I've been thinking about this lady in San Miguel de Allende. I don't know her well. I've never met her, actually, but we have corresponded. She told me that she's tried learning Spanish. She's spent money she didn't have to attend classes that yielded little in the way of spoken fluency in the language. Her experience? It's very typical. You come to Mexico, you might even come to live, and take classes only to find very little, if any, success in learning the language. Imagine the despair, the frustration, and the emptiness.
I've seen a trend in the research I've been doing lately. I've been looking at American expats in many different countries involved from Foreign Service to simple retirement. The overwhelming common theme that dominates almost all of the Americans in foreign countries is the linguistic inability to communicate with the locals of the country.
Some Americans, let's face it, do not want to learn the language. If they don't have to, why bother? They associate with other monolingual Americans and locals who speak English. In Asia during the 1950's, the locals called the enclaved Americans The Social Incest Club.
What is so sad to me are those who want to learn the language and make a valiant attempt only to fail. They want to significantly expand the social group with which to have communion and fellowship but they can't. They are forced either to mingle with the Gringolandia "Social Incest Clubs" exclusively or they remain alone and isolated. These are motivated people who need to know a secret.
The "Translation Method" of language instruction, the method which dominates almost everywhere, by design cannot work to teach you spoken fluency.
What are all the different language instruction methods that have come down the pike in the last 100 years? Why are there so many methods and which ones, if any, really work?
NEXT: What is the translation method?
There are two additional courses that I recommend. In fact, they are so effective that these, along with The Learnables, I credit with helping on my road to a high degree of spoken fluency. These courses are Pimsleur Spanish and Learning Spanish Like Crazy. Without this trio of courses I would not be where I am today linguistically living in Mexico for going on five years.
These are two of the most popular home study courses that, if you believe the press put out by the folks at Learning Spanish Like Crazy, are in competition with one another. I don't think that the case, however, you will hear all manner of references to Pimsleur as "out-dated" or "teaches vocabulary that is no longer used." Neither is true.
While the methodology the courses use is virtually the same, Pimsleur definitely and unashamedly teaches a vocabulary that is used in formal settings in Spanish speaking countries. I have found what I learned very useful in Mexico, where I live, in situations in which I am with more educated Mexicans. But, when I hit the streets, the stores, the parks, Pimsleur fails me. That's where Learning Spanish Like Crazy comes in. Its approach or "slant" is in attacking the more vernacular or common street Spanish, and I might add, does a very good job. I was floundering until I graduated from Pimsleur to Learning Spanish Like Crazy.
Pimsleur, I think, is the best one to begin with then graduate onto Learning Spanish Like Crazy.
You should do these two courses. You should do them after The Learnables and before entering into a formal class setting whether in your home country or going to a country for a study abroad stint.
Here's the science behind the courses:
Principle of Anticipation - This memory technique will lead you through the listening and repeating of the native speakers on the CD's in such a way that you will know the answer when the narrator asks you how to say something you worked on two or three minutes previously.
Graduated Interval Recall - This step is to build a "Speech Center" in your brain. You don't know you are doing it but soon you don't think about it, you just know what the Spanish word is.
Core Vocabulary ? In both courses you develop the vocabulary you need to begin like a first grade native speaker.
Organic Learning ? You will be learning the grammar and vocabulary much in the same way as you did as a child learning your native language. There will be no mechanical memorizing of anything and soon you will have the language ingrained into your being.
What needs to be pointed out here is that you should go through each of these courses, The Learnables, Pimsleur Spanish, and Learning Spanish Like Crazy multiple times. This will imitate the same thing which happened in the mastering of your native language?repetition? and will become True Immersion in the language.
Remember that True Immersion is: " Older learners who have been exposed to a translation system rather than an immersion system are suspicious of an immersion system because it is not widely used. Furthermore, they seek translation that keeps them in the English way of thinking, preventing the second language from developing independently from the first language. Immersion systems have as their goal the elimination of internal translation.
Furthermore, immersion systems provide the individual with authentic second language, enabling the person to achieve native-like fluency in the second language. For example, when we say the alarm clock went off (rather than on) we do not challenge the phrase as native speakers. When we say the house is on the river (rather than next to the river) we accept the phrase because we know its meaning. " (Harris Winitz, Ph.D. Language Development, K.C., Mo.)