At the About.com education page, you will find links (in the left sidebar) to pages for English as a Second Language (ESL), French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. They have beginning lessons, more advanced lessons, and information about the culture. These would be a great place to start, and they provide links to other websites and recommendations for books and CDs if you are interested in those. I do think it helps immensely to have some tapes or CDs recorded by native speakers because it helps your pronunciation and ability to understand others speaking the language. You can also locate radio stations and newspapers in the language you're interested in over the internet and get in some good reading and listening practice there. The About.com sites also have audio files, so you can get some listening done there. Oh, and they are free, which is often an important consideration for those of us trying to educate ourselves!
I am also interested in learning Latin, since many of our English words have a Latin base. I'd like to tackle Hebrew and Greek for Bible reading/interpretation purposes as well. There are also websites that can help you get started with these languages.
Latin: Wheelock's Latin page (has a page of links), E.L.Easton's Latin page, a college library Latin page
Greek: Learning Greek, Biblical Greek, Greek Grammar on the Web
Hebrew: Judaism 101: Hebrew Alphabet, The Online Hebrew Tutorial, Learn to Read Biblical Hebrew
Those will get you started and you can always search for more on the internet. Even if you don't want to study the languages, it's interesting to learn something about them
2 comments:
I noticed the same phenomenon as I studied French in high school. My understanding of English grammar increased immensely, as I had to really think about what I wanted to say and how best to say it outside of the 'default mode' (unthinking mode) of my native tongue.
For learning Greek, I recommend the little book "Teach Yourself New Testament Greek."
For English word roots, I heartily recommend the book "Three Dimensions of Vocabulary Growth" if you can track down a copy. It's an etymological approach to growing vocabulary by way of studying common Latin and greek roots.
Naiah, thanks for mentioning those two books. They sound interesting. I'll look in the library as well as the bookstores. I always like to find new material!
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