My wife is a 33 year old college educated Colombian and I have a 16 year old step-daughter who is in High School.

We tried the classes in Cali before they moved here (waste of money in my opinion). My wife has been going to school 5 nights a week for 2 1/2 hours a night for the better part of the last 6 months (some progress but very disproporionate for to the time and money spent).

I have found that the best things seems to be simply putting them in an environment where they have to speak English. The biggest jump in my wife's English was the week we spent during Christmas with my English Only speaking family.

My step-daughter gets English 5 days a week at school but she still has 100% Spanish speaking friends and a while a couple of her teachers speak Spanish the majority do not. They both pretty much watch only Spanish Television.  My daughter certainly understands a lot more than my wife but does not use English very much.

Now the single largest hinderance to a Colombian speaking English in my opinion is the thought of speaking poorly. I am not sure why Gringo's don't have a problem butchering their language and they are embarrased to take a whack at ours but that seems to be the norm rather than the exception.

So how to get them practice in an environment where they will not be embarrassed?

WELL her it comes this is my suggestion and it seems to be helping a lot.  Have them read children's books aloud. As you might remember my wife is now in her 8th month of pregnancy. I have a fair collection of children's books form my youth and planning for our baby. My daugther reads from Winnie-The-Pooh for about 30 minutes a night and my wife is reading from other Disney stories. They both are about 1/2 text and 1/2 pictures.  They read to me and I help them with pronunciation. By far this simple thing seems to be having a quicker more desirable effect than all of the other things. They seem to be picking up confidence and vocabulary. I guess it shouldn't surprize me as this is how most people learn to read as children.

Oh well that is my little tid bit for the week. If anyone else tries it let me know how it works for you.

This was from a military guy who was stationed some place, and he ran into someon there who spoke the language well after only one year.

He asked him what his secret was, and he said that when he talks to himself, he uses the new language. That by forcing himself to think and talk -- even just to himself -- helped.

You know... how many times do you say: "I can't believe I missed my turn there!"

Or "COme on... the lights green... accelerator is on the right, lady" Whatever.

He claims that this helped him learn the language MUCH faster, and no one ever heard him, so he wasn't self-conscious...

FWIW

This works!!!

The big thing is listening to and understanding Spanish. For that I try to watch the Spanish channel a few times a week to get used to A spanish speaking person talking at a normal rate of speed and such.  This is hard!!! but again I see improvements when I listen to my lady friend speak.  Especially since she speaks much slower because of me. ha ha.