I'm very used to this, in fact I arrange my working life around it. I invent/develop new technology so I spend about 50% of my time forcing myself to understand new topics on the bleeding edge.

First comes the brain-ache, then what I call cotton-wool head. That's when it feels like my head is stuffed full and everything is nonsense. At that point I just leave off and move on to something entirely different.
I let it just sit in my head for a while. After a few days something drops into place and I suddenly discover an insight and off I go full-speed-ahead.

I go through that process probably 30 or more times a year so although its stressful and can be quite dispiriting to begin with, I know that at some point the Euraka! moment will arrive

susique - I know what you mean about not remembering. I've convinced most of my friends I have BSE-related CJD since sometimes my short-term memory can be terrible.
I'll stop in the middle of a sentence knowing what I want to say but unable to grasp the word . I've become fantastic at charades though

My other talent is in using the wrong word entirely without realising it until the looks of confusion on their faces brings me to a stop and then there's a humorous conversation about what I said, what I meant, and how the hell I came up with the word I use

I hope I'm not as bad in Spanish

For those of you with Sky tv, there's channel 802 Television Espanola internacional (TVEi) for films, etc.

Damn! I just packed the Sky receiver away.

Does anyone have a recommendation for iPod-able audio language learning?

I'm thinking of something more suitable for continuous play where it can wash over you rather than needing to constantly stop/start it.

susique - do you think the synergyspanish audio would be suitable in that regard?

His sales blurb indicates that but I'd like to know from someone thats tried it

For every sentence you learn, you also need to learn 3 or 4 possible replies.;-)

Will "buggerit! millennium hand an' shrimp" do?

LoL, one answer will be mañana. ;-)

Download the samples he offers, you will see how be builds the language and the style of teaching. I now keep the CD's, compressed to 10 of the Synergy course, in the car and listen whenever I go anywhere. Even if its only to collect my son from school, or to the shops, its a little bit more going in every time.

The written material complements the audio and is also good, you can print it off or just read it from the PC. The only criticism is that you can't type in the answers on the PC, as its on a PDF file.

Anyway get the samples and try them, it convinced me.

susique: thanks - can you tell me if the materials are universal or do any of them require Microsoft Windows in order to be used?
This seems to be a big stumbling block for many of the on-line commercial materials.

Hi everyone...One more day to go of my crash course... enjoying it enormously and feel as though I have learnt a lot...amazing how much they abstain from teaching at beginners level. No unneccessary complications. I have an unfair advantage as I am slightly ahead of the others in the class..all six of us.. despite some of them having recently returned from travelling in South America. They had a clear and concise way of separating the different elements, and though it seemed a bit disconcerting that we would have several different teachers through the week in practice this has been excellent. Different personalitites and styles keep us alert, and we need to really listen to tune into different voices and slightly different accents. Like real life. Mainly grammar and construction and writing in the mornings with lots of fun and livelier participation in the afternoons. They have also waived the fee to have 15 week access to their interactive on line course, normally £30 for existing students or £60 for new enrolments. It requires internet access and a microphone. I think we get a taste of it tomorrow afternoon at the end of our course. They have been brutally honest and said it simply isn't enough to just rely on the course and we need to spend time working on revision and using the internet course would be an enormous help. Cannot wait to get out to Spain and start to try it all out!!!!!

It sounds like something I might try for myself closer to the move itself.

Are you able to ask a lot of questions of the teachers and adjust things to fit your own techniques?

In my experience the way a teacher presents is not always the way the student learns best; in teaching others I've always asked them how they learn best and adjust my presentation to them.

[SIZE="4"]Absolutely no problems with asking questions..However I think some of the students were phased initially by the teaching. One of my fellow students was disconcerted this afternoon as we were doing a conversation exercise in pairs. She was confused about the usage of GUSTAN. I tried to explain it to her, but she then said oh a lot of it's going over my head. She had made pages and pages and pages of notes rather than submitting and having fun with it the way the rest of us were. Her method she said was to revise and learn it all next week. I am not a teacher of languages, but it seems to me that some people try to control the way they learn rather than submitting. We learn a lot of things subliminally. My TEFAL teacher friend says that there is absolutely no point in learning endless rules of grammar when we use a mere hundredth of them in practice.
Some years ago I signed on for a French course at the famed City Lit Institute in London. The teacher used the BBC book and we merely worked our way thorugh the book chapter by chapter. Ugh!![/SIZE]

Precisely - it sounds like the Institute has the correct approach. I prefer to let new knowledge sneak up on me rather than trying to hammer it in, but at some point you've got to get repetitive in order to develop the skill.