Day 1 - Establishing strengths and weaknesses - Study time: 7 hours

Today is the first day of my 10 days Spanish challenge!

I have decided to hold an experiment to see how much Spanish I can learn in 10 days, if I dedicate every minute of my spare time to learning. I have to admit, that I have some spare time due to my flexitime job. I also have a motivating factor - in 2 weeks i'm going to Mexico, where I intend to put my acquired spanish knowledge into practice!

Where do I stand now?

• I have beginner level of spanish
• I speak 4 other languages
• I know how to teach and learn foreign languages
• I believe I have good listening skills
• I believe that reading in Spanish is the easiest thing

I thought that the first logical thing to do was to test my level. So I went to  http://www.spanish-test.net/ and  tried my best to exceed my expectations of A1, 

but failed:(

Encouraged by good results, I thought I could do more that A1, but it proved wrong...

Inspite of my bad grammar, I realise that I'm not so miserable at understanding spoken speech and even better at reading. I'd put myself to A2 level at these aspects.

When it comes to speaking, I'm useless. I can have a small introductory talk, that's all.

Lack of grammar and vocabulary makes further conversation impossible.

I started thinking how exactly I'm going to study during these 14 days. I realize that the best way in general and for me in particular in to personalize my studies, do in Spanish what i like doing in English. In the end I came up with this plan.

I have to

• work with a textbook, cos it gives structure 
• study grammar

I want to

• listen and learn songs
• watch a serial
• listen to podcasts
• read a book 
• test Duolinguo

So I began

1) I started with Duolinguo. It helped to learn some basic, but very necessary vocabulary, like food and animals.

2) I studied a unit from a textbook (El Accion 1) which turned out to be very entertaining.

3) Then I turned to podcasts and really enjoyed listening to Ben and Marina from Notes in Spanish. http://www.notesinspanish.com/

I took intermediate level podcasts and they suit me just fine.

4) I put 40 new words to my Quizlet.

5) I spent about an hour listening to spanish songs trying to find something to my taste, and finally discovered La Oreja de Van Gogh. Here is a song I particulaly liked

6) Writing practice (with my teacher's corrections)

7) I started reading a book that I've read in English and that I know pretty well "Hunger 

Games":) Challening, but possible.

8) Finally, I started watching a funny spanish serial "Los Protegidos". I finished 2 episodes with subtitles, and I wished i could watch more, but it was 2.00 a.m. already:)

I'm thinking of looking for an online teacher as well to help me with the speaking part.

If you know good resourses for studying spanish, please share!!!