It's All About Listening and Repeating
I'm finding French way more difficult than Spanish. I think it's all the silent letters and the back of the throat pronunciations. Spanish is spoken using the front of your mouth, but French uses more of the back of the throat. English, having so many similarities to both languages, kind of uses the whole mouth more. And I still think I like the Pimsleur approach better than the Rosetta Stone, but it's not even been two weeks yet with Rosetta Stone, so even though I say I still like Pimsleur better I'm trying to keep an open mind. Here's what it is: I have become a staunch believer that the initial way a person should learn a new language is the same way he or she learned their fist one, by listening and repeating. You learned to speak before you learned to read or write. The first objective is to COMMUNICATE. Once you have that down you can incorporate the reading and writing part. Pimsleur focuses almost solely on listening and repeating. They do have a few reading exercises, but 95% of it is listening and repeating. Rosetta Stone on the other hand tries to incorporate it all at the same time, which I think is a mistake. The most useful thing in learning a new language, in my humble opinion (and this comes from my experience in trying to learn three other foreign languages, Spanish, Khmer, and French), is by repeating the words over and over and over again. In dance, which is just another language albeit a non-verbal one, you develop muscle memory, your get so used to going through the steps that you don't even have to think about it. Well that's the same thing that happens when you practice a new language, at first a few words start to happen with little or no thought, and then you start putting phrases together, and before you know it you can carry on an entire conversation. A simple conversation but a conversation nonetheless. Even when I was taught how to teach languages at Language Corps the teachers there expressed that the most important thing, the most beneficial thing for the students was to get as much SPEAKING time as possible. It was all about learning to communicate first. Then the reading and writing.