"You will NOT lose your accent in 28 days,"  I tell prospective clients who might have seen ads making this promise. "The only thing you will lose is your money!"  So I was very skeptical when I checked out a language learning website that promised mastery of   "beginning level modern Greek" in two weeks with eight thirty-minute audio CDs. However with free shipping and  a cost of only $9.95, what could I lose? I have booked a tour to Athens and the Greek Islands in late May with a lady friend and I knew that being able to speak even a very little Greek would enhance our touring and shopping experience.  

   The discs arrived and I knew two things immediately:  First, they were of a very high quality with ONLY audio teaching, the way language is learned. The narrator had flawless Standard English but the actual Greek was spoken by natives. There was a lot of repetition and review and slow teaching of words that were long, complex sound sequences with zero resemblance to the English equivalent. Secondly, there was NO way that my senior brain could retain the carefully measured content of one thirty-minute CD in one day. NO WAY! I would remember the English meaning but completely forget the Greek word ten minutes after it was first introduced. Had I failed? That was on December 2. By January 21, playing just one thirty-minute CD over and over for an entire week, only while I was driving, listening, repeating, correcting, repeating, I had mastered the entire contents of four hours of Modern Greek and was trying it out on my travel friend.  So had I failed?