I think you need to use several resources.
An adult education class would help
You need a good verb book, "501 Spanish Verbs" is a good one.
I make flashcards & study when I do my morning walk. Spanish on one side, English on the other.
Play CD's in your car. You can check out most anything before you buy it at Amazon.com, read the reviews from others.
Watch Spanish TV, I turn on the subtitles. Even though they are in Spanish, I find I can understand better reading than listening. Maybe someday I'll be able to understand what they say. At least you get the manner of speaking.
Check the resources from this site, just click on lessons, there are many.
Don't get discouraged, it's not easy. When I start to get down on myself, I try to think of how much more I know now than when I started.. Some people are just good at learning languages, others, like me, aren't. I'm just determined.

There is a book
Word by Word English/Spanish
Diccionario Ilustrado de Inglés by
Steven J Molinsky, Bill Bliss & Herlinda Charpentier Saitz

I call it a pictionary. It illustrates everyday events, items & gives the meaning in English & Spanish. It wasn't very expensive. I got it at Amazon.com. Check it out ISBN 0-13-125865-6
Use the ISBN, there are several editions.

I was just thinking, 3 hours, I've been at it for almost 3 years. Even though my vocabulary is pretty good, I have a problem with conversation, & that is always having to translate. I really think you are asking too much of yourself. Relax, learn what you can, hopefully you have a better memory than I do. It will come, be patient, it takes TIME & dedication. My class keeps me going, the teacher is fun, the class diversified, & we laugh at our mistakes, which are many. When I make a serious mistake, the way it should be, tends to stick..

I agree that 3 hours isn't very long to expect to learn a new language. I"ve been "learning" on and off for 6 years, and I still can't listen to Spanish and understand most of what's being said. I think you'll do well to use flash cards, or to make post its around the house to learn household items, we did that in my first year of Spanish. I also think a real class is a good idea. Several universities have classes online that you can take. I'm currently taking a Spanish class online through Penn State, and it's very educational. There's even a program where we can get together in a chat room type setting and all talk to each other. The good thing about Spanish is that all the letters sound the same in every word, so once you understand how to make the sounds, you can read almost anything. Also, once you understand the basics of conjugating verbs, you can conjugate almost anything, with a few exceptions. Good luck!
Also, you know, for almost any product you will purchase, you're going to find postings on the Internet about how much that product sucks.

i agree with ricardo. i learnt spanish via linguaphone. i spent half an hour every night for 9 months, many times listening to the same record over and over again. even after that length of time, i still only knew the basics. in my opinion, the only true way to become fluent, is to immerse yourself, ie live or work in the country whose language you want to learn. as this is not possible for 99.9% of people learning another language, you just have to keep trying. reading spanish books, listening to spanish channels on the tele. the books i used to prefer were parallel text ones, spanish on the left page and english on the right. this saved a lot of time hunting through a dictionary. ricardo is also right since after learning spanish i also speak decect french and am at the moment learning portuguese. it just depends on how badly you want it and to bear in mind that it will NEVER be easy. Querer es poder (where there's a will there's a way).

ps: ricardo, why do you want to go to the river with me.

Hey, don't get down on learning Spanish. I've never applied myself to the CD courses to know if they help or not, but there are plenty of other resources to help you gain a level of competency in Spanish.

Thanks. I looked at some of the resources here - they are pretty good !! I will be using.

I"ve been "learning" on and off for 6 years, and I still can't listen to Spanish and understand most of what's being said

That is depressing ! How do you have so much paitence.

I am sending my son to Costa Rica for two weeks in the summer to a teen camp - with 3 hours a day of Spanish. I think that will help him on.

I guess I may be underestimating how much I actually understand. I can read and write and speak fairly well, but the way that native Spanish speaking people speak is just different than the way that we do. We have pauses between each word, but in Spanish it all flows together, it's very difficult to pick up. I just completed an assignment about travel and it was this video of people in an airport talking about how much they travelled and where they went and why they travelled, and we had to take a quiz afterwards. Luckily, there were subtitles of what they were saying written in Spanish, otherwise I don't think I would have understood.
I think that your son going to Costa Rica will really help him, though. When I was in high school, my best friend went to Costa Rica for the summer on an exchange student program, and she learned so much Spanish. Having to speak and listen to it everyday really makes you have to learn. One night while she was there, though, she said she woke up and there was a giant bug on her face, so I'll probably not go there.

I don't know how old your son is, but young people tend to absorb a language much better than most of us adults & the younger the better. He will be able to teach you. Try to say everyday things in Spanish. My cats are becoming bilingual. I make my grocery list out in Spanish, of course sometimes I come home with the wrong thing, lima beans instead of limes. And I think the idea of labeling household items items is great. The only thing, all these suggestions, while being very good, don't help so much with conversation. That's why I think you need a class. I go once a week, which really isn't enough.

