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.

A definite advantage of an audio course is that it is a good simulation of the method we used to learn our native language. As a baby you learn your native language by listening and eventually repeating what you hear. This is the same method that is used with a Spanish CD or MP3. The words and phrases are listened to and repeated. There is a dialog that you take part in much like the dialog a baby has with it’s mother.

This is in sharp contrast to more traditional methods that require students to learn reading, writing and grammar at the same time. This is not an intuitive model as most kids learn these skills after they are fluent speakers. This teaching method works for some people but many get overwhelmed by the huge amount of knowledge and learning they have to take in and simply lose interest.

Secondly, learning from an audio CD can help your pronunciation. In many ways pronunciation is more important than grammar when you first start learning a language. If you want to speak to people to practice what you have learned (and you should), they will forgive your grammatical mistakes and get the meaning of your words. However if your pronunciation is bad they will simply not understand you no matter how sympathetic they are to you. This can really dent your confidence when first starting out. Believe me, talking to Spanish speaking people is the key to improving your skills so you don’t want to shy away from this because of poor pronunciation or a bruised ego.

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.

This is largely true. However I would say that when you are first listening to the audio you need to focus all your attention on the course and what is being said. Thus I don’t think you could use it in the car or at the gym initially.

If you have listened to the audios half a dozen times then it gets easier to multi task but initially I would say it is a no no.

So, do learn to speak Spanish CDs work ? I think they can certainly help. They can make it easier for a person to concentrate on two core skills rather than five. However there is a lot to learn before you could be considered fluent and most courses probably don’t go into the sort of depth that is required to get to this level. They do give you confidence to speak to Spanish speaking people, and to me, this is where you really start to learn Spanish. So they are a help and a good solution for many people that are time poor but still want to learn a new language.

Tags: Self Improvement

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