¿Cuánto tiempo?

[hablaespanolnow]

When I was in the middle of the learning process, it was less about how much time I spent specifically studying Spanish, and more about how committed I was to consistently expose myself to Spanish. I was amazed by the progress I made by taking every opportunity to literally saturate myself in Spanish -- listening to Spanish language music in the car, turning on Spanish language news, watching DVDs in Spanish (with English subtitles!), shopping at local Hispanic markets... and then practicing by imitating expressions and phrases that I heard. When possible, I would make note of expressions and phrases that stood out and I would either look them up or ask about them, when possible. It was a gradual, but very steady process and I realized that I was not only learning new words and phrases, but also learning the language as a whole, rather than a series of vocabulary words and conjugated verbs. It was a huge help in the learning process.