Spanish Language Software Reviews

Archive for July, 2009

What’s The Best Way? To Learn Spanish Online

Thursday, July 30th, 2009
There are many opportunities to learn Spanish online these days, and it’s a great way to get started with any language. With all of the options now available, it can be a fairly confusing task to choose which system to go with. How do you decide?

First of all, you’re going to need the answers to a couple of questions:

Why do I want to learn Spanish?

This is important because some Spanish courses are more suited to conversational Spanish, which will be useful if you’re learning Spanish for a trip you’re planning to take, or to be able to talk to Spanish speakers wherever you are. Other courses, however, are more academic, and will be useful for those wanting an online Spanish course to help them with their Spanish language studies. There are many options for each of these types of course, and the cost can vary wildly, which brings us to our next important question…

How much will it cost to learn how to speak Spanish online?

For those who are completely new to learning new languages, you may want to try a few different systems out before you decide on one that works for you. We all learn in slightly different ways, and a course that works really well for one person may not work at all for another. With this in mind, it’s a good idea to test out the free options first, and try out a paid one when you know more about which systems suit your learning style.

Many of the paid online Spanish courses have free trials. These can be a great way to get started and test out the course at the same time. Take advantage of these free trials and free courses and try before you buy.

Having said that, please don’t overload yourself by trying different courses out at the same time! This never works - you’ll simply lose focus and not get very far with any of them. This is one of the biggest mistakes that people make when trying to find a course that works for their own learning style. Try one at a time, if it’s not working for you, ditch it and move on to the next.

When you find a course that you like, stick with it. Don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to cover the whole thing in a week! (This happens a lot). Take it easy, and get into a routine that allows you to spend a little time each and every day working on your Spanish speaking - little and often is the way to approach this.

As I said above, there are a few totally free ways to learn how to speak Spanish online as well as plenty of free trials for the paid courses. There’s a neat little 12 day course, which is completely free, at Spanish Lessons For Free - I’m not sure I like the way that Pinata looks at me though!

Spanish Made Easy with Rocket Spanish

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
Today, speaking two languages is a good thing because you get more travel opportunities from your work or you get more job offers if you can converse in more than one language.

Especially now with the flourishing of the ICT and the BPO industries respectively, where a lot more multi-lingual work opportunities are offered, learning and mastering a second language will surely put you ahead of everyone else.

Different from traditional schools, there are other ways for you to learn Spanish - ways that are easier for you and likewise cheaper. You can learn at your own tempo and you won’t have to worry about being self-conscious practicing your Spanish in front of everyone in the class.

Clickbank is a seller online of different items that covers almost everything that you could ever need or want. One of their bestsellers is the Rocket Spanish tutorial that will teach you everything you need to be able to converse in Spanish eloquently and with ease.

Where others have failed, Rocket Spanish has succeeded. It has perfected the method of teaching Spanish to beginners as well as those who want to take a refresher course on their Spanish skills.

The module was created by Mauricio Evlampieff - himself a former student of learning the English language. He discovered a superior way to teach Spanish without the perplexing jumble of words that you don’t even remember how to say at the end of the day.

The Rocket Spanish Audio CD tutorial will take you from the basics of the language up to where you will feel confident enough to converse in the language without the help of your tutorial CDs or notes.

Now, if you are a bit hesitant about the whole online tutorial thing and especially the system by which Mauricio Evlampieff claims you’ll learn to speak the language with ease and comfort by the end of eight weeks; there’s a Free Trial that they are giving away.

This will convince you that Rocket Spanish can really assist you with your Spanish - whether in school, at work, or for a trip to a Spanish-speaking location. The Six-Day Free Trial will be found on their link included at Clickbank.com. You just have to sign-up to get your free tutorial and you’re on your way to learning a few Spanish words for starters.

Improve Your Spanish Pronunciation - Getting the Rhythm

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
by Martha Benitez

You have decided that you are going to learn Spanish and that is a very commendable task but you still need to learn to speak it well. It is such a joy when you speak to someone who has learned a foreign language and can speak it well. The first thing you think is that person has learned well, and worked hard at practicing speaking the language. You do not necessarily think that this person is smarter because they can speak the language so much better than other people. It is not a matter of intelligence but rather the fact that they worked hard at this task and became a good speaker.

If you want your speech to sound as natural and intelligible as possible, the rhythm of your speech can be just as important as, say, the quality of individual vowels. As an illustration of the importance of rhythm in speech, think in English about how you’d differentiate a ‘lighthouse keeper’ from a ‘light housekeeper’. In this article, I’ll outline two important elements of rhythm and how they work in Spanish: syllabification and stress. Syllabification is the process of organising the sounds of a word or utterance into syllables, and can differ a little from language to language. Informally, when we clap a word or phrase, we clap once to each syllable.

Syllabification: a key to giving your Spanish a more natural rhythm is to understand a process called diphthongisation: that is, making two vowels share a single syllable. Whenever you see a ‘i’ or ‘u’ vowel next to another vowel in Spanish, you need to think about diphthongisation.

There are many websites that can help you to learn such as Latin Chat. The website can help you to master the basics of Spanish while having fun. It may be a challenge but after just a few lessons, you should be able to have meaningful conversations with others. Tutors can be found in almost any city in the US today.

