Learn Spanish from Native Speakers

Learn Basic Spanish

Language Experts agree, our courses are the most complete and thorough self-instructional language course available. Our competitors like Rosetta Stone would like you to believe learning a language is easy and fun. We think they are being dishonest. The truth about learning a language is it takes time. Repetition, vocabulary, sentence structure are the building blocks our course utilizes to teach a language. Lots of repetition drills. Dialog drills. Pronunciation drills. Vocabulary. Your investment in a language course is your time. The audio material is from native speakers and the corresponding textbook is your guide. There are no short cuts. Our Methodology, Guided Imitation, sets the student on a path to a certified level of fluency. Our courses are the most comprehensive self instructional language material available on the market.

The Spanish Basic Volume I contains Units 1 through 15 and comes with 15 CD's and a 690 page textbook.

The Spanish Basic Volume II contains Units 16 through 30 and comes with 21 CD's and a 718 page textbook.

The Spanish Basic Volume III contains Units 31 through 45 and comes with 16 CD's and a 580 page textbook.

The Spanish Basic Volume IV contains Units 45 through 55 and comes with 18 CD's and a 392 page textbook.

The Spanish Basic Combo contains Units 1-55 and comes with 70 CD's and four textbooks.

The materials in this book have been developed to present Spanish as a spoken language, and the skills of understanding and speaking are accordingly emphasized. The method of presentation will likely be new to students acquainted with more traditional methods of language teaching. In order to understand the materials, one must first understand the-method upon which they are built.

The method is known as GUlDED IMITATION. Its goal is to teach one to speak easily, fluently, with very little accent, and to do this without conscious effort, just as one speaks his own language without conscious effort.

There are two very important aspects of this method. First, learning a relatively small body of material so well that it requlres very little effort to produce it. This is OVER LEARNING. If a student overleans every dialog and drill as he goes through these books, they will almost certainly experience rapid progress in learning the language.

The second aspect is learning to authentically manipulate the sounds, sequences, and patterns of the language. The important implication here is the reality of both the model and the imitation. The model (teacher, recording, etc.) must provide Spanish as people really speak it in actual conversations, and the student must be helped to an accurate imitation. Above all, the normal tempo of pronunciation must be the standard; slowing down is, in this context, distortion.

The complete course consists of sixty units, each unit requires ten hours of study to master. The course is a six-hundred-hours course which may be studied intensively over a period of about six months; or may be spread at the rate of a unit a week over a period-of sixty weeks

The acquisition of a good pronunciation is first of all the result of careful listening and imitation plus whatever help can be obtained from initial pronunciation drills and description, and from the cues provided for continuing reference by the aids to listening. It is well to remember that a sizeable investment in pronunciation practice early in the course will pay handsome dividends later; correct pronunciation safely relegated to habit leaves one's full attention available for other problems of learning the language.

Every unit (after the first two) is organized in the same way: part one is the basic dialog with a few pertinent notes; part two is grammar drills and discussion; part three is a set of recombination narratives and 'dialogues; part four, beginning in Unit. 16, is readings.