Do Learn In Your Car Spanish CDs Work ? | Language

By AdrianFletcher
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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 begin, I think if you only have an audio course then you are learning the language the way you learned your native language. Babies and children learn their mother tongue by listening and repeating what their mother (and other people) say to them. This is usually the method adopted with a Spanish MP3 or CD. Words and sentences are spoken and you listen and repeat. Although it is not exactly the same as learning as a child (as you may have your native language on the course too) it is an approximation of this and can be useful.

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.

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.

Having said this, once you have listened to the course repeatedly then it does get easier to multi task because you have learned much of the course already. You are just topping up your knowledge and don't have to concentrate as hard.

So can you learn Spanish from a CD or MP3 ? I think they can give you a grasp of the language but you have to learn a lot more before you will be considered fluent. Being fluent requires a fair degree of confidence too. And you can only have this confidence if you use the language regularly and have made a few mistakes along the way. Even so an audio course is a good starting point and is convenient for many people that have busy lives.

About the Author

Looking for a good Spanish course then visit http://rocketspanishreviewed.com . The site has reviews on three popular Spanish courses, including a detailed Rocket Spanish level 2 course review.

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