Do Learn In Your Car Spanish CDs Work ?
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There are plenty of language self learning programs on the market these days. Some are quite expensive and some seem like a reasonable price but surely the ultimate judge of value for money is whether the product has managed to teach you to speak Spanish. Can you learn to speak Spanish from just a book and/or a CD or MP3 ? Well, kind of. This article will cover the advantages and disadvantages of using an audio language course to learn Spanish.
To start off, an audio course is a very intuitive way to learn a new language. People learn their native tongue as a baby or small child by listening and repeating the words that are spoken to them. This is the same method in a learn Spanish CD or MP3. Although an audio course can never completely replicate the way you learned as a baby, it is a good approximation of this method.
This is at odds with more common language learning methods that teach reading, writing and grammar at the same time as listening and speaking skills. This can often overwhelm the average student and they will get bored with learning the new language because they feel they are not making any progress.
A second benefit of an audio MP3 or CD is that it will teach you how to pronounce words and sentences correctly. This is vital, more so than grammar, when you are first learning because you will be able to speak with people and be understood. Speaking to people is key to consolidating your skills and having the confidence to take you abilities to a fluent level.
Lastly, a great benefit of a learn Spanish CD or MP3 is that it is easy to use. The classic example of this is listening to the course as you drive to work each morning. You could also listen to it in the gym or when cooking a meal.
To some extent this is true. However, in my experience you can’t devote your full attention to more than one thing, especially when it comes to a new language. Michel Thomas has many audio only courses and he advises (in the introduction to the courses) that you don’t do anything else but listen to the audio. I tend to agree with him, especially on the first few listens.
However, if you have listened to the course often then it gets easier to multi task but to begin with it is tough and you would probably save as much time just doing one thing at a time.
So can you learn to speak Spanish with a CD or MP3 course ? I think they are really useful in teaching you the language. They will not make you fluent but they will give you some skills that can help you get to that kind of level. They break the learning process down into more sizable chunks. They concentrate on getting 2 core skills right rather than hitting you with five areas of learning. They also give you some confidence to speak to native Spanish speaking people. To me this is where the real learning comes from and having this confidence is essential.
