When people ask me in Spanish, “Como aprendiste español?” (How did you learn Spanish?) I have to answer “en mi coche, con la grabadora.” (in my car with the cassette recorder). I did this back in the 1980s. I had a long (25 miles) commute and I hate wasting time so it wasn’t long before I was looking for interesting cassettes. Fortunately the library had two Berlitz Spanish programs on cassettes, one for beginners and another for intermediate level students. Both programs had interesting (and often very amusing) story lines. The intermediate program told the story of a young American importer, Ricardo Gonzalez, who flies down to Mexico to meet a Mexican business associate. Through Ricardo we meet many interesting people: Ricardo’s Mexican business associate’s daughter, Consuelo, whom Ricardo eventually woos, her unscrupulous cousin, Faustino, who is always involved in some kind of intrigue, Consuelo’s rich aunt, who decides to will to Faustino not money or land, but rather a collection of classic books in Spanish ”so that he will learn to cultivate his mind.” It’s a clever story and I never tired of listening to it. There were grammar explanations as well and some drills, but I never felt that they were a pain or a chore. I worked with my Berlitz program for many years, listening to them carefully and taking great care to imitate the sounds and inflections that I was hearing. My accent kept getting better and better. I could hear the improvement for myself. The many hours I spent listening to cassettes gave me confidence and that served me well when it came to speaking with people in real life situations
Sooner or later I bought a grammar book and read it through. This helped me to understand the overall structure of the language. I would recommend reading at least one grammar book, preferably an interesting one. This is an important part of any good program for learning Spanish.
I should mention in passing that years later, around 1995, I discovered the “Destinos” Spanish program on DVD. (Google it for samples.) Technology had advanced from cassettes to DVDs so you could actually see the characters and where they lived. What an improvement that was! “Destinos” is a winner and I recommend it highly. The protagonist is a lady lawyer and as she works on a mysterious, complicated law case she travels to many Spanish-speaking countries. The story line is first rate. Both the Berlitz cassettes and “Destinos” give you cultural insight: you learn how people think and express themselves. Such knowledge gives you the confidence to engage in real live conversations with native speakers.
In my Spanish program two other activities helped me a lot. The first was listening to songs. (The other was traveling to Mexico on a regular basis and speaking Spanish whenever the situation presented itself.) Way back in the 1980s I became aware of the wealth of beautiful songs that existed in the Spanish-speaking world. On my 25 mile commute I soon added Eydie Gorme and the Trio Los Panchos to my listening and imitating program. Songs like Solamente una vez, Sabor a mi, Caminito and Piel Canela were revelations to me. I was charmed by their beauty and I listened to them over and over and over again. This wasn’t a chore, believe me. I was “gaga”. Before long I had them memorized, (and I wasn’t even trying to commit them to memory). This activity helped me to acquire a good accent and it opened my eyes to new vocabulary and expressions. It helped me to gain control of the verb tenses (such a crucial part of learning a language). Finally, it showed me typical Latin-American (and Spanish) attitudes towards love and life and opened up a whole new world of music and ideas for me. I had always loved the great popular songs of our own culture (songs like Stormy Weather, Cry me a River, As time goes by, The Summer Wind) but the songs in Spanish were different in some ways and that gave them an unusual dimension, e.g. many used religious language and were grounded in Catholicism. That was an interesting change from what I was used to.
So that is more or less how I taught myself Spanish (and of course I still have a great deal to learn). Sooner or later (late 1980s) I put together a course on songs in Spanish and started teaching songs in senior centers and other such venues. Over the years I acquired more and more material and eventually (October, 2015) published a book on the subject: “Love Songs in Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning.” I also recorded a CD to sell along with the book. (See my website www.godwinbooks.com). I was interviewed about this book on CHEK radio in Victoria, B.C. on November 11, 2015. Here is the url. I hope it works.My next blog will be a description of the songs in my “Love songs in Spanish” book.
THE TWENTY-FIVE SONGS IN “Love songs in Spanish” and what they are about.
Love Songs In Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning 