subtitles.
Back when I was in college (many years ago),the conservative history professor suggested that we learn Russian while it was still an elective.
I guess now it would be Chinese.
I found success using Duolingo along with some work with a native speaker very successful to get basic use of the language. Important one read the discuss sections if an item is issued because explanations taught me a lot!
Buena suerte!
Duolingo is free.
When you get there, avoid english speakers and english language press as much as possible. Watch soap operas. Talk to people as much as you are able. Expect it to take awhile to kick in, you are in this for the long haul, so no need to be in a big hurry. Language ties itself to events, so as you live out the daily events of your life language will connect and start to fill in.
Once you finish your Duolingo course, start reading books. Read the New Testament in Spanish. Read novels. Read the newspaper. At first, don’t stop to look up the words you don’t know, they are too many, and you’ll figure most of them out by context. But read and talk to people. And avoid english speakers as much as you can until you start to feel like you’ve got it.
Try this one out. This gent seems to have a gift for languages, and teaching them. I’m about to start on the Mexican Spanish lessons.
Do not fall for the marketing of Rosetta Stone and similar techniques. Adults do NOT learn language like kids do. Period. Rote memorization of phrases doesn’t teach you the language. It gives the illusion you are learning the language.
You learn language by learning the grammar + adding vocabulary + repetition, until you train your brain to process in the new language.
That is why it is hard. PM me and I’ll tell you what to get.
Your best dictionary is a long-haired dictionary, but you are probably already married.
My Vietnamese friend said she learned English by listening to country music.
Peruse later.
Bump for reading later.