improve my french & spanish

The most exciting thing happened yesterday: I was reading a book in Spanish. It’s an architecture book about Gaudi, written in Spanish with a lot of pictures. I was amazed at how much I could read out loud and comprehend.
Wow.
This means that by keeping up some learning activity on a subject, even if it’s very low intensity, almost imperceptible; that by working on something so gently and easily you learn it.
Life is beautiful. What a discovery!

I feel like such a star. This weekend I studied Living Language Conversational Spanish (by Irwin Stern.) Bought the 1985 book ten years ago in a set with a dictionary and tapes. This weekend, I listened to all the tapes (I converted them to mp3 so they’re on my laptop) while rapidly going through the whole book. Then I studied the 60+ page grammar summary at the end. Amazing book, and amazing use of my time.
The parts I don’t have a firm grasp of:
- pronouns (as direct/indirect objects, or in reflexive construction) but in many cases I could just use a noun – it’d be long but it’d be correct.
- verbs, of course, conjugating in many funny tenses and subjunctives.
But ooh la la, cool language and program of study. My Spanish is much better already.

Meet and Marry Rafael Nadal.

It’s a part of a nice old set with a little dictionary b/w English and Spanish, some tapes that I’ve copied onto my computer, and a little accompanying book which I’ve been studying. Surprisingly, I already know a lot of the things in the book even though I haven’t formally studied any Spanish.
When I learn basic grammar from this book – pronouns, verbs and usage – my Spanish will improve greatly for sure.

because many world cup games were shown only on spanish channels on tv. it’s nice to hear the language. and tv is a fun and easy way to learn.