OK, today I am going to give more clues as to why and how my method works. To some people it becomes difficult to think about this and they think that they are not going to be able to finish their goal. At the same time while thinking they need to learn grammar.

My method consists of copying a novel in Spanish to Spanish (it still unknown what's being said in Spanish). This has to be done phrase by phrase.

From there, it has to be translated to English, word by word (the only way for you to understand that phrase written in Spanish) using a bilingual dictionary. If you are going to use an online translator use it as a dictionary and not as a translator of complete phrases in Spanish. You need to exercise your natural translator (your brain). I imagine you understand that if you lift weight you are going to develop muscles, but the fact you understand this it isn't going to develop your muscles. If you actually lift the weights then you are going to develop those so much sought muscles. Right?

Once you obtain a literal translation, word by word, according to you, most likely is not going to be grammatically correct but it will give you an idea of what’s being said, which you have to re-arrange in English in order to make sense and be correct in English. Let's say that 90% o more of the times you are going to be translating correctly.

From there, you have to "Anglicize" the pronunciation according to your understanding (in the beginning you are not going to be close, but with time this will adjust itself and you are going to be doing better) For example:

¿Cómo se llama?

Anglicized would be:

KOHmoh seh Jahmah?

See? In order to do this you can get the pronunciation of the words in Spanish in any online Spanish dictionary.

Then read the Anglicized phrases out loud, over and over. Even if it appears weird, you are going to be speaking Spanish. I will explain further later.

The last step is to write in Spanish again, the same phrase or paragraph that you just wrote, translated to English and pronounced in Spanish.

In order to practice your listening, one has to choose the type of movie that you like most but in Spanish (Spanish track) and watch it without subtitles, only watching it intently. In the beginning you will not understand much if anything, as expected, but with a little practice you start getting better at it.

Like I said on another occasion, if one knows how to read, write and express oneself in our native language, we don't have to learn all that all over again in another language. Most likely, if you ask anybody that's very capable and learned, if they could write anything in Spanish, French or German, they will say "no" because they don't know those languages. But the question was if they could write and not understand any of those languages. It isn't like one doesn't know all this, but one does not think of this consciously and the mind becomes our own enemy.

What I sought was to use what I knew in my own language so that I could apply it to the foreign language that was the one that I was learning.

When we need to practice Spanish, le's say written, everybody understand that we need to write in Spanish. All good so far, but then we all try to think in Spanish, language that we don't know, and we write a phrase in Spanish according to our knowledge of Spanish, most likely zilch, that get nears to what we think we want to say and ask a Spanish native to guide us and tell us what's wrong with the Spanish we wrote, language that we don’t know and want to learn.

Crazy but OK in our heads. What's more, language schools teach this and expect us to do the same. Crazy!

To me it is way more natural to translate from Spanish to English, in order to understand in my native language what was written in Spanish. Just for that you write in Spanish and then translate to English. This way, one, or better yet, our mind gets accustomed to see Spanish (read) and see it correctly written. By doing this for some time, not only you are going to get used to read and write faster Spanish but you are going to get used to the correct written form, without knowing for sure (grammar) of why it is correctly written.

Nobody needs a college degree to understand this, but one does not think of this, maybe because it is so easy, and we like and expect difficulties when learning a language?

For our listening skills we also need to accustom our ears to Spanish. In order to do that we need to get a Spanish movie or a movie that has a Spanish sound track and watch it without subtitles of any kind, because we have enough material to read with the novel we are writing, translating and pronouncing, don't you think so? If I needed to read I would go to the library and not to the movies, period.

Besides, with all that practicing that we are getting with that reading, writing and translating , one starts to recognize more and more words from watching the movie. You are going to err in the beginning but then by doing all this the better you are going to understand, and what a feeling it is when you start recognizing more and more words in Spanish without really knowing Spanish...and as you advance the more Spanish you know.

Watch the movie over and over, just one day a week, don't stop doing it until there is no word in that movie you don't understand. That day you also have to collect all the Anglicized phrases and paragraphs from your novel once you have a whole page of it, and then read out loud all that while recording yourself using a computer or a cassette recording etc. Then listen to yourself. See what errors you have made when reading. Once you get over your initial horror of listening to yourself and then the even more horrendous Spanish accent, you have to re-record yourself reading this page over and over, each time trying to fix your errors as you understand them. Each time you repeat this, strive to imitate better how the people in the movie sound when talking Spanish. Do not worry if you think you are not speaking Spanish, because in fact you are doing it. Just make sure with each repetition that you are fixing the error you detect in diction, drawl etc. Little by little you will start to improve. If you need to Anglicize some letter in order to pronounce better Spanish, do it - for example in the phrase:

Juan llena la caja.

Anglicized would be like in the beginning:

HOOan YEHnah lah cahah

YEHnah in Spanish sounds like Hiena

A better way would be:

..                  ..

HOOHan JEHnah lah CAHah

(2 periods over the H would signal you that you need to pronounce harder that H, etc.)

The rest will be to continue practicing the reading of the Anglicized form, recording yourself to later listen and keep on correcting the errors you detect in cadence and pronunciation of the letters and or words.

The purpose of this exercise is to obtain fluency while speaking in a record time and that of softening your accent.

I am fluent in English but I still have an accent, but that's because I don't want to lose my accent. Something like not wanting to lose my soul if you take a picture of me. ;)

I know I can help you with your pronunciation. What's more, if I wanted to soften or lose my accent in English, I would only have to follow my own advice to do so, but like I said, I am not interested in that. I lost my interest a year after I arrived in the US. but I haven't lost my interest in teaching this.

I am always available at chileno74@hotmail.com

If you write me an email please use a subject of "blog", I will be more than glad to help in case all this is still not easily understood.

I do this for free, however, if anyone would like to pay me a million dollar, Who am I to say no?

Thanks.