Sunday, Septemeber 13, 2015
It is important to study the best material.
Fluent In Spanish provides material that is commonly used. You will not be wasting your time studying with us.
Learning to read and write in Spanish will not improve your speaking skills, but if you learn to speak correctly, then your reading and writing will improve.
The course we are offering to you here was developed by the Foreign Service Institute of the United States government and is in the public domain.
This Spanish Basic to Advanced Course is designed for people who need to learn the language completely and quickly. It is a four level course that once completed will enable you to understand spoken and written Spanish. It will also allow you to actively engage in conversations with an abundant vocabulary of several thousand words.
We are offering it to you at a very reasonable price: US$27.
Biography of the editor of this Course
Don Casteel spent over twenty years in the Foreign Service of the United States, retiring with the rank of Consul General. Raised in a totally monolingual environment in Wyoming, Don achieved during his career full professional proficiency in five languages, including Spanish, as tested by the State Department’s Foreign Service institute. He spent much of his career in Latin America, and is a graduate of the Foreign Service Institute in Finnish and German (as well as Spanish). He also served as Deputy Director of Professional Development at the Foreign Service Institute. His experience in Latin America includes tours of duty at the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as well as at the American Consulates in Monterrey, Mexico and Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he held the office of Consul General. He also served as Director of Counter-terrorism programs for the whole U.S. Government, with responsibility for all of Latin America. Don has tried to bring both his language learning experience and his experience with the Latin culture to both students and those who use reference works. Among his innovations are using authentic historic illustrations to give a cultural and historical flavor to this course. He considers his work with this course as a continuation of a lifetime of public service.
Read now the introduction of this course contained in the first volume (Level One):
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.
Method of Teaching
The method is known as GUIDED IMITATION. It may appear to be new, but actually it has been used by a considerable number of teachers for many years, though its greatest popularity has come since the Second World War. 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 requires very little effort to produce it. This is OVERLEARNING. If a student overlearns every dialog and drill as he goes through this course, he 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 tempoof pronunciation must be the classroom standard; slowing down is, in this context, distortion.
The complete course consists of fifty-five units, each requiring some ten class and laboratory hours plus outside 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 (four college semesters). Either a native speaker or a teacher with very little accent in his Spanish is necessary as the model for imitation.
Pronunciation
The first two units are focused primarily on pronunciation problems. Drills on other aspects of the language are deliberately postponed because of the importance of developing good pronunciation habits from the very beginning of the course. Pronunciation is extremely important. It is the basis of all real fluency. A person is readily able to understand anything he can meaningfully say himself, if the correlation between the way he hears it and the way he says it is reasonably similar. Probably the more similar, the greater the ease of comprehension.
The basis of the student's imitation is of course the teacher, whose pronunciation, if he is a native speaker of an acceptable dialect of his own country, is the ultimate source of authority. The fundamental classroom procedure for learning new material throughout this book (except the reading materials) is repetition by the student in direct immediate imitation after the teacher. The imitative repetition may at first be done in chorus after the teacher, and subsequently by each individual, or it may be individualized from the start. In either case the student should wait for the teacher's model. Imitating after another student too frequently results in compounding the errors of both. If a person is fortunate enough to begin studying a second language before the age of eight or ten, the powers of imitation are normally sufficient to insure excellent results in pronunciation without resorting to technical explanations of what happens to various parts of the vocal apparatus. If occasionally an individual has managed to retain this gift that all of us had in childhood, so much the better, but most adults need more specific guidance based on an awareness of the particular problems of producing particular sounds. The drills and explanations in the first two units are devoted to the specific problems an English speaker with his English habits of pronunciation will have in accurately imitating the sounds and sequences of sounds of Spanish.
Aids to Listening
If speakers of English were not so highly literate, it might be possible to teach effectively without reference to any written symbolization, but most students are much more comfortable if some kind of representation of what they are imitating is also available for visual reference. There is, of course, a traditional writing system for Spanish which is used in all parts of the Spanish speaking world. It is a very adequate system for its purpose, which might be stated as providing visual cues for persons who already speak the language. For pedagogical purposes, a respelling, or phonetic representation of Spanish is also provided as a means of reminding the student of important features of the pronunciation which the traditional spelling system does not provide, such as significant sound distinctions, word groupings, intonation patterns, etc. The phonetic symbolization may at first look unfamiliar and somewhat foreboding, but this very unfamiliarity is a healthy reminder that none of the English sounds (which are so easily associated with the familiar letters of the alphabet) are exact duplications of the Spanish sounds to be mastered. This is also, of course, true in the respelling when familiar symbols are used: the appearance of the letter t does not mean the familiar English sound is indicated.
