Adding in News in Slow Spanish to the Mix

Just finished lesson 16 of level 2.

I learned about using the ir + a construction in the past tense to convey the past tense of a verb in lesson 15.  I have a lot of apprehension about learning so many conjugations, so learning a simple way to express the past tense is really convenient.  That's two tenses, future and past that are effectively expressed using this construction.  Really fantastic!  Of course I still have my work cut out for me because I still have yet to learn the actual conjugation which I will be confronted with in the spoken form. However, just to be able to express the idea increases my abilities tremendously.  Was it taught like this in school?  I feel like it wasn't... wonder why.

Lesson 16 goes into the specific past tense conjugation of regular verbs.

I decided to buy a one-month subscription to News in Slow Spanish.  Looks like a great resource.  The podcasts are free on iTunes, but the subscription gives you the transcript of the sessions.  For $9/mo it's worth it.  I should learn more quickly reading + listening rather than listening only.  Is it too much information?  Lots of vocab and additional conjugations make much of the text difficult to follow, but I'm taking it as an immersion tactic.  The transcripts also have a fancy roll-over function which shows the English translation of the text.  Fluenz does recommend immersion by way of watching movies or TV en espanol, but watching full-speed stuff is going to go way over my head anyway.  I think it's a good idea to get as much out of the media that I can.  In learning Spanish via the news, I get to keep up on some current events.  What better way to have a context for learning?