Jim

Looking for a way to jump start your Spanish?  Well, I have an idea for you.  But first, a little background.

I think I go through stages in my learning of Spanish.  Most people probably do.  I have the "I just need to get out and talk to people lots" stage.  Then I have the stage where I need to understand how the grammar works.  Then there’s the stage when I just need to drill the basics into my head.

We went through a lot of grammar at the university we attended in Cuernavaca.  But you go through it pretty fast.  And personally, I need to hear something about a million times before it really sinks in.

So every once in a while it’s nice to go back to the basics.

Yeah, but what Basics?

Synergy Spanish is all about the basics.  But it’s not like the Spanish you might have learned in school.  You don’t come away knowing how to say "to eat white dog at the house".  You very quickly learn how to use complete sentences, with pronouns.  You know, you learn to say things that are actually useful.

When we trained short term teams, we started using a similar process to train team members in Spanish.  The idea is that you can learn blocks of text that fit together – phrases.  This is actually part of the way children learn.  They don’t learn how the grammar works (as important as that is).  They learn how things are said, and eventually learn to mix and match phrases.

For example, verb forms are tough in Spanish.  In English you say I eat, you eat, we eat, they eat, I ate, you ate, we ate…. In Spanish it’s yo como, tu comes, nosotros comemos, ellos comen, yo comí, tu comiste, nosotros comieron… yes, all different.  And it gets a lot more complicated from there.

But you can say a lot without getting into the complexity of verb forms.  If you learn some blocks of Spanish that you can mix and match, suddenly you can say 20 phrases, then 40, then 80.  With only a few words you can say a lot, if you do it right.

About this program…

The Synergy Spanish course comes with mp3s (or CDs) to listen to, with a native Spanish speaker (very important).  It also comes with 220 pages of written material, so that you use your eyes, ears and voice to reinforce the phrases.  In fact, after only a few lessons, you’ll be able to make a combination of over 88,000 phrases and sentences – not talking like a 2 year old, but using proper, commonly used Spanish grammar.  Seriously!

The course even includes a personal coach to help you when you get confused or stuck.

Obviously, this is all about learning the basics – words you use a lot.  You’re not going to learn an expanded vocabulary of 2,342 words.  So if that’s what you’re looking for, there are other excellent resources that would be better for you.

But if you want to really start to understand how to easily say thousands of common phrases – this is for you.

Ummm… why are you telling me this?

I’m taking all this time to write about this because I know a lot of people who travel to Mexico for holidays/vacation, or a missions trip, and all they can say is "thank you".  If they had known about this program before coming, and tried it out, they could have instead been saying,"Thank you!  I love Mexican food.  We’re going to go to the restaurant after we’re done working, would you all like to come with us?"

You have no idea how much that will enrich your trip.  Using the language, even just a little, is a huge advantage; many people don’t understand that.

These lessons are for the absolute beginner, or for those who have taken a little Spanish but are struggling to really speak.

If you’re thinking of coming to Mexico (and I hope you are), or have another reason why you want to communicate in Spanish, I highly recommend Synergy Spanish.  It’s available now for 300 students – if you’re thinking of travelling in this next year, give it a try (it’s actually got a money back guarantee – you can try it for 56 days to see if it really works for you).

Check out the official site here.  Y despues, ¡nos vemos en México!