For three years I tried to learn Spanish without any real degree of success.  Okay, I learned the basics, I could speak a few words, order dinner in a restaurant in espanol, but nothing of any consequence seemed to stick. I forgot what I learned the minute I learned it.

I was struggling with the process like a high school student who hates school.  I hated the entire process and actually grew to dread trying to learn more. 

Then I hit on a system of learning a language almost by accident; and the system worked so well I am now trying it with other languages.  The essence of the system is nothing super-complicated, it is in fact quite obvious, but the fact is that most of us ignore the obvious and prefer to fight reality and butt our heads up against the difficult. 

How I Discovered The Obvious And Learned A Language

I was talking with a friend, a native English speaker who spoke perfect Spanish, and decided to ask him how he had learned Spanish so well.  I of course suspected that he had some natural gift for languages, or if not that, then perhaps he had some sort of secret method.

What he told me gave me the key to learning languages.  He told me that he got a English-Spanish dictionary and read it from cover to cover, when he was done he could speak Spanish.  That is sort of like reading a phone book, and sounds like less fun; but there was the key.

I will state the obvious: "To learn a language you have to learn it."  To do that you need to attack it from all sides in segments.  For some reason the human brain learns best in 20 or 40 minute segments.  What I had been doing was listening to CD's trying to cram the language into my brain in segments I couldn't digest.

The Big Secret That Works

Here is what I did, and it worked.  I scheduled a series of comfortable segments, none of which annoyed me; and in each segment I did something totally different then what I was doing in the previous segment.  In one I would listen to either the Rosetta Stone language program, or the Pimsleur program.  The Pimsleur I listened to in my car, the Rosetta Stone, because it relies on pictures I used at home or in the office.  

The segments

But I went beyond just using the language programs, and that is the key to making the CD programs effective.  I spaced the segments throughout my day, when it was comfortable and non-pressured to do so. In the morning when I got up and was drinking my first cup of coffee I would read a magazine in espanol.  My favorite being Américas Magazine published by OAS, the Organization of American States.  It is a magazine that holds my interest, and yes, I kept a dictionary and a Spanish - English electronic text translator next to me. Capiche?

Okay, This Is Enjoyable

The very day I started doing this I said, okay, this is enjoyable, this is something I want to do and it isn't disrupting my day.  I was doing what I wanted to do, not cramming indigestible chunks of language into my brain.  On the way to work I listened to the Pimsleur program in the car. The Pimsleur is a conversation type program, where you are 'virtually' speaking with a person in a conversational mode. It is very effective.  During the day I would take twenty minutes with the Rosetta Stone on my lunch break, Rosetta Stone is a very good program, but one that you cannot listen to in a car.  In the evenings I always watched a movie in espanol, at first usually with English sub-titles, eventually without sub-titles. I subscribed to four magazines published in espanol, always a magazine that I was interested in reading.  National Geographic en Espanol holds my attention, and there are several others. Magazines I would read anyway, so this way I was doing what I wanted to be doing, reading what I wanted to read, and all in a language I wanted to learn; which is exactly what I ended up doing.  Capiche?

To this regiment I began to add other segments. Flash cards.  Fun for a few minutes, but not for an hour; and I always used the flash cards for words I was having trouble with. They also have flash cards for parts of speech.  I looked for everything that would be fun to do, and I surrounded myself with everything in espanol that I knew would hold my interest; travel books, movies, cookbooks, music, you get the picture. Always on subjects that interested me, because it was the pleasure that held my interest.  Of course I learned Spanish in record time, because I was doing what I wanted to do and what I would have been doing anyway, but I was doing it all in espanol. Capiche?

Culture + Pleasure + Maintained Interest = Speaking Another Language Quickly

Yes, you can learn a foreign language... maybe.  If you want to learn a foreign language you can learn it easily by doing exactly what I did, and am still doing. You will find yourself adding your own sequences as you go along, finding things that interest you and which you really want to pursue, and as you do so you begin learning a foreign language at an amazing rate of speed. Capiche?

Immerse yourself in what is pleasurable, and learning is a piece of cake.  The tools I used are on the following page.  I have them for a number a languages including Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, along with some of the tools I used in the process.

Using both sides of your brain

One further note, there is a book or two that I read that really helped, based on memory techniques that increase retention and aid the process of memorizing what you learn so that it stays with you.  I will recommend three books that helped me do exactly that.  The first is "Use Both Sides of Your Brain" by Tony Buzan, the second is "Lateral Thinking" by Edward De Bono, and the third is Harry Lorayne's memory book. I have read dozens of books on learning, memory and retention.  These three worked.  

Get with it!

If you want to learn a foreign language, what I did, you can do.  It works because it is pleasurable. It is segments added to your life, like sound bites, the composite of which as a whole exceeds the sum of their disparate parts.  I didn't struggle, I learned a foreign language the way it should be learned, by living it, not by studying it... and I had a blast doing it.

The tools I used are on the following page.

One further note: Yes, I do occasionally read through a few page of a Spanish-English dictionary.  But not from beginning to end - - I do it in segments.  Capiche?