L. Adams
The Heretic’s Crash Course in Spanish Conversation and Culture gives you everything you need to ‘get by’ in Spanish in one to three weeks AND the confidence you need to do it.
There’s a 90%+ reduction in the learning curve for verbs. Focus on cognates teaches more vocabulary faster and easier. A unique pronunciation guide helps to create Spanish sounds ‘automatically’. In the entire book, there’s only ONE rule of grammar.
If you approach this course as an adventure in learning and as an opportunity to communicate in a language spoken by more than 500 million other earthlings, then you will enjoy and appreciate the radically different approach this book takes.
www.thelanguageheretic.com
The author has traveled extensively throughout Latin America and has resided for more than ten years in southern Spain.
By his own admission, he is “NOT a Professor of Language in Spanish”. Rather, he says, “I’m just a guy who has had a lifelong love affair with the Spanish language and culture and who knows how difficult it is for most people to bridge the gap between the desire to speak Spanish and actually speaking Spanish.”
He takes a unique approach that produces concrete, practical results quickly. He demonstrates that he understands how difficult it really is to learn a foreign language and shows a natural gift for making complex aspects of language simple to understand.
Vocabulary is THE single most important aspect of learning a language and being able to communicate in it.
Heretic’s Axiom
Words are to thinking as coat hangars are to clothes.
If you don’t have a hangar, you can’t hang your clothes.
If you don’t have the words, you can’t ‘hang’ your thoughts.
In fact, without an adequate vocabulary, there will be thoughts you will be incapable even of having, let alone expressing.
Therefore, WORDS empower thought and communication.
Without an adequate vocabulary with which to express both the concrete and the abstract, you will lack the basic necessities required for either forming or communicating ideas, concepts and/or facts.
Hence, a robust vocabulary is a necessity for anyone who wishes to be an intelligent thinker and/or an effective communicator.
Why do we want to focus on building vocabulary first in this course?
Children and Functional Illiterates.
Well, that’s the way children learn a language. They first build vocabulary. One word at a time.
Fact:
Children don’t even begin to study grammar until they already speak their native language fairly well and are then finally ready to begin to learn the written language.
Many people who are considered functionally illiterate (i.e., can neither read nor write) are still quite articulate with the spoken language. Why? Because they have a good vocabulary. It’s surely not because they understand the rules of grammar and verb conjugations, except intuitively.
As you well know, even very small children can communicate what they want with the use of even single word sentences, completely lacking in verbs.
“Biscuit me” (or, “cookie”), “milk”, “ball”, “doggie bow wow”, “car”, “Mikey go” (Whoops, a verb!), “me eat” (Oops, another verb!) are all effective communications by toddlers -- perhaps not as articulate as we would like, but communicative nonetheless.
