[zpr]

This is great advice. Thanks for the anecdotes.

I'm a native English/Russian speaker who took a few Spanish courses in high school and college, and recently decided it would be a waste if I didn't finally learn to speak it fluently, at least like a child. In some sense, I suppose I already do. I can read many things and spoken slowly enough can understand partially -- but there is some mental block, mostly in the smaller, connecting words and other "minor" details that are actually major and completely central to the language. So I drill duolingo from time to time but it seems like mostly a waste of time since I know a majority of the words, and the ones I don't know such as "curtain" aren't critical for me. I always had the idea to visit Spain for several months to force myself to adapt to the language but that's been impractical thus far. I knew reading would be good too and your story of learning Japanese is inspiring, so I think I will find some children's books or Mexican menus. Thank you

[barry-cotter]

I highly recommend LibriVox audiobooks for listening comprehension. My German had deteriorated greatly from when I was living in Germany and I decided I wanted it back so I listened to Anna Karenina in English and German, chapter by chapter. Wonderful book, beautifully read in English and in German. LibriVox has Don Quijote in English and Spanish though I can’t speak to the quality of the reading.

And LibriVox is free.

[mikekchar]

Oh wow! I didn't know about this. And there are 126 Japanese books there. This is like gold! Japanese audio books are basically non-existent. Thanks!