HERE in Spain, high school students are encouraged to learn a second language to be competitive in the regional world of Europe and the far wider scope of the globe in general. Spain, being a country with very diverse ethnicities, has its own share of dialects such as Castilian, Catalan and Basque to name a few. The Moroccan-Spanish here are also able to speak Moroccan and French. In the inland city of Salamanca, there are quite a few people who speak American English while in the coastal Mediterranean cities as well as in such islands as Las Palmas and Tenerife in the Canary archipelago and Ibiza and Palma de Mallorca here close to home, there are a few people who can speak British English and understand some Dutch or German. Other than that, especially in cities such as Madrid and Barcelona and a few rural regions like Garabandal, only mainstream Spanish is understood by the majority of the population.

How to rectify this anomaly? There is one such very unconventional answer – Internet and cable television. During the 1960s when Francisco Franco brought progress to Spain, a nationalistic fervor swept the nation. Then, people still believed that the Spanish are a supreme race and they did not like to learn another language. But with the onset of globalization at the end of the millennium also thankfully came cable television. Even to this day where majority of the stations in a cable network are dedicated solely to Spanish sports such as the battle between Real Madrid and the team from Almeria for example, cable channels from the United States and Britain have already invaded our home so to speak. If you do not want to churn out the extra time or the extra amount for tuition to acquire English at a conventional language school, then do it at home at no extra cost. Just watch English language programs the whole free time that you have. In summer, you can do it the whole two months but during school days, you still can though during weekends.

I’m flicking channels as of the moment so you’ll know what to learn. If you have a fair command of the English language at school where it is compulsory, then switching English channels serves as complement to your English education in school. I’m watching Sogecable as I’m writing and the first channel that I click is Nickelodeon. Right now, they’re showing the video of Vanesssa Hudgens’s latest track, Come Back to Me. And while watching these English programs, why not log on to the Internet as well? Search for the lyric of Vanessa Hudgens’s Come Back to Me and try to understand what message the character in the song is trying to send. If you have done so already, go back to your television remote and switch to the next channel. According to my cable decoder, the next English station after Nickelodeon is Bloomberg. Bloomberg is a television station dedicated to economic analysis and this is a good station to watch if you are planning to take up a degree in economics in college.

Other ideas for language learning are to involve yourself in online communities. You should pick a hobby which interests you and so you are motivated to go to the site and interact with its users. An example could be a poker online forum a cookery chat room – it’s a fun and interesting way to learn a language, much more so than grammar books!