Learn Spanish from Native Speakers

Learn Basic Spanish Volume I

The Spanish Basic Volume I contains Units 1 through 15 and comes with 15 CD's and a 690 page textbook or 1 DVD with audio on MP3 and textbooks in a PDF file.

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