Morning Campers,

Decided to take it upon myself to inflict my appallingly poor language skills on another tongue. Id like to be able to eventually be fluent enough to be bale to hold full conversations rather than ask for directions.

Just wondering what the opinion of the stw on the best way to go about this. I have thought about evening classes or pc packages, such as rossetta stone. Im leaning more towards the software as it “should” be easier to fit it in around life, but am concerned that interaction within classes could be lost.

BTW – this would be the first additional language adventure apart from very basic school French

cheers

Michel Thomas CDs are good. Totally different (and IMO much better) way of learning than my school classes.

You need to interact with a human speaker. And the first time you try out your language skills ‘for real’ you’ll wonder why it’s not working…

Learning vocabulary/grammar from books/computers is a start but there’s no substitute for one-to-one conversation with a native speaker. Also, I found listening to a native language radio station helped.

Thanks for the info guys.

I am a bit concerned by the isolation, but some some of them offer voice lessons over the phone/tinternet

Depends on the language, some have the worlds supply of resources available so you can do a fair bit on your own before you need to actually talk to others. On the other hand some have almost nothing available so early contact with a native speaker is more important.

Agree that the Michael Thomas CDs are pretty good, as are the pimmsleur (sp?) series.

My wife and I are learning German, important because we live in Austria. I have lessons provided by work but my wife has gone for Rosetta Stone.

The course seem really good plus you have the online lessons with a German teacher and other students. My wife has been really impressed with the quality.

there is a two week residential course in nant gwetherin , all in welsh– you will be able to ask the way, but not in french……allez

My wife and I are learning German

I’m signing up for a beginner’s course in German at the Folk House in Bristol. We visit friends in Mannheim and I’m embarrassed at my total shitness at speaking it. It’s ages since I learned something new, but I find I need to know the rules behind something before launching into learning it. I accept that this is because that’s how I was taught at school but I can’t really change how I learn languages now. 😐 (I’ve tried).

Staying in the Schwarzwald this June with them on a farm. Looking forward to it now.

If as well as the lessons, you want to learn lots of vocabulary, this site is good for it:

http://www.memrise.com/welcome/

Watch DVD series in English with ‘Language’ subtitles
then swap .. watch with the new language with english subtitles.

meeting language swaps through gumtree can work out ok as well..

Evening classes ftw. I’ve tried books and software and a friend has tried the over the phone one2one thing. In the end if you really want to get into it you need to be in situations where you have to talk and also have people correcting what you do wrong.

The other stuff helps though. So if you use a book then try to find local groups that get together in the pub of an evening and try and chat

I am trying French right now using Hugo books and CD’s and evening classes

The Hugo books seem good as they teach you grammar rules along the way, rather than just basic phrases

A mixture:
– evening classes really make you learn and do the homework, plus once you’ve paid you’re not going to give up halfway through the term!
– Intercambio: if you’re in a city and not learning something obscure, you can probably find someone who’s a native speaker of said language who’d be happy to meet every week or so and chat in their language – the idea is you reciprocate by helping them with their English.
– foreign-languge films and podcsts, for your spare time when you really don’t want to have to ‘learn’
– and a Rosetta Stone/ Michel Thomas thing can be good too. The only thing is in some CDs Michel Thomas has some real dunces that he’s trying to work with, so it can be slow going.