RavenPanther

Damnit, why wasn't this answered, though?!

Hola, professor! I've taken ~6 years worth of Spanish, between middle school and High School, but because of moving between states and teachers changing, I've not really learned much at all. I've re-taken Spanish 1 and 2 to try and get a better grip on things, but I still don't feel comfortable with it. Colors and counting I have down-pat, verbs are a bit iffy, but other than that, I can only pick out a few spoken words here and there, and I can get the gist of reading conversation through text. But I can't speak a lick of it. When I try to understand, I go through the process of recognizing words and then translating what they mean to English, then piece together the sentence as best I can.... not really the most fluid way of understanding language. For example, "El gato está en casa." (I had to use google translate... so sad!) Hearing this, I would pick out "Gato" and "casa", think "Cat and home" and then extrapolate to assume that the cat is home, or is in the house.

What is the best way to go about trying to learn again? Tutor? Programs like Rosetta Stone? College courses? I'd rather learn "street" Spanish as opposed to "Academic" Spanish, as I live in Arizona. I desperately want to finish learning, as I know that learning languages gets (relatively) easier after you know more than one... and I want to go on to learn other languages as well.

Nice, concise answer. Nothing else to say except gracias!