I'm leaving the USA in a few days. In preparation, I'm quitting heroin "cool turkey." I hate that I have to quit. I find that life is actually better on drugs than off them. With heroin, I have something pleasant to look forward to a few times a day. Not that it is the only thing I look forward to, but it enhances the non-drug things I enjoy about life. But I'm committed to quitting it here and now, gradually, rather than going through full withdrawals at the customs and immigration lines at a foreign airport. Even gradually, it sucks. I'm in pain, sweating, and it feels like I'm under a mountain of stress and anxiety.
I lived my early childhood in a mixed, mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood in south Florida. I had Puerto Rican playmates, and, constantly exposed to the Spanish language while living there, I was quickly becoming bilingual. We eventually moved to a part of the country whre only English was spoken, and I quickly forgot my spanish. I did pick up a lot of it again while traveling in South America. It was actually fun to practice there -- the natives appreciated the effort I had made to speak spanish and were never condescending.
Now I'm about to move overseas for work, and I want to be able to function in the language of my host country so I don't come across as some obnoxious american who thinks the whole world ought to speak english. I can read it quite well and write it OK, but speaking and understanding it spoken is very difficult. Memorizing 5000 words and learning grammar hasn't helped me at all. Out of desperation, I got an audio language course, the "Michel Thomas" method. This seems to be helping... It's very basic, but has a lot of tricks of pronunciation which are impossible to pick up from reading it. It has listening and speaking lessons as well. I'm finally able to follow basic conversations and understand radio broadcasts.
I lived my early childhood in a mixed, mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood in south Florida. I had Puerto Rican playmates, and, constantly exposed to the Spanish language while living there, I was quickly becoming bilingual. We eventually moved to a part of the country whre only English was spoken, and I quickly forgot my spanish. I did pick up a lot of it again while traveling in South America. It was actually fun to practice there -- the natives appreciated the effort I had made to speak spanish and were never condescending.
Now I'm about to move overseas for work, and I want to be able to function in the language of my host country so I don't come across as some obnoxious american who thinks the whole world ought to speak english. I can read it quite well and write it OK, but speaking and understanding it spoken is very difficult. Memorizing 5000 words and learning grammar hasn't helped me at all. Out of desperation, I got an audio language course, the "Michel Thomas" method. This seems to be helping... It's very basic, but has a lot of tricks of pronunciation which are impossible to pick up from reading it. It has listening and speaking lessons as well. I'm finally able to follow basic conversations and understand radio broadcasts.