When learning a second language, it is imperative that you know how the word comes out of ones mouth. You can also tell how their tongue accentuates the word. In the Spanish language, Latin speakers talk with their tongue right behind their teeth. This is what helps give their words a much more crisper sound then that of English words. In English, our tongue tends to stay in the back of our throat and that is why it is hard for most North Americans to speak the language spoken in Central and South America.

So in careful speech, ‘poeta ingls’ (”English poet”) would be syllabified ‘po.e.ta.ing.ls’, in five syllables, but in normal, relaxed speech would tend to be ‘poe.taing.ls’; ‘come y toma’ (”eat and drink”) would be ‘co.mei.to.ma’; ‘mi amigo’ would be ‘mia.mi.go’ etc. The word ‘zanahoria’ (”carrot”) is often pronounced as three syllables, ‘za.na(h)o.ria’: as mentioned before, the ‘h’ isn’t pronounced and doesn’t affect syllabification.

About the Author:

Learn Spanish Online vs Live Spanish Classes

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Learning Spanish online is starting to become one of the most popular ways of learning spanish.

Traditional methods which have been used for years are outdated and slow compared to the methods used online. There has been a major growth in the amount of people turning to the internet to learn a language. Online methods are far superior to the older methods because of the speed that they can teach you a language

Let’s face it, the old methods were dull and boredom was a frequent visitor to your brain as you tried to learn. Learning from books used to be the name of the game. This mainly required you to white out words or sentence’s and then try to remember them by repeating them again, and again, and again. If you spent enough time doing this, something was bound to sink in sooner or later. However it wasn’t very enjoyable.

The best way to learn something is to have some fun while you are doing. This stops your brain getting fed up and refusing to learn. Who wants to learn something that sounds boring? Learning Spanish online takes all this away from the learning process, and makes it more fun and more exciting. This is the optimal mindset to learn.

There is no shortage of online Spanish courses. At the top of the tree you will find Rocket Spanish, Rosetta Stone, and Tell Me More Spanish. These are all great language programs but it is hard to beat the value and effectiveness of Rocket Spanish. All these programs use techniques that make you use your eyes, ears, mouth, and emotion. This gives you so much more in terms of learning the language quickly.

Research carried out for a number of years suggests that the ability to learn is increased tremendously if a person can learn through the various senses. This has changed the face of learning languages. So much so that a lot of people can hold conversations in a matter of months, instead of years.

A good Spanish program will provide you with the ability to use a number of senses. It will do this through the use of pictures, audio, games, and text. This method allows your brain to retain far more information than it could by just learning from a book. This means a faster rate of learning.

Also with these types of programs you are never waiting for a lesson. It’s completely up to you when you learn, so you march to your own tune. The more time that you decide to put into the learning, the faster your results will arrive.

There is no more effective or quicker way to teach yourself Spanish than a good online learning program. It is interesting, it is fun, and it is very effective.

What To Look For In Learn To Speak Spanish Software

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Most people feel that the best way to learn how to speak Spanish is the go and live in a Spanish speaking country for a while (6 months or longer). It makes a lot of sense. You will be motivated to learn the language and you will be able to use what you learn. These are two of the problems of learning a new language in your native country - lack of motivation and opportunity to use (and reinforce) your new skills. However, it is not practical for many people with jobs and families to move to a Spanish speaking country so what are the alternatives. One such alternative is learn to speak Spanish software. This article will be a general learn to speak Spanish software review.

To begin with, why do people want to learn Spanish ? Well, in the United States, many people of Latin American origin are settling or migrating. This opens up opportunities to speak to these people and even do business with them. It can improve career prospects as Spanish becomes the second language of the country. Spanish is the second most diversely spoken language in the world too, so it may come in handy for any exotic vacation you have planned.

So the popularity of learn to speak Spanish software is down to a couple of factors. The first is that it gives the person using the software choice. They can use it whenever they have some free time or they can set out a schedule, like an hour a night for a few months. This flexibility is a great benefit of software and other self study courses over, say, a class. This suits many people who lead busy lives, however using it infrequently won’t produce good results.

And possibly the most important reason why learn to speak Spanish software is popular is because it is as close to immersion Spanish as you can get if you use it properly.

A software course can use the power of the multimedia features of a computer to make the learning process more vivid and memorable. It can use vision and sound to bring conversations to life. You can learn cultural aspects of countries where Spanish is spoken. You can practice reading and writing with direct feedback from the computer tutor.

Some software can act as a good teacher too. It can motivate and keep the student interested in their topic. Two ways in which the software can do this is to use games as a teaching tool. I’d say the aim of learn Spanish games is to help you learn without you thinking that you are learning. Some games can do this and have an addictive quality that makes you play them over and over again.

A software program can also keep the student going by providing feedback and measuring progress. People can get demoralized when taking on a large challenge like learning a new language. Without some encouragement they are just as likely to pack it in or find other things to do with their time, like watch tv. A software program can give feedback and tell the student how they have progresses and where they have to go next to improve.

Learning to speak Spanish software can make attaining new language skills far more enjoyable and easier than you might imagine. A good package can cover all the basic skills needed and also motivate you to keep going. these are the key elements to any learn to speak Spanish software.

About the Author:
© Spanish Language Software Reviews 2010