Improve in another language the hard and laborious way.

So you want to learn a new language?

Boy do I have the thing for you! That's right! Start with my method and you too can speak a new language in ten to twenty years!

Step Zero: Get your learning template from years of public schooling, and "learn" how to learn a language from a few years of Spanish french or German in high school.

Step One: find some phrase books or first year books with some phrases in them. Try to practice saying these phrases to yourself.

Step Two: Get busy and forget about learning the language for a year or two.

Step Three: Get very serious about the language again after watching a special on the Travel channel. Get a few grammar books and some more advanced textbooks because "you've already learned the easy stuff."

Step Four: Burn out after a few months or weeks.

Step Six: Buy some expensive software or audio CD collection as a way to show yourself that you are really serious about learning this language. Start using them and really feel like you are making progress.

Step Seven: find the software or CDs stuck in a closet or under a car seat and wonder why you are so bad at learning languages.

Step Eight: Travel to a country where people speak the language that you have been "learning". Order a meal and feel pleased with yourself. Then notice some other tourist having what appears to be a fluent conversation with a local and wonder why you've been wasting your time.

Step Nine: There is no step nine because you gave up on trying to learn a foreign language and settled for talking to people in English.

So class, what have we learned? Not a whole lot really except that I forgot the real first step and had to add it in later as step zero because I don't want to relabel every step. We also learned that we don't know how to learn a language.