learning new language

[shootingstar]

I am getting a little frustrated with Rosetta Stone. I am at the point where they are throwing in lots of stuff, but they don't explain it; I had enough previous Spanish to know it's a new tense or some grammar thing, but I can't get the pattern, because it feels incomplete. So, I go to my book, which helps, but I am having to slow down my pace of learning. I wish I had someone to practice with. My DH is much slower than me and although we are trying to speak together, I end up yelling at him a lot (I admit it).
I feel confident about traveling, "survival" Spanish, but I am half way done with Level 2 and not sure how much I am retaining through this method. I just bought Level 3, so that's my goal.

No Spanish-speaking shows in your area? At least it'll keep your ear reminded of the linguistic flows, sentence structure? Mind you, colloquial spoken language is different from formal verbal language learning.

I do have a role model with my own family on 2nd language learning: my father. He became fluent in English after considerable hard work of self-teaching as an adult. As a child I do remember big huge tape cassette reels, where he heard and taped himself to practice. He didn't have much time to attend ESL classes since his job had long hrs. and his big family was young.

He reads newspapers like the Globe and Mail..which is the Washington Post literacy equivalent.
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Papaver, have to say that the Chinese, German language learning swap didn't happen with us. Probably because we aren't motivated to learn and also each of us have ruined mother tongues by now. However he knows way more German than I have retained my Chinese..it's easy to test this with playing word games with English as reference point.

His German is getting a bit rusty since his mother died. But shouldn't take much if he were to go to Germany again. What I have learned from him, has been more cultural in terms of behaviours, attitudes, food , regional differences. Just hearing German got me more accustomed when I worked for an international, but German-based engineering firm where there were alot of German ex-pats speaking German often/nearly daily.

[Crankin]

I can only catch words and occasional sentences when I try to watch Spanish TV. They just are speaking so fast, it magnifies my feelings of stupidity. There are also a lot of Latin American colloquial expressions, which I don't understand (but can sometimes figure out). I am also sorry I bought the Spain version of the Rosetta Stone Spanish and not the Latin American one. I believe most of the Spanish I learned in school, especially in Miami, was strictly the Latin American version, so many of the words are different. My thought was that since we are going to Spain, the Spain version would be the best, but it's probably not going to be the most useful in terms of using the Spanish on the job.
Of course, right now, I would probably send someone into a deep depression if I tried to do a therapy session in Spanish!
Really, I am in awe of anyone who is bilingual (or trilingual). I wish this country had a different attitude toward languages, so we learned 2 of them at an early age.