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Old 07-17-2013, 06:00 PM   #26
twowheels
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My answer is not exactly to the question that you asked, as I'm a native English speaker, but I think the question is interesting in the general case.

I learned Spanish in high school (yep, even some Americans bother to learn other languages!) -- it was my favorite subject, so I was fairly good at it, practicing every chance I got. In order to not forget it I have continued to listen to Spanish language radio and to read books, multiple decades later.

I've found the Kindle Paperwhite to be AWESOME for this purpose. Combined with a translating dictionary, the Spanish-->Spanish dictionary (for when the first doesn't find the word), and the translate feature, I can read at an acceptable rate, even when there are many words or phrases that I don't understand. It's weird, but I've learned to read ahead while waiting for the definition to pop up, and then re-insert the word in the sentence and reassemble the meaning "out of order", after the fact, allowing me to keep reading as if I knew the word all along, making up for the delay in getting the definition. My Spanish improves a lot whenever I read a new book. I recently read "Historia de un crimen perfecto", which was a fun easy read, and "just hard enough" that I could read at a good pace, while still expanding my vocabulary now and then.
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