Recently I read a lengthy article on wired magazine's website about a software called 'supermemo.' Basically, what it does in a nutshell is figure out the forgetfulness curve and reminds you to review the word just about when you are to forget it. After 4 reminders the word/phrase etc should stick in your brain 90% retention.
I've been using Supermemo for months and highly recommend it as a flash card substitute. I run in on a Palm Tungsten E2 PDA that I purchased just for Supermemo. I use it several times a day and take it with me if I think I'm going to have to do any waiting.
I took three years of Spanish in High School 35 years ago and remember hating most of it, but I did retain some vocabulary. Several of the countries I'm checking out as possible retirement destinations are Spanish speaking, so I decided I must learn.
Much of my strategy came from
How to Learn a Language - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks . I agree with them in that the most important thing to have in learning a second language is motivation.
Here is what I'm doing:
* Found lists on the web of most frequently used Spanish words and loaded them into Supermemo.
* If I have trouble remembering a word I construct a phrase and add to Supermemo.
* The library had some of the CD based courses, I tried several and then started with 'Learn Spanish In your Car' and moved to 'Learning Spanish Like Crazy. Transcriptions of both courses are available on the net, so as I went through them I added new words and phrases to my growing Supermemo database.
* A friend gave me the basic Bilingual America course. I like it's multi pronged approach but I burnt out. I did 9 lessons in 10 weeks, it's taken me six weeks to finish the next two, there is one more to go.
* There are websites that allow one to practice listening comprehension,
Learn Spanish | Spanish Listening Comprehension, Spanish Audio for example.
* I've done a little listening to Spanish TV with Spanish subtitles, but it made my brain hurt at first. It got easier.
* I tried speaking Spanish with friends who know the language but no matter how many times I asked them to slow WAY down and use a vocabulary that they would use with a 8 year old they didn't, so I stopped doing that. I intend to try the language exchange websites when my vocabulary more extensive.
The two most helpful tools so far have been Supermemo and Learning Spanish Like Crazy (LSLC). In every other course I looked at the student repeated what the instructor just said. In LSLC there is a lot of that but they also ask you a question or ask you how you say X and then you have to say it before the recoding says it. It forces one to respond without thinking, because if one does a Spanish - English - Spanish conversion, one doesn't beat the recording. The early lessons were easy because of prior learning, but the later ones kicked my butt. I had to repeat them, sometimes twice to make it through getting most of the responses correct. I'm up to lesson 14 now and an amazed at how much comprehension I have of the sample conversations they present and the beginning and end of each lesson.
If you want some intense self study, check out
Learn Spanish the way Diplomats do . The US Foreign service developed their own courses decades ago and later put them into the public domain. The originals are available on the web for the cost of a CD and shipping. Reviews of them find fault with the low fidelity, lack of variety of the voices, and out of date vocabulary. The Platiquemos people updated the course and re-recorded all the auditory material. I've read that this course is college level. I expect I'll tackle it once I'm actually living in a Spanish speaking country long enough to realize how much I need it.