Is this okay for learning a language? | Specific language questions | Forum

Hello, happycheeks93. I'm sorry this post hasn't generated a lot of attention so far but I can tell you what my experience is. I started seriously working on Spanish near the end of summer 2010 so it's been a while for me to remember everything I tried back then, what worked and what didn't, but here are a few things I recall:

- I used flash cards too. Buy a set of index cards on a spiral ring that you can flip over. Start an entry on a card, write down words you don't know and underline them so you can sort them from the definitions easily. Fit in as many word as you can, That You Think Are Important! Don't put words you don't need, only what you will use or find often. For example, when I was in México, I used the bus almost everyday, so I wrote down the word for bus stop('parada') because it was something I needed. After that, I could review easily – I just opened the book and looked at past days.

- If you feel like it, find a good grammar book. The only one I really used was a verb conjugation book(that was really heavy), and I spent basically a whole week memorizing out of it – But It Helped Me So Much! I worked thru the beginning not understanding most of it(I was really weak at grammar in school, even in my native English), but as I read the examples, I started to understand how to conjugate those verbs. After that, I started trying it out for myself. I wasn't perfect, but I had the beginnings of the idea, and after that, practically nothing else surprised me about those verbs.

- Pay careful attention to everyday words, especially connecting words like 'and', 'but', 'for', 'because', 'of', etc. It can be hard to learn these because we use them everyday and rarely think about them. But try to learn anything you can about them because it will help you a lot. For example, does Romanian use the verb "to do" like in English? Some languages don't, so a simple question might be "You speak English?" instead of "Do you speak English?" Also, does it use a double negative("I don't have nothing," "I didn't go nowhere")? I know very little about Romanian, so translate these ideas to your context if they sound wrong or utterly ridiculous.

Hope this helps!