Well for starters read the book "How to learn any language" by Barry Farber. It's on Amazon.com but use the link through the SDN homepage so they get a kickback
😉
The title sounds like it promises too much but it is more about techniques than anything and is actually full of useful ideas, some obvious, some not so obvious.
For free the web site
http://www.micheloud.com/FXM/LA/index.htm is somewhat inspirational and very informative. It also has links to online spanish radio stations. Listening to these will aid your audio-skills. You can also switch your TV over to SAP to hear spanish on some programs. Ones that are really easy to understand are things like Cops and Americas Most Wanted neither of which I ever watched prior to trying to learn Spanish - but the Spanish they use is very easy and repetitive and gets you used to it.
Although expensive the Pimsleur series is unbeatable in terms of building spoken language skills. You can usually buy these discounted on Ebay. I personally do not like AT ALL the foreign service institute series as they are exceedingly dry and largely phonetic. It's just irritating.
For Spanish a good online (free) intro is at
http://www.studyspanish.com/tutorial.htm
In St Louis there is also the spanish newspaper "Red Latina" (I have no idea why it is not 'Latina Roja'....) which is free and in spanish and will let you know about local events eg the various latino festivals. Saturday morning on Channel 11 at 6am (video it) is a TV talk/morning show entirely in Spanish.
Forest park/Florrissant/Meramec community colleges all run intro spanish courses for like $120.
For Bosnian there are many bosnian cafes in south St Louis, most with some kind of flyers in Bosnian, which is a good way to get a start with the 'real-life' written language. I have seen a Bosnian paper but can't remember which cafe I saw that in. Red Latina is available for exmaple in the Grind on Maryland in the central west end though.
Good luck!
