[Rick Lee]

JP, what I've done is get started with a language by taking a class. Once you know how it works, the tapes and cd's can be very helpful. I started intensive Russian my senior year in college, so there was not enough time left to really get advanced. But after two semesters, I had enough of an understanding to get tapes and go from there on my own. Ditto for Mandarin. I took night classes at the local high school for two courses. I kept signing up for level III, but they kept cancelling because I was the only person who signed up. If I weren't so lazy now, I could do the rest on my own, since my fiance is a native speaker. I can't imagine starting from scratch with tapes, though I did that with German when I was 13 and it gave me a little bit of a head start once I got into a real German class.