How Can Spanish Audio Programs Help You Speak Spanish Fast and Easy?

  
Audio recordings have become an inseparable part of any comprehensive Spanish language self-study for years. No conversational skills can be developed without audio lessons, so audio goes along both with learning books and software learning tools.

The popularity of audio learning programs should be no surprise as spoken Spanish is the primary form of communication for Spanish speaking people. It is also the way every child learns its native language.

What is more, during the last 20-30 years the technology of audio recording and reproduction has made a great progress and has reached a fair balance between audio quality and cost. Listening and talking are much more natural than any written and readable form of text, and the rapid advance of technology allows making various audio products related to Spanish language learning really accessible for most of the people.

Benefits:

•  Audio programs often provide best value for the price. Their format is the perfect learning Spanish solution for people who are not fond of computers and prefer traditional forms of training.

• Pronunciation is taught much more successfully compared to textbook learning. Due to lack of a book, a learner has no other choice than to play the lesson many times again and again. What is more, correct pronunciation can not only be heard but also practiced during that time. A better Spanish pronunciation would often give you much more self-confidence when communicating with Spanish speaking people.

• You develop your Spanish listening skills by intense listening to the provided audio recordings. You could train your ears and listening habits, so that you don’t have any problems when listening to the radio or watching TV. What also matters however is that you gradually become more and more courageous when start talking to Spanish natives about various kinds of topics.

• Audio recordings in Spanish are very easy to use, although unlike the book, you do need some special equipment – a cassette-player or a CD player and a pair of headphones. You could listen while walking, while traveling, while commuting or in your car.

Disadvantages:

• Audio lessons do not contain sufficient amount of Spanish vocabulary. No matter whether any grammar is present or no (that is, whether it’s the immersion method or the audio-lingual approach), there is limited amount of words. This could easily be explained with the limited time per lesson, while in a book there is much more space for more content.

• Additional written materials and resources might be needed, since there are usually no explanations about some language details – for example a grammar reference book, a phrase book or a course book. Sooner or later, every student who starts with audio course, is likely to come to developing his reading skills as well.

• Audio lessons are less effective than Pimsleur method or language immersion in view of talking Spanish. The reason is that most of audio recordings train mostly enough your listening skills, without providing good enough opportunity for talking – in the two mentioned methods you fall into the company of native Spanish speakers which is the most effective way to learn speaking Spanish as fast as possible.

• Repeating and replaying the same recordings to memorize and learn how to apply the material successfully is inevitable.

Among the best Spanish audio program representatives are Rocket Spanish, Synergy Spanish (both embedding the situational approach) and Pimsleur Spanish (based on audio-lingual approach).

All the software learning platforms use audio recordings intensively as part of their multimedia structure.

Audio is a really important component of language learning, however it is most effective when used with some additional resources that stimulate and develop language skills other than conversational.

For this reason, even in the case of the most popular audio-lingual courses, the combination of a book and audio is the most powerful learning system. Certainly, such a combination might be either more grammar, or more conversational oriented. Combined programs however are much more flexible than pure grammar or pure immersion programs, as they are more balanced and comprehensive, as they intend to develop various language skills.