My cats are becoming bilingual

:} LOL

You might appreciate this

"Mi gato es bilingüe. Si le digo "Miso ven aquí" me ignora, y si le digo "come here" me ignora igual.

As a fluent speaker of 2 languages, Spanish and English, and an average speaker of French and bad speaker of Italian let me clarify some things.

3 hours is not enough study to learn the basics of any language let alone become fluent. I have spent more than that on my Italian and it is dreadful!
Fluency comes with practice preferably with native speakers in that language or at least very fluent speakers of the language. (ordering in a restaurant doesn't count unless you can have a conversation. Trust me I do that in italian all the time!

The most diffcult is your first foreign language. YOu need to establish new pathways in your brain and these do not come easily. The younger you are the easier they are to establish. Once you have learned a second language the third, fourth and so on are a lot easier but they all require practice!

People that learn from CDs often expect that once they have gone through the CDs they'll speak the new language. This is impossible. They may have gained the knowledge but they need practice to parse the language instinctively, ie to split what you hear into the component words.

People that have learned it through a second language speaker, ie not a native speaker, often find they have a problem speaking to a native speaker. Native speakers, in any language, speak faster and run their words together which makes parsing difficult.
They also often swallow sounds as their listeners are used to it.
I mean they will say 'sallrite instead of 'it is all right.'

Similarly in Spanish they may say maomeno instead of 'mas o menos'. This of course just make parsing more difficult as you must do it on the fly as you listen to someone.
So I might say 'Cuandoqueresquevayamosalrio'' and it is your job to split it into the actual words.

So don't get discouraged and make sure you can find ways of practising what you learn with another person.

Take care.
R

Eddy,

I like your ps.

When you asked the question I was reminded of:

Y que me la llevé al rio
creyendo que era mozuela
pero tenía marido

(part of a poem I read many years ago.
I think by Antonio Machado but I could be corrected on this one.)

and then I realized that Eddy could be male or female.
So enjoy anyway!

ps why did you want to know?
Couldn't you wait 'til I got you there to find out?

R

Ricardo,
I would like to know at what point in your language learning process, you are able to turn off the translating in your head.
It seems I always have to frame my sentences in my head before saying them. Conjugate the verb, stick that pronoun here & this one there, etc, etc., so as you see, it takes me awhile to speak, making for very sloooooow conversation.

Do you find that your brain just changes channels from one language to another? And why is your Italian so bad, accent, vocabulary or what? I know some people have the gift for learning a language, just wish I was one of them.

I did go to one class, where she taught only in Spanish, but I still found a way.

I am not sure about when your brain switches over.
I was lucky, i learned English as a small toddler so I never translated in my head. When I learned French, it was natural to think in French. I have met people that after 30 years speaking English in Australia, still translate from their original native non-English lanaguage...
Maybe it's a thing you do consciously and jump into the void and hope and after a while it becomes second nature.

As to my Italian... I never studied it properly so my grammar is woeful. Accent and vocabulary is not so much a problem as I have two other romance languages, Spanish and French, and I even studied Latin at high school.
But I picked up Italian here and there and have never spent any time seriously trying to get it right ( a low priority as I mostly use it in Italian restaurants!). If I did it, would improve heaps in no time. I got the hand mpovements down pat!

As to the brain channels...
I am not sure. When I speak in English i often get words in Spoanish or French come to mind while I am still thinking in English. So if it is a channel the signals get confused at times.
What I have noticed is that if I use Spanish words while I am speaking English I will pronounce them with an English accent.
Then again I always count in Spanish, as my wife once told me, without being aware of it. I can easily count or do maths in English but I must make a conscious effort to do it. If I don't think about it I will naturally revert to Spanish.

Be aware that I not only learned Engl;ish before I went to school but I also followed a bilingual education. I went to English school in the morning and Spanish school in the afternoon studying often the same subjects in both languages. My parents spoke both languages and often spoke to me in either of them. So I don't know why the counting in Spanish is so strong.

As to your problem, I would suggest you take a plunge and try and think in Spanish. Do it consciuously at first and see if it becomes unconscious with time. don't worry about getting it right all the time. Just speak it. Remember that the four stages of learning are:
1. Unconscious ingnorance (you don't know what you don't know.)
2.Conscious ignorance (you know you don't know)
3. Conscious knowing (it takes an effort to use the skill)
4. Unconscious knowing (you use your skill and you are not aware of it.)

think of learning to ride a bicycle or driving a car for the four stages to become clear.

Hope this helps.
R