Starting over again with Spanish

This post is modified from a ‘learning log’ I wrote in December over at the forum, How to Learn any Language.

Back in November I started over with learning Spanish. I have done the equivalent of 1st semester Spanish 3 or 4 times before being distracted by other things and laying it aside.

So once again I start up Spanish. Here are some of the resources I am using:

Prado’s ‘Practical Spanish Grammar‘ - I had completed up through lesson 6 before ‘restarting’, so I reviewed that material and am going through lesson 7 now. All the vocabulary, grammar rules, and exercises from lessons 1-6 were already in SuperMemo. I would like to complete a chapter a week in this book. It takes some time to transcribe all the vocabulary and exercises into SuperMemo plus turn the grammar rules into questions, but that in itself is a good learning tool.

Platiquemos FSI - I had purchased the standard FSI course 3 or so years ago - but the phonetic alphabet that is used (rather than just plain Spanish) made it too difficult for me to get far enough. After reading this forum I decided to buy Platiquemos. I have gone through units 1 and 2 and all the vocabulary is in SuperMemo. I have been disappointed about the typos I have run across already, but they seem to be par for the course, since even ‘Practical Spanish Grammar’ has it’s share. It was very difficult to follow the speakers as they read the columns of Spanish/English but not in the order they are printed in the book. I hope to progress through a lesson a week in this program too. I am not sure if this is practical yet since I am still in the ‘intro’ units.

Learn in Your Car Spanish - I am using this as a supplemental vocabulary builder and pronunciation guide. It’s advantage is that I can use it while driving in my car. I am also transcribing the vocabulary into SuperMemo so that I can learn the correct spelling to along with the audio learning. I hope to enter 2 or 3 ‘lessons’ each week into Supermemo.

SuperMemo for the Palm. I use this program as my flash card drill. I enter not just vocabulary but also grammar rules, translation exercises, multiple choice questions, etc. All vocabulary and translation work is put in 2 times - once for English to Spanish and once for Spanish to English drill. When I restarted I had 2800 items in the database. I am now up to 3250. It uses a repetition spacing algorithm that drills you on the stuff you don’t know. It took quite a while to clear the ‘items needing work’. It still brings up 200+ cards a day to review but I am able to add new stuff now and still get through all the cards in a day.

I have a number of other resources I will use but don’t have ’scheduled’. I like to go to the library and pull 3 or so kids books from the Spanish section and read them during lunch. I have 2 easy Spanish readers. I like listening to the Spanish radio stations even though 90% of the vocabulary is beyond me now.