Back to the polyglot thing (Kató Lomb)
I just wanted to say that I followed up on this polyglot phenom at link and am engrossed in the book. I'm almost unable to come up for air. This is a fabulous book written by a fabulous teacher and writer. The English is embarrassingly good. The techniques are very sensible.
For anybody who is looking for learning technique, this is a major work that shouldn't be missed. If you think learning lists of words out of context is the way to go, you really owe it to yourself to see what this woman has to say.
I think the key idea for me so far is the idea of keeping the vocabulary alive. It has to be experienced and committed to memory as a living, breathing thing that had specific meaning in a specific context. The experience of learning it has to be interesting!
Fun and interesting can only be done with books, as she argues. I think that is the nugget of advice that is, itself, alive.
6 Answers
I am always thinking of different techniques to help my learning. I can't do lists of vocabulary, verbs conjugations etc etc. I just don't remember them. They are just too abstract without context or content.
I like the word and picture of the day threads on this site. I think about what I want to say, then do my best taking what I already have stored in my head. I then fill in the gaps by looking in the dictionary and reading articles. Then of course when I receive the corrections, I find that things seem to make more sense to me.
This all needs repeating over and over, but I am finding that there are words\phrases in my head that I can call upon to construct some increasingly complex sentences. Thats fine with reading\writing - my next challenge is calling upon my spanish resources when actually speaking. Now that is a different ball game lol, but little by little, I am getting there 
In the Osaka Central Library near where I live there are a few hundred books in Spanish, of which a large number are translations from other languages. Among them are some Japanese manga which are easy to read and not uninteresting if you can accept that they were written for young girls. I read Tezuka Osamu's "La Princesa Caballero" last week. Manga often come in series of many volumes, so if you find one you like you can go on forever.
I just read the first hundred pages, and I think it has great value. One of the most popular questions that we see on this forum is some variation on "how to learn". I am just now starting to realize the value of reading, after several years of memorizing vocabulary and studying the rules of grammar.
When I want to get the most out of my limited study time, I read. Jumping into a pool of words is so much more rewarding than the steady drip of vocabulary lists. These days, I do all of my recreational reading in Spanish. I have to admit, though, that I haven't given up my grammar books and I'm not sure that I would want to.
Anyway, thank you for introducing me to such an interesting book. I will keep reading-- I only wish I could find it in Spanish!
I've been reading this book, also, since whoever it was originally posted the link a week or so ago. I only have time to read a chapter every day or two, but I like it a lot. I wish I had the time and money to go back to school. I'd definitely study something language related so I could be as good as Lomb is.
Yes, Polyglot is filled with ideas for successful language learning. The link (for which many thanks) was to the English translation from the Hungarian. Two comments:
Kato Lomb's suggestion to get a book and try to read and analyze the language is one that I have used myself for many years. For Spanish I chose a translation from Japanese (Murakami Haruki's Tokio blues). This may seem weird, but I live in Japan and at the library came across this book by a famous Japanese author. As with Polyglot, the translation seems to be excellent. Of course, my pace is slow, but I've worked through over a hundred pages in three weeks - and enjoyed it! I recommend this book.
The other thing is that I have an American friend whose Spanish is near-native. I've begun to exchange short (two to four lines on my wide Mac) notes with him in Spanish. Since they're short, it's not a burden on him or me, and as Kato Lomb asserts at one point, there's a feeling of exultation when you communicate (reading, writing, listening, speaking) in a language you didn't know a few months ago.
All the impressive polyglots I have met stress the same thing.
And even for myself, only after learning another language, did I comprehend just how contextual any language is.
And the contexts which take precedence and stress very to a significant degree from language to language (we sometimes think of it in terms of "culture").
Now ... if only I practiced a modicum of my "own" observation! 
