I too am trying to learn Spanish, although I don't seem to be able to devote enough time to do it properly.
I have tried going to school, but I get bored too quickly when it comes to all the grammer stuff - past participles, present subjunctives, yawn yawn yawn - all of these terms are like a foreign language all on their own! I just want to be able to have conversations with people I meet, I'm not too worried about getting it right all the time, but it takes a lot of confidence to "have a go".
I'm currently using a CD course by Michael Thomas (it's published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton, but I don't know if it's available anywhere else). His teaching methods are very different to anything I've come across before - there's no memorising, no pens or paper, no homework. He has very relaxed, calming sort of voice, that is very easy to listen to. He sort of breaks the language down, then builds up phrases and sentences, which for me makes it easier to understand word order and sentence structures.
He also does the same courses in French, German and Italian.
Another thing that I have found particularly useful is a book published by Penguin called "New Penguin Parallel Texts: Short Stories in Spanish". Basically it contains numerous short stories (surprise, surprise), but the good thing is that the text on the left hand page is in Spanish, with the English translation on the right hand page. Simple but brilliant.
I have tried going to school, but I get bored too quickly when it comes to all the grammer stuff - past participles, present subjunctives, yawn yawn yawn - all of these terms are like a foreign language all on their own! I just want to be able to have conversations with people I meet, I'm not too worried about getting it right all the time, but it takes a lot of confidence to "have a go".
I'm currently using a CD course by Michael Thomas (it's published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton, but I don't know if it's available anywhere else). His teaching methods are very different to anything I've come across before - there's no memorising, no pens or paper, no homework. He has very relaxed, calming sort of voice, that is very easy to listen to. He sort of breaks the language down, then builds up phrases and sentences, which for me makes it easier to understand word order and sentence structures.
He also does the same courses in French, German and Italian.
Another thing that I have found particularly useful is a book published by Penguin called "New Penguin Parallel Texts: Short Stories in Spanish". Basically it contains numerous short stories (surprise, surprise), but the good thing is that the text on the left hand page is in Spanish, with the English translation on the right hand page. Simple but brilliant.
I want to graduate to adult books!