The intonations are marked in the respelling by a system of dots and accents placed at relative heights over the vowels. The patterns recorded in this way are not necessarily the only possibilities in spoken Spanish, but they are all normal patterns which have been thoroughly and widely tested.
The symbolization in the respelling will allow for a consistent interpretation of the pronunciation of any dialect area of the Spanish speaking world. For example, the /s/ symbol is to be interpreted as a sound similar to the 's' of 'sink' in Spanish America, but as the 'th' of 'think' in Central Spain. Other regional pronunciation features are similarly marked.
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.
Basic Dialogs
The basic dialogs are the core of each unit. These dialogs are recreations of the real situations a student is most likely to encounter, and the vocabulary and sentences are those he is most likely to need. The dialogs are set in a mythical country called Surlandia, which is described as a typical Latin American republic, insofar as it is possible to extract common features from so diverse an area. To further provide information in context, many of the notes suggest regional differences in both the language and the culture that will be encountered in various areas of Latin America and in Spain.
In the first part of the book new vocabulary is introduced mainly in the basic dialogs. Occasionally, in the illustrations of grammar points, new words are introduced in order to fill out patterns needed to do the exercises. New words are always clearly indicated by placing them on a line themselves, indented between the lines that are complete sentences. Since each new word is introduced in this fashion only once, the student should take pains to be sure he learns each word as it is presented. Careful pains have been taken to see that each word introduced will reappear many times later in the course, to help the student assimilate each word in a variety of contexts.
The student should very carefully learn both the literal meanings of each individual word or phrase that is given on an indented line and the meaning that appears in the full sentences. It should not be cause for concern if the meaning in context is strikingly different from the literal meaning. In the construction of each dialog, the Spanish was written first, and the corresponding English is its closest equivalent and not a literal translation. It is therefore not at all surprising if the Spanish does not seem to 'follow' the English.
The student should learn the basic dialogs by heart. If they are committed perfectly to rote memory, the drills will go easily and rapidly. Roughly half of the estimated ten hours that are spent in class on each unit should normally be devoted to the basic dialogs.
Drills and Grammar
Each unit can in some ways be likened to a musical theme with variations. The basic dialogs are the theme, and the drills provide the variations. Patterns of the structure of the language which have been learned in the basic sentences are expanded and manipulated in the drills.
There are four kinds of drills in each unit (three before Unit 6). Of these, two are designed to systematically vary selected basic sentences within the structure and vocabulary the student has already learned. And two are oriented toward the structure of the language to provide a systematic coverage of all important patterns.
All of these drills are planned to be easily and rapidly answered. They can be done orally and w1th only the teacher's book open. The method of conducting the drill is clearly shown by the format of the text, and all answers are available for the teacher's convenience and for the student to refer to when studying outside of class. If a drill is found to be hard, the difficulty probably reflects inadequacy in the mastery of the dialog and earlier drills. The drills are not problems to be worked out like mathematics, and the ability to do them, not to figure them, is indicated by the nature of the course. There are no tricks in them, and they are not intended as tests.
Pattern drills are presented in a format which provides both practice and explanation. First appears a presentation of the pattern to be drilled, then various kinds of drills, and finally a more detailed discussion of the pattern.
The presentation consists of a listing of basic sentences (and a few new sentences when necessary) which illustrate the grammar point to be drilled. Then there is an extrapolation which shows the relationships involved in the pattern in a two-dimensional chart, which is further explained by a short note or two. This presentation should provide sufficient clues to enable the student to understand and use the pattern correctly in the drills that follow.
These drills are mainly exercises making substitutions, responses, and translations, highlighting the grammar points covered. They are devised for oral answers to oral stimuli.
After the drills there is a more detailed discussion of the pattern drilled. These descriptions are written in a condensed and somewhat technical fashion. While an effort was made to keep these discussions clear and readable, it has to be recognized that a description of a language is a technical subject, and simplification can only be attained by sacrificing accuracy or at a cost of a great many more words than space allows. The student who works through these discussions by a careful reading will find that he is acquiring a set of analytical tools that will be useful throughout the remainder of his career of interest in language.
