Learning foreign languages, or more precisely, my lack of ability to do so was the bane of both my High School and College educations. I failed two years of Latin at, of all places, Boston Latin School; barely passed one year of High School French due, primarily, to the good hearted nature of the teacher who appreciated my fondness for her Edith Piaf recordings and wound up graduating from college with a BS in English rather than the more usual BA because the catalog I entered under allowed for this option to graduate without having to complete the foreign language requirement customarily part of any Liberal Arts bachelor’s degree program. As an adult, I live in California where a good proportion of my fellow citizens have Spanish as their first language. I visited Costa Rica once, and in the two weeks I was there, I began to understand and speak “un poco d’espanol”, but it went away almost as soon as I got home.
In the past several years, I have spent some of my commuting time listening to recorded books on CDs – mostly for recreation. Then, recently, a strange thought struck me. Maybe I could actually use some of this time to learn something! Having tried and given up on at least seven CD and DVD Spanish programs over the years, I was not really hopeful of a good result, but felt obliged to give it another try. When I found this set on sale, I went ahead and sprung for it – and what a (pleasant) surprise I was in for!
The program’s developers seem to have taken into accont many of the factors that did not work to my advantage in the past. There are no tedious drills or boringly discreet lessons in grammar, vocabulary building or syntax. It is conversation taught much in the same way that we naturally acquire our own primary tongue. One word and idea at a time, by spoken word and by gentle and limited repetition and reinforcement. It is not that grammar and vocabulary are not taught – on the contrary, they are taught together with everyday conversation. The audio-only approach works better for me than the DVDs that became so ‘multi-media’ and interactive as to become extensively comlicated and not at all fun for me. The spoken language is approached ‘organically’ via simple but real-life situations. I think it IS a little distracting to do the program while I drive, but I expect it is less distracting than the cell phone! Also, CDs, unlike DVDs, can be played and listened to almost anywhere and anytime. Best of all, being a person of admittedly limited attention span, each lesson is precisely 30 minutes long. You are asked to do ONLY ONE each day.
Due to my poor history with past attempts to learn another language, I started this program with intensive self-doubt. I was sure I would need to listen to Lesson #1, for example, at least three times before venturing on into Lesson #2. But, guess what? It didn’t happen that way. Each lesson builds on the one before it – but very gradually and with a lot of touching back to what came earlier. I did not have to repeat a single lesson as I completed the entire course. I even find myself currently considering ordering the next level program in this series. I am proud of myself!
Now, it is doubtful that any Spanish speaking person will ever mistake me for a native Sppanish speaker. But, fooling someone into thinking so was not one of my goals. I had two of them. Simply stated, my goals were to 1) prove to myself that I could learn basic conversational Spanish, and 2) get good enough at it to find places I was looking for in Spanish speaking neighborhoods and countries and to understand at least the essence of things said to me by non-English speakers in Spanish. I am happy to report that both goals have been met. It’s a little hard for me to believe that I’m about to write the following sentence, but here goes: If I can learn Spanish by listening to and using this program, you can too!
