Study New Languages

There are many different Spanish Language courses available today.  Many are online, many are expensive, but there are some that are cheaper (or free).  Here I will give links and what I’ve found about the various courses available.

I hesitate to put a single book listed here as a “course”, but there are some books that I have that didn’t fit well in the reference section and can really be treated as a course to at least improve your understanding of Spanish.

I like Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish: A Creative and Proven Approach mainly for it’s simplification of the rules. Among other things this book helps you understand how many Spanish words you already know, but it also helps you get some of the fundamental rules down. I think this was the first Spanish “textbook” (and I use the term a bit loosely) I used since High School. It gives you some exercises to write and work from notecards as you go through and really helped me to do a thorough review and refresh of what I knew (or thought I knew) from High School. This was the first book I got with an attempt to improve not just my vocabulary, but my grammer as well.

Another good book that helps you improve your Spanish is Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish. Among other things this book helps you to avoid the common mistakes English speakers learning the Spanish language make (false friends for instance – yo-ismo for another example.). It also gives you an idea of “filler words” various words NOT to say. I think one of my favorite quotes from the book was a chapter on filler words (equivalents of um, well….) I think they say something to the effect – yes you’ll still sound like an airhead just as much as you would in English, but you’ll sound like a more fluent airhead… Entertaining book on improving your Spanish skills.

Okay… here is a big one. I am still working my way through the second level of this, but it’s free and available from online. This is the full FSI (Foreign Service Institute) program developed by the government some years back. It is a bit dated, but still a very good course. If I understand many of the audio tape based (or cd) courses out there are versions of this. Some are duplicates (and quite expensive) some are just re-recordings or slight updates. Anyway, legally these original sources are available online for free because the people that have recorded and scanned the materials have posted them as such. FSI Spanish (I’ve been working through the Programmatic Spanish – mostly through the second level when I got out of the every night routine.)

I’ve heard an awful lot about Rocket Spanish, it’s an audio course primarily, but there are transcripts. It’s 31 lessons with an average of about 25 minutes each. In addition to that component, there are grammar lessons (targeted to beginner, intermediate and advanced speakers, so there’s something for everyone.) Also, there’s software to help learn vocabulary and software to help recognize spoken Spanish. They offer a money back guarantee and have a low refund rate. They offer a few free samples. The price for the download version is $99.95 and a 60 day money back guarantee. Even though I feel pretty good with the FSI Spanish course and where I am, I would be curious to try this course. There is a 6 day free course available from them using this form below:

YES! I want to claim my free instant access to the Rocket Spanish 6 day Learn Spanish course ($27 value).

Your Name:
Your Email Address:
(This is a private and fully protected mailing list. You can unsubscribe at any time).

I’ve also learned recently that Rocket Languages has introduced Level 2 of their Spanish Language Course: Rocket Spanish Level 2 – it includes 28 tracks at an average of 40 minutes each. (With transcripts.) It’s an instant download and they have the 60 day refund if you’re not satisfied. $99.95 as the original was.

I’ve also had a newsletter from Learning Spanish Like Crazy. They seem to have a pretty good course as well, I’ve managed to catch free clips here and there from the newsletter. They make use of native speakers at full speed. The real focus here is to speak it like a native.

For other course resources, you might be interested in my “Learn Spanish Online” page that I’ve used to collect resources on my onlineradiotv.com site. (I know – too many hobbies – some of them overlap as well. I guess you could say this site is a “child” of that one.)