The student may notice slight differences in the respelling used in the aids to listening and in the grammar charts and discussions. The respelling useful as a guide to pronunciation for an English speaking student, records more details than a respelling to be used in grammar discussions where comparisons are made between Spanish forms, not between English and Spanish pronunciation.
Conversation
The conversation section of each unit is designed to help bridge the gap between the more or less mechanical stimulus-response activity of the drills and the skill of free conversation which is the ultimate aim of the course. These recombination monologues and dialogs extend the abilities of the student into ever more natural situations. The narrative is an anecdote type description of an event or situation which is then recast as a directed dialog in which the teacher acts as a prompter for students who take the parts as the actors. The prompter gradually withdraws his help so that in the end the conversation is carried on freely.
Readings
Beginning with unit 16 reading materials are introduced for outside preparation with perhaps some classroom discussion of the questions provided. These readings can also be used to provide content information for oral summaries.
Up through unit 30 the readings tell s continued story about an American family living in Surlandia, expanding on matters of interest hinted at in the basic dialogs. These require no new vocabulary except for easy and obvious cognate loan words that can readily be guessed. From unit 31 through 60 the readings are much longer and do introduce a considerable number of new words. This vocabulary is introduced through basic sentences which summarize the content of the following reading.
The readings are designed to provide information of interest and value about the culture which the Spanish language reflects and to provide insight into the practical problems an American is likely to encounter in adjusting to life in a Hispanic area.
Tags: Spanish language, English language, Spanish learning, learning Spanish, second language, language course, fluency, language teaching, English as second language, Spanish as second language, language acquisition, language resources, language skills, English language teaching, language processing, best language, language lesson, native Spanish, Spanish Phrasal Verbs, Spanish Vocabulary, Vocabulary in Spanish
It is important to study the best material.
Fluent In Spanish provides material that is commonly used. You will not be wasting your time studying with us.
Learning to read and write in Spanish will not improve your speaking skills, but if you learn to speak correctly, then your reading and writing will improve.
The course we are offering to you here was developed by the Foreign Service Institute of the United States government and is in the public domain.
This Spanish Basic to Advanced Course is designed for people who need to learn the language completely and quickly. It is a four level course that once completed will enable you to understand spoken and written Spanish. It will also allow you to actively engage in conversations with an abundant vocabulary of several thousand words.
- Level One of the Basic Spanish Course (Units 1-15) contains 30 mp3 files and one 700-page PDF file (237 MB Zip file).
- Level Two (Units 16-30) contains 36 mp3 files and one 717-page PDF file (318 MB Zip file).
- Level Three (Units 31-45) contains 31 mp3 files and one 615-page PDF file (336 MB Zip file).
- Level Four (Units 46-55) contains 112 mp3 files and one 464-page PDF file (405 MB Zip file).
We are offering it to you at a very reasonable price: US$27.
Biography of the editor of this Course
Don Casteel spent over twenty years in the Foreign Service of the United States, retiring with the rank of Consul General. Raised in a totally monolingual environment in Wyoming, Don achieved during his career full professional proficiency in five languages, including Spanish, as tested by the State Department’s Foreign Service institute. He spent much of his career in Latin America, and is a graduate of the Foreign Service Institute in Finnish and German (as well as Spanish). He also served as Deputy Director of Professional Development at the Foreign Service Institute. His experience in Latin America includes tours of duty at the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as well as at the American Consulates in Monterrey, Mexico and Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he held the office of Consul General. He also served as Director of Counter-terrorism programs for the whole U.S. Government, with responsibility for all of Latin America. Don has tried to bring both his language learning experience and his experience with the Latin culture to both students and those who use reference works. Among his innovations are using authentic historic illustrations to give a cultural and historical flavor to this course. He considers his work with this course as a continuation of a lifetime of public service.
Read now the introduction of this course contained in the first volume (Level One):
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.
Method of Teaching
The method is known as GUIDED IMITATION. It may appear to be new, but actually it has been used by a considerable number of teachers for many years, though its greatest popularity has come since the Second World War. 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 requires very little effort to produce it. This is OVERLEARNING. If a student overlearns every dialog and drill as he goes through this course, he 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 tempoof pronunciation must be the classroom standard; slowing down is, in this context, distortion.
