"I am learning at the feet of the masters."

You raised some important points on which I would like to comment.  If you are an MT, some of this will already be familiar to you, since we all have gone through the process of acquiring advanced medical language skills.

My husband speaks 5 languages (Farsi (L), Armenian, Greek, German (L) and English (L),  and is literate (L) in 3.  We met in 1990 as pen pals, a hobby he had adopted to facilitate acquiring and refining his literacy in English.  From what he tells me and what I learned from this process, there seem to be certain distinct stages of learning and using another language.  

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  Formal classes or other types of instruction to learn basic vocabulary, phonetics, entymology, grammar/syntax, reading, writing and comprehension, both written and verbal. 

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  Practice, practice and practice some more.  Use it or lose it.  Typically, beyond the basics, the student will progress through the easiest to the most difficult skills in stages.  The first 4 basics (stage 1), followed by the next 2 (stage 2), then written/reading and verbal comprehension (stage 3). 

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  Verbal comprehension in and of itself is also a 2-stage process.  In that final stage, most often the student will understand the foreign language much more easily (and for a much longer period of time) when it is spoken to them or around them.  The most difficult stage of foreign language usage is the final stage of actually being able to produce coherent conversation with confidence. 

Most of us never really get beyond the classroom/instruction level.  It is a real challenge to find the time and the stage on which the remainder of the process can be played out.  Here are a few ideas on how to overcome that obstacle. 

·       Finding venues for Spanish acquisition is pretty easy.  Watch TV in that language.  Start out with children’s programs and advance according to your comfort level.

·       Rent movies.  The ones with subtitles are particularly helpful.

·       Listen to music and/or radio stations.

·       Read books.  Again, start with children’s and work your way up. 

·       Put yourself in environments where that language is being used.  Perhaps you could volunteer to tutor an ESL student who speaks your language of interest.  Church services, ethnic restaurants, public events, etc.  Speaking events, such as public political forums, where both languages may be spoken are particularly helpful. 

·       Find an on-line language partner.  See below. 

·       Make friends with someone who speaks that language. 

·       Find a pen pal. 

Here are a few resources: 

• ESL Idea Generator.  Great ideas on how to teach English as a second language.  Find access to a language partner and you and your partner could try some of these suggestions.  It is really fun to do…kind of like a game of charades.

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Houston-TeachingIdeas.html

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  Rosetta Stone Language Exchange Network.  Text and voice chat / language exchange partners

http://www.sharedtalk.com/index.aspx?SRC=GAds.SN.en.Language.Exchange&gclid=CIqy8JrcyZQCFSEragodImWSkw

• TT 4 You On-Line Language Exchange.  Voice chat forum / enhance conversation skills.  Handy translation query text box

http://www.tt4you.com/

Most importantly, keep is casual and fun.