Learn Spanish

I am now trying out the learning language site lingq.com where you can study several languages. It seems easy to use.

I am now trying out the learning language site lingq.com where you can study several languages. It seems easy to use.

There is handy to have Google translator in your browser. Hte url is http://www.google.com/translate_t an you can choose buttoms English-Spanish or Spanish-English

I have a blog where I document my learning path in Spanish.
http://www.samkoma.net/spanish

I have now become interested in reading comics is Spanish, that was a way I used as teenager to learn English. My only English reading material besides schoolbooks for years was then MAD magazine. The equalent of Mad magazine in Spain is El Jueves

The royal family in Spain has gone to court for a comics cover in El Jueves http://www.eljueves.es/

Here are some links about comics in Spain
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6438253.html

I am now in Austin, Texas USA. I came here for a conference in San Antonio and will go back to Iceland tomorrow. I listen to spanish radio while I am driving and I have bought some latin music CD that I will listen to when I came home. Now I realise that I understand most of the time some words in the songs. I feel that my Spanish is improving.

Look at my wikipage with lyrics and embedded video
http://salvor.wikispaces.com/Una+Rosa

Being very busy I have little time to practice my Spanish but I try to listen to Spanish music now and then. I look up the lyrics in Google and try to sing along. I do believe we use another part of the brain for singing and rythm than usually for language patterns connections.

Now I am trying out Wikispaces.com as a place to learn Spanish. I can embed videos and I can paste in the lyrics and I could (or a group of students) translate the difficult words in the lyrics.
Wikispaces has a wonderful and easy way to embed videos and wikis really have potencial in language teaching and learning.
Here is my first wikilesson when I learn to understand Spanish by listening to music.
Una Rosa ES Una Rosa (by Mecano)

Update
I made my wikispace at salvor.wikispaces.com private because of copyright concerns. Since all content is released under CC then I am not sure if I can post lyrics there. I can not take other persons copyrighted property and put it on a wikipage where content is released in creative commons.

I was in Boston in August at the Wikipedia conference and I bought some Spanish lessons on CD. Sadly the box is still not opened. I am determined in my goal of learning Spanish and I am hoarding all kinds of learning stuff and designing learning paths. But something is missing. I am not walking along these paths. Maybe it is because I really do not need to learn Spanish and there is lot of pressure bending my limited time in other directions.

Right now I am very interested in wikis, especially wikibooks and wikipedia. I write in the Icelandic wikipedia. Maybe wikis could be used for language learning.

Right now I am very interested in how you can use online comics in language learning. I do not mean comics for the students to read, I know that is a proven technique in all language learning – I would like to take this further – I am thinking about comics were the students make a comic strip or graphical story or maybe only a one picture strip.

I mean an environment were the student is not only a reader, s/he is also a contributor. I was looking into information about a discontinued comic chat by Microsoft, there is still interest in the project
Some links:
http://www.mermeliz.com/index.htm
http://www.chat.org.uk/downloads/mschat.htm
http://research.microsoft.com/vwg/projectsheets/comicchat.htm

I will try to link this new interest tho bubble tooltips
http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/001717.php

http://www.stripgenerator.com/http://pitchingwoo.net/mostlyrandom/cg/

http://www.thirdframestudios.com/adgame/stripgen/

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/sleep/starslp/missionz/comic.swf

http://www.tapestrycomics.com/

http://www.strippedbooks.com
http://www.chrisbishop.com/her/

It takes so much time to look words up in dictionary - I discovered this very cool Aja translator which translates while you type:

http://ajax.parish.ath.cx/translator/

I plan to use this while I learn Spanish.