smart phones

one other thing, i will probably purchase a smartphone and use a few of the apps out there in place of the little notebooks i'm keeping. for vocabulary, there are plenty of flashcard apps. looking forward to using them...

pronouns, conjugations, new software purchase

from e-learn spanish language website, i learned that you should learn pronouns first before verb conjugations because the pronoun forms (and nouns) determine how to conjugate verbs.

i purchased at costco (yes!) Instant Immersion. i researched this program before. on amazon, this program has nearly a 4-star rating with 133 reviews. not as robust or functional as rosetta stone, this program apparently is adequate for beginners. in addition, it was only about $29 with tax at costco. it's latin american spanish and mac and pc friendly.

keeping up with Spanish

something i found out that was quite interesting is that a ton of the major Spanish learning software programs teach Castillian Spanish; that is, Spain or European Spanish. the is that Castillian Spanish is considered formal, educated Spanish. odd huh? well, i guess "culture" (narrowly defined here) started in Europe!

so, i started making lists of nouns, verbs, pronouns, prepositions and common phrases. i got them all from rosetta stone (v2) and the website, www.elearnspanishlanguage.com. i really like the website. it's organized, simple and mainly text-driven with some audio wave files for pronunciation. this is in comparison to rosetta stone, which has both audio, text, input boxes to practice writing and pictures.

the first couple of weeks, i really just "listened" to Spanish on the radio and watched some Spanish TV programming to get a feel for the language. i'm now officially taking notes and practicing. as all the SLA theories say, it just takes time to learn a new language. i can't wait until i actually understand the Spanish radio and TV stations!

making a list of spanish phrases

i've started making a list of spanish phrases - commonly used, intro, hi, you're welcome stuff. i'll get into technical grammar in a couple/few months.

finding decent online spanish learning websites

i found a website that's for absolute spanish learning beginners. it's called E Learn Spanish Language. i particularly like it because it has a section titled "I want to Learn Spanish. Where Should I start?" it has some good, common sense tips. i was hoping for leads to other sites.

anyway, the creator has broken the beginner lesson to very easy, understandable and not overwhelming basic such as nouns, articles (definite, indefinite), article agreements and plural and singular form noun agreements, etc. also, the site has soundbites or wave files to help with pronunciation. helps me out!

online spanish learning sites

this is a tougher one b/c most good ones, you have to pay of course! the bbc language site deals with castillian spanish (i do like the site and format/design).

i'll keep hunting...

spanish learning software

alright, so there are so many options out there. i googled "spanish learning forums", "top 10 spanish learning software" and then went onto amazon for reviews. i then researched each product that came up consistently and finally, researched if they were mac compatible, able to download to ipods and most of all, if the spanish was latin american vs castillian (spain).

top spanish learning software list: fluenz, tell me more, rocket languages (coincidentally, in Los Angeles), rosetta stone, pimsleur and study spanish.

castillian spanish: fluenz, study spanish, tell me more (not mac friendly). automatically out for me.

latin american spanish: rocket languages, rosetta stone

mac version: rocket and rosetta both

mp3: transferable to ipods: rocket languages

price: rocket has downloadable price for $99 (cds 300)

method: rosetta stone is based on natural language acquisition where kids learn by images and sounds and matching them. rocket has media as well but also focuses on writing and finer points of grammar - from the reviews

what i'll purchase: rocket languages spanish (latin american)