How did you learn English/your second language?

I'm also in the US, but Spanish was my first language. Because my mom was a working single parent, my mom would leave me with my aunt while she was at work, and my aunt at the time barely spoke English having just immigrated to the US from the Dominican Republic. So, I started to speak Spanish, and my mom being fluent in both Spanish and English decided to just speak to me in Spanish. By the time I started attending nursery school at the age of 3, I knew a few English words, but basically expressed myself only in Spanish, which was a problem since I couldn't communicate with either my teachers or my classmates. The teachers had a meeting with my mom, and asked that she start using English at home to bring me up to speed with the other kids. Except I was a stubborn kid, and refused to speak English because I hated it (according to my mom).

Then, in 1991, Michael Jackson premiered his video "Black and White" on television, and I remember watching it with my mom and being blown the frack away. I cried until my mom agreed to buy me the tape of his Dangerous album, and once in my possession, I proceeded to play it non-stop on my little Fischer Price cassette player. It had a microphone attached to the side, and I would carry it around, blasting Michael Jackson, and singing into it like the little spastic fangirl I was becoming. My mom realized a good thing when she saw it, so she went out and bought me every MJ album on tape. And that's how I started to learned English. By listening to Michael Jackson.

After BaT's story, mine will sound totally lame :P Whatever...

I studied at private school since I was 6, we had English as our subject since 1st grade. I had a wonderful teacher, who started giving us homeworks, to read fiction books whichever we preferred and come to class and retell it... As I love detectives, I started with Conan Doyle...When I was 13 I told the class about Harry Potter :D
My everlasting (hopefully) love with reading started with Harry Potter books, which I received as a New Year present from my parents...
Also, I'm in love with music, it helps a lot...I can't help but sing the song with the singer, so I always sing, as I always listen to music...
Then came movies...This is what helped me and still heps me the most... Watching the movie in the original language is MY best way to study a foreign language :)

P.S. In fact, my 2nd language is Russian, but it's common (at least it was when I was at school) in Armenia to know Russian. Russian is also my favourite language. It's the most beautiful language in the world, I think :)

First language- English
Second language- Spanish

When I was in elementary school I had a baby sitter for a couple years and she only spoke in Spanish! Somehow I started to understand when she spoke to me and her daughter also taught me words. In high school I took 5 levels of Spanish. Even with all that studying I'm not comfortable speaking it unless I really have to.

I want to learn Korean! Its such a hard language to learn though=(

Hehe, my second language is Japanese and Latin.... kinda. I am conversational in Japanese and if I brushed up a bit I could be near fluent in Latin, so between the two I know one language XD. I learned Latin through hard work and Japanese by watching subs since 12/13 or so. By the time I left Japan I was almost fluent *sob*. I am just on this side of conversational now.

English is my second language. I started learning it when my dad decided to join the civilized world and got us cable TV. It was Summer, I don't really like the beach (plus I was 11), or the sun and heat (ironic seeing how I live on an island in the Caribbean). Plus I've always been weird and didn't really care for socializing (the only things I needed were my Nintendo and Game Boy). So that Summer, I sat day and night watching TV with closed captions. Once I started getting it more and more I sat with a dictionary looking up the words that I didn't understand. Once I understood enough, I started reading books.

There was one of my "uncles" (who is really just an aunt's husband), who kept annoying me to stop watching TV because I wasn't going to learn anything from The Flinstones (how I loved this cartoon, lol). Then one day he saw me and was trying to make fun of me and I just said something in English and smiled. Then added, in Spanish, "Now tell me I'm not gonna learn anything from cartoons." I loved his facial expression when I said that.

sheriberi wrote: There was one of my "uncles" (who is really just an aunt's husband), who kept annoying me to stop watching TV because I wasn't going to learn anything from The Flinstones (how I loved this cartoon, lol). Then one day he saw me and was trying to make fun of me and I just said something in English and smiled. Then added, in Spanish, "Now tell me I'm not gonna learn anything from cartoons." I loved his facial expression when I said that.

Kind of off topic, but two thumbs up for this! I totally loved cartoons as a kid to the point where whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be as an adult, I'd answer, "A cartoon." (I was a dumb kid, what can I say?) It's a shame they don't air those old shows anymore. As much as I love the new stuff, nothing beats a classic Looney Tunes in my book.

*ahem* Sorry, back to the topic at hand...

arvedy wrote: I am envious of all my online friends who speak their native language and then completely rock English.
I personally only know English fluently, and Spanish (not fluently)

I'm totally envious of all Koreans who do not need subs to watch the dramas. And of my French cyber friend who can speak many languages. While I only know two and am forgetting the French I learned cause I don't really have anything with whom to practice it since my friends forgot it as soon as the class ended. *sigh*