Sand123:What would you recommend? Doing more courses?

If you want to do something structured, I recommend the course "Kio okazas?" at lernu. It basically has you writing your own version of a story, according to a series of pictures. It's really good practice for active learning, because you're writing your own text and being corrected by a tutor. And you can't move on to the next lesson until your previous lesson is 100% correct, so it's not one of these courses where you can do a lesson all wrong and progress, and then do the next one all wrong, and so forth. It pretty much forces you to keep correcting your text until you get it right.

It's labeled as an intermediate/advanced course. I'm not sure where you are, but if you want some instructor feedback on a simpler level, you could do Ana Pana or Ana Renkontas first. They both require answering questions (and all correspondence with your tutor is intended to be in Esperanto in Ana Renkontas). The more you write, the more you learn, so on questions like "Tell about your favorite vacation", don't answer with "I went to London. It was fun". Take the time and write a paragraph or two about your trip, and you will learn more.

Another way to practice - go to the Esperanto forums. Find a topic that interests you and post a message to the thread. Ask other readers to correct any errors they see in your message. This forum's participants don't normally correct messages unless someone has asked for it, but if you ask, people are happy to give feedback.

Sand123:Hi guys, my first thread here. I would appreciate some help.

I recently (about 2 months ago) did a short course on the basics of Esperanto. Since then, I've been trying to stay on top of it and improve my skill level, but am finding it very difficult to find a) the time, b) the motivation and c) adequate resources to keep myself progressing with the language.

Every time I go over things like the suffixes and prefixes etc. I end up forgetting them the next week (I usually spend about 10-15 minutes on a Sunday night working on my Esperanto - which I know is hardly enough and even that is only because I really force myself to.)

I would appreciate some advice on how to stay interested in the language and develop my reading and writing skills without getting bored.

I also speak French to a reasonable (B1/B2) level.

Also - how long would it take to get from mid A1 level to roughly around B2 level? Thanks a lot.

Dankon

I know some here will declare me hopelessly old-fashioned, but I find flashcards to help immensely. You can combine cards with affixes: take a verb or noun that you know already, and then (using a dictionary if you need to) put that word with each affix and if the result makes sense, put it on a card. soon you'll have a fistful of words that will help you learn the affixes.

In my experience, having someone to talk to is very motivating. I made leaps and bounds in my learning when I found someone who was roughly at the same level as me and we began to chat and compete in a friendly way over who could learn the most the fastest.

Along with the Lernu community, there are also quite a few Esperantists who like to use Skype. There are also quite a few active Facebook groups, this one for example.

orthohawk:
I know some here will declare me hopelessly old-fashioned, but I find flashcards to help immensely.

I can only agree with you! Flashcards really are very useful. And I'd suggest to learn words/suffixes/prefixes definitely in a context, not as stand-alone entities: to memorize ten short sentences or phrases takes not more effort than memorizing ten words.
I myself use KWordQuiz and Mnemosyne now - but Anki should be good as well.

The Internet has its good side, in that it is attracting to Esperanto people from all over the world who may not otherwise have come to know about the language. The bad side is that budding Esperantists may find that there is nobody in their immediate vicinity with whom they can speak the language.

In such circumstances, it is quite understandable that there should be some difficulty in sustaining the initial interest.

There is nothing more useful and stimulating in language learning than being placed in a situation where you need to make a real-time response in the target language in interaction with other speakers of that language.

In Europe it is not too difficult to find a local club or Esperanto events to which you can easily travel. Additionally many people will find themselves not too distant from another country in which a different language is spoken.

The only solution that immmediately occurs to me for the isolated Esperantist in the larger countries of the world, who wishes to improve his active skills, is to observe his conversation in his mother tongue and then try to produce (in Esperanto) some of the phrases he has used.

Failing that, the picture description of the course 'Kio Okazas' here at Lernu looks a valuable exercise.

Anyway, there are two distinct aspects of active skill practice. Firstly finding something you want to say (an idea you want to express), secondly finding a way to formulate that idea in the target language. The difficulty in practising in isolation, in part, arises from the first stage.

Of course, for beginners their thoughts will come dressed up in their mother tongue so the exercise is largely one of translation. It is impossible for a beginner to think in the target language, and there is no sense in denying this. However many textbook translation exercises may seem unstimulating and academically dry, if unrelated to felt communication needs.

In face to face interaction in the target language the desire to communicate arises quite naturally.

I completely agree with the previous speakers and I speak of my own experiences when I say it is a big motivation to have some chat partners or any other persons or contacts you can practice, and more important, to use Esperanto with.

Also it is always advantageous to you having several little goals than just one big goal. Of course every Esperanto beginner aspires after being able to speak and understand fluently Esperanto but you shouldn't focus on that goal in the very beginning since it seems to be so far away. Instead focus on being able to understand Esperanto short stories or fairy tales, to have a small talk in Esperanto, and so on. This applies to learning vocabularies and grammar also. Make little steps and just take the next step if you have internalized the last step. Learning a language takes time and endurance.

If you look at babies, in their first 18 months they listen carefully to their environment before they try to say a real word. I don't want to compare any one with a baby, anyhow, that's how our brain works it needs to get used to this new environment. Try to combine any other activity you enjoy doing with learning Esperanto.

My personal motivation is my love and my interest in languages, culture and in getting to know different people from all over the world as it was in English, too.

erinja:"Being Colloquial in Esperanto" is an excellent book (and also available free online)

Where? I can't locate it anywhere other than Amazon or Google Books.

Vestitor:

erinja:"Being Colloquial in Esperanto" is an excellent book (and also available free online)

Where? I can't locate it anywhere other than Amazon or Google Books.

It's here, on D. K. Jordan's website.

Excellent! Thanks. Now if I'd just used common sense and googled the author's name...

To help you not to forget things you have learned, you may want to have a look at the spaced repetition learning technique and at programs like Supermemo or Anki.
I use Supermemo every day, for Esperanto and other languages, with pretty god results.