En fin, hasta yo aprendo de ti y no sólo sobre consejos sobre el aprendizaje de idiomas sino sobre mi propia lengua: Por ejemplo, no sabía que la palabra “guiri” se usara también para designar a un policía… Nunca había oído ese término con ese significado. A lo mejor es algo dialectal de la zona de Albacete, pero en Gran Canaria, de donde soy, o en Madrid, donde ahora resido, se usa esa palabra para referirse a un poli.

Sea como sea, me encanta tu bitácora y espero que te divierta tanto el estudio del francés como te ha divertido el estudio del español. Een knuffel en veel geluk.

Anyway, this blog is about telling people how they can learn another language, not showing off my English skills. My English isn’t that impressive. I think my Spanish is actually better at this moment, simply because I’ve spent the last three years getting Spanish input and not doing anything with English. You could say it’s difficult to take advice from someone that hasn’t fully mastered English yet, but luckily I’m not writing a blog called “English Only” .

Besides all that: some things are just typos, sorry.

You said: “As soon as you start the days of doing nothing are over, they don’t exist anymore.”

It’s small, but you might want to use an extra comma after “start” i.e. “As soon as you start, the days of doing nothing are over; they don’t exist anymore.” (The semi-colon isn’t completely necessary, but is still useful here).

You said: “Therefore; people that take classes, use textbooks, only dedicate an hour per day to Spanish, still do many things English, etc. are in the danger zone.”

Incorrect usage of a semicolon here. http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/StudyZone/410/grammar/colons.htm

“Therefore” isn’t an independent clause. In this situation a comma is fine. “Therefore, people that take classes, use textbooks, only dedicate an hour per day to Spanish, still do many things in [it sounds more natural if use "in" here] English, etc. are in the danger zone.”

You said: “(Now, I could write all my posts in Spanish, but that would pretty much take the advantage away of the fact that most reader here speak English but not Spanish [yet])” This sounds odd. Try: “Now, I could write all my posts in Spanish, but that would pretty much take away the advantage that most readers here speak English instead of Spanish [yet].”

You said: “There was a time in my simple life (you know, simple in the fact of being mostly monolingual (okay, bilingual if you insist that English and Dutch are two separate languages, ha!)) where I was sucking at Spanish (may I call myself a loser for going in the wrong direction? May I? May I?!), and I was sucking hard.”

This is actually challenging to read. It shares some traits with run on sentences. You’re trying to pack too many things into one sentence. Suggestion: “There was a time in my “simple life” where I was sucking at Spanish, and I was sucking hard.” The “simple life” being mostly monolingual (unless you insist that English and Dutch are two separate languages, ha!).” Asking “may I call my self a loser for going in the wrong direction?” seems odd to me. I guess if you insist on asking something like that, instead say “should I be calling myself a loser for going in the wrong direction? Should I? Should I?”

You said: “Why was I sucking at Spanish (and not improving)? Because my environment said that it’s ok to just dedicate a few hours to Spanish every day.” Again, this just sounds odd. Try: “Why was I sucking at Spanish? Because my current environment, at the time, was saying that it was ok to dedicate only a few hours to Spanish every day.”

Alright, this is the first instance of many where you used the gerund form (-ing words) instead of the infinitive ( http://www.englishlanguageguide.com/english/grammar/infinitive.asp ). You said: “I realized that if I wanted to learn Spanish, REALLY learning Spanish, I had to change and had to make Spanish a BIG part of my life.” It’s really odd because you did it right the first time “I realized that if I wanted to learn Spanish,” but not the second time, “REALLY learning Spanish” should be “REALLY learn Spanish”.

And here’s where the cluster of them are, you said: “So why not choosing the easy way (really, immersion is easier than you might think)? Why not making Spanish a big part of you life? Why not having fun? It’s easy and it simply works. So go, and make Spanish the most important thing in your life!” Should be “so why not choose the easy way? Why not make Spanish a big part of your [you said "you" instead of "your"] life? Why not have fun? It’s easy and it works simply. So, go and make Spanish the most important thing in your life!”

And then, again in a comment, you said: “What I do is using my college textbooks to mine sentences from because they’re often pretty complicated.” Should be: “What I do is use my college textbooks to mine sentences from because they’re often pretty complicated.”

Sorry if this kind of comment is unwelcome, but it’s difficult to take advice from someone on learning a language when they themselves haven’t quite mastered one already. I suppose it’s like sending in a resume/CV that’s riddled with spelling errors. Chances are, you won’t get the job.

Regardless, you have some excellent content here on this site. Keep up the good work.

What I’m trying to say is that although there are people who have some advantages, the grand majority of the language learners simply need to really commit themselves to the language in order to learn it. There’s no other way about it.

He learnt Icelandic in a week! Well, he is a genious!