The complete course consists of fifty-five units, each requiring some ten class and laboratory hours plus outside 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 (four college semesters). Either a native speaker or a teacher with very little accent in his Spanish is necessary as the model for imitation.
Pronunciation
The first two units are focused primarily on pronunciation problems. Drills on other aspects of the language are deliberately postponed because of the importance of developing good pronunciation habits from the very beginning of the course. Pronunciation is extremely important. It is the basis of all real fluency. A person is readily able to understand anything he can meaningfully say himself, if the correlation between the way he hears it and the way he says it is reasonably similar. Probably the more similar, the greater the ease of comprehension.
The basis of the student's imitation is of course the teacher, whose pronunciation, if he is a native speaker of an acceptable dialect of his own country, is the ultimate source of authority. The fundamental classroom procedure for learning new material throughout this book (except the reading materials) is repetition by the student in direct immediate imitation after the teacher. The imitative repetition may at first be done in chorus after the teacher, and subsequently by each individual, or it may be individualized from the start. In either case the student should wait for the teacher's model. Imitating after another student too frequently results in compounding the errors of both. If a person is fortunate enough to begin studying a second language before the age of eight or ten, the powers of imitation are normally sufficient to insure excellent results in pronunciation without resorting to technical explanations of what happens to various parts of the vocal apparatus. If occasionally an individual has managed to retain this gift that all of us had in childhood, so much the better, but most adults need more specific guidance based on an awareness of the particular problems of producing particular sounds. The drills and explanations in the first two units are devoted to the specific problems an English speaker with his English habits of pronunciation will have in accurately imitating the sounds and sequences of sounds of Spanish.
Aids to Listening
If speakers of English were not so highly literate, it might be possible to teach effectively without reference to any written symbolization, but most students are much more comfortable if some kind of representation of what they are imitating is also available for visual reference. There is, of course, a traditional writing system for Spanish which is used in all parts of the Spanish speaking world. It is a very adequate system for its purpose, which might be stated as providing visual cues for persons who already speak the language. For pedagogical purposes, a respelling, or phonetic representation of Spanish is also provided as a means of reminding the student of important features of the pronunciation which the traditional spelling system does not provide, such as significant sound distinctions, word groupings, intonation patterns, etc. The phonetic symbolization may at first look unfamiliar and somewhat foreboding, but this very unfamiliarity is a healthy reminder that none of the English sounds (which are so easily associated with the familiar letters of the alphabet) are exact duplications of the Spanish sounds to be mastered. This is also, of course, true in the respelling when familiar symbols are used: the appearance of the letter t does not mean the familiar English sound is indicated.
The intonations are marked in the respelling by a system of dots and accents placed at relative heights over the vowels. The patterns recorded in this way are not necessarily the only possibilities in spoken Spanish, but they are all normal patterns which have been thoroughly and widely tested.
The symbolization in the respelling will allow for a consistent interpretation of the pronunciation of any dialect area of the Spanish speaking world. For example, the /s/ symbol is to be interpreted as a sound similar to the 's' of 'sink' in Spanish America, but as the 'th' of 'think' in Central Spain. Other regional pronunciation features are similarly marked.
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.
Basic Dialogs
The basic dialogs are the core of each unit. These dialogs are recreations of the real situations a student is most likely to encounter, and the vocabulary and sentences are those he is most likely to need. The dialogs are set in a mythical country called Surlandia, which is described as a typical Latin American republic, insofar as it is possible to extract common features from so diverse an area. To further provide information in context, many of the notes suggest regional differences in both the language and the culture that will be encountered in various areas of Latin America and in Spain.
In the first part of the book new vocabulary is introduced mainly in the basic dialogs. Occasionally, in the illustrations of grammar points, new words are introduced in order to fill out patterns needed to do the exercises. New words are always clearly indicated by placing them on a line themselves, indented between the lines that are complete sentences. Since each new word is introduced in this fashion only once, the student should take pains to be sure he learns each word as it is presented. Careful pains have been taken to see that each word introduced will reappear many times later in the course, to help the student assimilate each word in a variety of contexts.
