This morning while working in my garden, I listened to the first lesson of a program called Platiquemos Español. I had bought it in 2003, and worked with it during a time that we were roaming around Mexico in our little motorhome. At the time, I was rather overwhelmed by how much Spanish I didn’t know, and I was pretty diligent in working through the lessons.
So today I thought it would be fun to see what I thought of it, after steeping myself lately in information about how you can best learn Spanish fast, and after spending most of my time in Mexico for several years now.
The program began with some common greetings and expressions. I was thinking that it was rather like Rocket Spanish, only not as logically built up into conversations.
But very soon it shifted to pronuniciation drills, “contrasting a and o under weak stress,” for example. I weeded my broccoli and transplanted tomatoes while repeating “mala” and ‘malo,” or any number of other duos. This went on and on. And on and on.
I thought it was boring.
I didn’t know a lot of the words, and of course a beginner would only recognize some that are the same in English. Evidently the purpose was to educate your ear to the sounds of Spanish.
I didn’t think I was getting anything out of this drill until it got to words of of four or five syllables. There were some real tongue twisters in there, and that was kind of fun. The lesson ended with an old popular song from Mexico, and that was enjoyable too.
Platiquemos Español is a makeover of the old FSI (US Foreign Service Institute) lessons for learning Spanish that must go back more than half a century. You still can find the FSI programs around the net for free, but don’t bother as the sound quality isn’t up to modern standards. And as I just found out, the pedagogy is rather traditional.
I felt like I was back in school. I also thought that someone new to speaking Spanish could drown in all the words they didn’t know.
(The program came with some PDF files, but I have changed computers several times since I bought Platiquemos Español, and it seems I didn’t copy the PDFs over at some point.)
For this kind of program — an audio-based one you listen to on an ipod, mp3 player, or CD player — I think you are much better off with Pimsleur Spanish or Rocket Spanish. The links take you to my reviews of these programs.
