Many people make New Year�s Resolutions because they are hoping to reach some of their goals that they feel are important in their lives. Here are five tips on making resolutions that may change your life.

New Year�s Resolutions � 5 Tips

My resolution is to learn to speak Spanish more fluently. I am planning to spend an hour per day studying the grammar and vocabulary. Since I tend to avoid speaking Spanish because I do not speak it �perfectly� (in fact far from it) I will also practice speaking the language with a person who speaks fluently for at least a half hour per day. I will post how I am doing once per week in the forum. Share your main resolutions here and we can all support each other.

Awesome Elizabeth, that has been one of my goals forever. At age 53, I would love to be able to practice with someone who does speak Spanish fluently. The challenge I have had since doing it in High School, is understanding an every day conversation and being able to respond. As you already know, a lot of our English words are similar to Spanish. LOL, also learned that not every Spanish speaking person speaks the same - and by that I mean, for example, Cuba that is beside my island (Jamaica, West Indies) uses a different version for some Spanish words compared to say someone from Spain.

Yes, I have to remember to check back to see how you are doing.

How are you going to find someone that is fluent in Spanish - I have not had much luck with this. It seems everyone wants to be paid with my "arm & leg"(lol). Don't have the extra cash right now, but would like to look into "barter" - I practice my Spanish and they practice the English...

Have an AWESOME day/night!

Hi Angela
Here is a list of some good sites for learning a language:

elearn Magazine 25 Free Resources for Learning a Language Online

Some of them are free just for a while to try them out and others have a lot of free information but usually most is for beginners rather than intermediate and advanced. You usually have to pay for a premium membership to work at the higher levels. I want to take a closer look at these sites to determine what they offer that I will find beneficial. It sounds as if we are looking for the same sort of help with Spanish so if I find something really interesting I will let you know. I see that there is a conversation exchange site listed so maybe you can try that out since I won't be needing that for a few months.

For listening and understanding I am going through the "Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish" course and find it to be really good for practicing my listening skills. Here is the link for that site:

Resource: Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish

This course has a workbook available to buy if you want it. I have not purchased it since I have other books with the grammar and vocabulary and much of that is available online at some of the above sites plus there are links to some of that in the Destinos lessons.
Hope that you will find some useful information in some of these sites.

I am fortunate that I have a sister who lives in Guatemala so right now I am in Guatemala. I haven't started working on my goal yet - it will be either tomorrow or the next day when I actually start working on it formally. I have been travelling and have to do a few other things before I can concentrate on my goal - i.e. more important goals at the moment. lol I am practicing a little as I get a chance though.

How exciting Elizabeth, this is awesome. You are in the right location to do all that you want to do.

Thanks for the info and I will check back to see how you are doing!

Hugs,
A

My distance learning resolution is to get straight As for all the courses this year. I am in my junior "year" for this winter term and then I become a senior for the rest of the classes. So that is very exciting to me. It seems like only a short while ago that I was researching which college to sign up with.

I suppose another resolution can be to be more gentle in the school forums. I tend to be quite enthusiastic because I'm taking these courses for the knowledge. I want to learn as much as possible; I.e. I'm not taking them "just to get the credit" and graduate. I get nothing from having a degree, I don't need it for my job. I'm taking the courses because I actively want to learn, so I tend to post a lot. And that seems to annoy / overwhelm some other students. So I want to strive to be more aware of that.

I love the stuff I have been learning. Every course has had life-applicable information in it.

Lisa, that is a great goal and one I am sure you will meet with your enthusiasm for learning.

As you say, I guess that enthusiasm can be overwhelming for others. I guess some people take courses for the degree or certificate and aren't really very interested in learning a lot in the courses. I have always wanted to learn - even when I took required courses for work etc. but I do recall that for many participants it was more a chance to get out of the office than something they really wanted to do.

Well we are almost 2 weeks into the new year and I haven't made much progress on my goal for becoming fluent in Spanish. I have done some studying of grammar and vocabulary but not on that regular basis yet. Also I have not begun my 1/2 hour of speaking. I do have a few reasons but mostly excuses so I had best get working on that goal so I am not setting the same goal for next year.

I think the good thing is that I have not given up on it. So many just forget about the goals they set if they have trouble getting started.

It is now four months since I made my New Year's Resolution. I am working on my grammar and vocabulary on a fairly regular basis but not an hour per day - it is more like 1/2 hour per day for about 5 days per week. Not quite as much as I would like but at least feel that I am learning and will get there eventually.

However the speaking part is not happening at all. I have thought about it and decided that it is purely because of circumstances - I simply have no one to talk to in Spanish on a regular basis in spite of the fact that I am in a Spanish speaking country. So it is not just an excuse and I have decided that I will try to find an online person to speak with when I am back in Canada. I cannot do that here since the internet service is not reliable enough.

So I haven't given up on my goal but am postponing it a bit at the present time.

Elizabeth,

Just the fact that you are going back to "revisit" your goals is EXCELLENT!!! You've already succeed!