The student should very carefully learn both the literal meanings of each individual word or phrase that is given on an indented line and the meaning that appears in the full sentences. It should not be cause for concern if the meaning in context is strikingly different from the literal meaning. In the construction of each dialog, the Spanish was written first, and the corresponding English is its closest equivalent and not a literal translation. It is therefore not at all surprising if the Spanish does not seem to 'follow' the English.
The student should learn the basic dialogs by heart. If they are committed perfectly to rote memory, the drills will go easily and rapidly. Roughly half of the estimated ten hours that are spent in class on each unit should normally be devoted to the basic dialogs.
Drills and Grammar
Each unit can in some ways be likened to a musical theme with variations. The basic dialogs are the theme, and the drills provide the variations. Patterns of the structure of the language which have been learned in the basic sentences are expanded and manipulated in the drills.
There are four kinds of drills in each unit (three before Unit 6). Of these, two are designed to systematically vary selected basic sentences within the structure and vocabulary the student has already learned. And two are oriented toward the structure of the language to provide a systematic coverage of all important patterns.
All of these drills are planned to be easily and rapidly answered. They can be done orally and w1th only the teacher's book open. The method of conducting the drill is clearly shown by the format of the text, and all answers are available for the teacher's convenience and for the student to refer to when studying outside of class. If a drill is found to be hard, the difficulty probably reflects inadequacy in the mastery of the dialog and earlier drills. The drills are not problems to be worked out like mathematics, and the ability to do them, not to figure them, is indicated by the nature of the course. There are no tricks in them, and they are not intended as tests.
Pattern drills are presented in a format which provides both practice and explanation. First appears a presentation of the pattern to be drilled, then various kinds of drills, and finally a more detailed discussion of the pattern.
The presentation consists of a listing of basic sentences (and a few new sentences when necessary) which illustrate the grammar point to be drilled. Then there is an extrapolation which shows the relationships involved in the pattern in a two-dimensional chart, which is further explained by a short note or two. This presentation should provide sufficient clues to enable the student to understand and use the pattern correctly in the drills that follow.
These drills are mainly exercises making substitutions, responses, and translations, highlighting the grammar points covered. They are devised for oral answers to oral stimuli.
After the drills there is a more detailed discussion of the pattern drilled. These descriptions are written in a condensed and somewhat technical fashion. While an effort was made to keep these discussions clear and readable, it has to be recognized that a description of a language is a technical subject, and simplification can only be attained by sacrificing accuracy or at a cost of a great many more words than space allows. The student who works through these discussions by a careful reading will find that he is acquiring a set of analytical tools that will be useful throughout the remainder of his career of interest in language.
The student may notice slight differences in the respelling used in the aids to listening and in the grammar charts and discussions. The respelling useful as a guide to pronunciation for an English speaking student, records more details than a respelling to be used in grammar discussions where comparisons are made between Spanish forms, not between English and Spanish pronunciation.
Conversation
The conversation section of each unit is designed to help bridge the gap between the more or less mechanical stimulus-response activity of the drills and the skill of free conversation which is the ultimate aim of the course. These recombination monologues and dialogs extend the abilities of the student into ever more natural situations. The narrative is an anecdote type description of an event or situation which is then recast as a directed dialog in which the teacher acts as a prompter for students who take the parts as the actors. The prompter gradually withdraws his help so that in the end the conversation is carried on freely.
Readings
Beginning with unit 16 reading materials are introduced for outside preparation with perhaps some classroom discussion of the questions provided. These readings can also be used to provide content information for oral summaries.
Up through unit 30 the readings tell s continued story about an American family living in Surlandia, expanding on matters of interest hinted at in the basic dialogs. These require no new vocabulary except for easy and obvious cognate loan words that can readily be guessed. From unit 31 through 60 the readings are much longer and do introduce a considerable number of new words. This vocabulary is introduced through basic sentences which summarize the content of the following reading.
The readings are designed to provide information of interest and value about the culture which the Spanish language reflects and to provide insight into the practical problems an American is likely to encounter in adjusting to life in a Hispanic area.
-------------------------
Tags: Spanish language, English language, Spanish learning, learning Spanish, second language, language course, fluency, language teaching, English as second language, Spanish as second language, language acquisition, language resources, language skills, English language teaching, language processing, best language, language lesson, native Spanish, Spanish Phrasal Verbs, Spanish Vocabulary, Vocabulary in Spanish
