Learn Spanish: DVDs, CDs and More
It would seem that the entire world is determined to learn a new language, with it being one of the most used New Years resolutions there is. If you’ve decided to learn Spanish, you now have to decide how to go about learning it. Due to the popularity of learning a new language, there are literally thousands of teaching guides and aids available, all designed to help you effectively teach yourself Spanish.
One of the most recognisable forms of self-tuition is audio books. These generally involve following a teaching program via CD or MP3. The books come with work sheets and, usually, oddly optimistic promises of your chances of success. They can be quite expensive, and their results vary greatly.
If you’re a total beginner, in truth self-tuition is not really an option. To learn a new language, you need to be able to ask questions, go for verifications and be hearing the language spoken over and over again. While the tapes can offer the latter part of this, they offer no chance for you to pause and ask for something to be clarified.
This does become less of an issue as time, and your grasp on the language, progresses. But mostly people find they do need active teaching – via night school or private tuition – to really turn basic Spanish phrases into conversation. As the tapes are set to a standard syllabus which you must follow, you will not learn how to structure sentences yourself – most tapes work off the concept of you hearing a phrase, learning what it means and then repeating it. Which is all very well, but none of this is going to get you fluent in Spanish. Passable, yes, but for a true genuine ability to speak Spanish well, you will probably find you need a teacher of some kind, at least some of the time.
This doesn’t mean the world and market of audio books, CDs and DVDs is a complete waste of time. These can be used to great effect as an addition to your personal learning, allowing you to expose yourself to the language outside of strict classes. However, if you wish to learn a language from scratch using just these things, you will need endless amounts of patience and perhaps even endless amounts of time.
