When I was first learning Spanish I had a Kindle Unlimited membership which allowed me to choose from thousands of books. I read all the books I could find on what are the effective and ineffective ways to learn a language. I chose not to use Rosetta Stone because at least 4 of the books mentioned that this was one of the methods that people tended not to find very helpful-- several mentioned that the free program Duolingo was actually more useful.
I do not think that learning Spanish need to be boring. I took the online course Fluencia (for about $9.95 per month), and finished it in 3 months because I loved doing it. It definitely did not feel like ¨all the same, just new words.¨
It got me to the place where I could understand well enough to enjoy watching telenovelas and movies in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. Watching movies and telenovelas gives me the repetition I need to learn lots of vocabulary without ever getting bored or feeling like I am studying.
Why "a waste of time"?
I think that the studying language is first of all a remembering new words with a lot of repetitions. And it is boring job.
Completely agree on that, Thai alphabet is amazing! The whole Thai writing, and for that matter reading also, is so different from anythig i've ever seen before. It took me 6 months to almost get it. Speaking comes easier, though very tricky too.
