Friday, March 18, 2005

podcast #2, books on language acquisition

podcast #2, books on language acquisition

A review of books on second language acquisition
(link(2) to the podcast)

How to Learn Any Language
by Barry Farber

Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition
by Stephen D. Krashen

Why You Need a Foreign Language & How to Learn One
by Edward Trimnell

How to Learn a Foreign Language
by Graham Fuller

Principles of Language Learning & Teaching
by H. Douglas Brown

Please comment on this web site:

or email me at: learningspanish@gmail.com

Sunday, March 13, 2005

podcast #1, introduction to Trying to Learn Spanish

This is the link(1) to the first podcast.

Click on it to listen, or download and save.

to get automatically with your RSS downloader (such as iPodderX), set feed to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TryingToLearnSpanishPodcast


Please comment on this web site:

or email me at: learningspanish@gmail.com

Subject matter of this blog

To the readers and listeners of this blog:

This podcast is for adult students and learners of Spanish. I only specify "adult" here because I think the resources and methods of learning a language as an adult are different than for children. My experience is as an adult learner, and that's what I will address in this blog/podcast.

I have been interested for some time in "Trying to Learn Spanish". Note "trying" signifies a work in progress, a work certainly in it's early stages. By now, about three years in, I have amassed some experiences and resources that I will share here. I imagine that someone else can profit from some of the things I have tried, and also hope to attract some feedback and comment that will be of use to me and others on our path to learning Spanish.

I am setting up this, my first blog, without much of any technical experience in blogging or podcasting, so if you come across this and have something to offer me in the way of advice, I would welcome it.

This weblog and podcast are not about the actual mechanics of learning Spanish, but about the process, and especially the resources available. I will leave the "how" to the experts; but I do hope to provide some insight on where to find some of these experts, and to attract more comments on the same, which I will share with you.

Basically, I hope this will be the blog I wished I could find as I looked for and tried many different things in my ongoing attempt to learn Spanish. There is no one "right" way to do it, I hope together we can create a smorgasbord of possibilities that will help each of us continue to enjoy and make progress in "Trying to Learn Spanish".

I plan to eventually cover the following material, and more:

1. Books and articles on language learning, especially second language acquisition.
2. Tapes and CDs designed to teach you Spanish
3. Immersion language schools (I have attended 4 so far)
4. Language learning in schools here in the US (I have studied in a community college)
5. Speaking Spanish with local hispanohablantes
6. Volunteering with your Spanish
7. Grammar books and other books designed to teach you Spanish
8. Using podcast for learning Spanish
9. Using movies for learning Spanish
10. Using live radio for learning Spanish
11. Using websites for learning Spanish
12. Using Internet radio for learning Spanish
13. Using novels for learning Spanish
14. Using magazines and newspapers for learning Spanish

Please leave me your comments and feedback,
Rich

Please comment on this web site:
http://tryingtolearnspanish.blogspot.com/

or email me at: learningspanish@gmail.com