When you start to learn Spanish in traditional schools they give you a few basic words and quickly get into teaching you grammar, verb conjugation and vocabulary. But that's putting form over substance! How to learn Spanish? or any language for that matter? Well, you already know one language. How did you learn that?

You learned English by listening to native speakers, imitating what they said and how they said it. You learned by conversing, trying to express your needs, your ideas, your observations. You learned how to talk first. You should approach learning Spanish the same way. That is why interactive courses using digital media are so effective and popular. They start you off with the basics of conversation; Hello, good morning - Hola, Buenos días, and go from there.

You don't need to know the formal rules of grammar to converse, you just need to know how to say what you want to express. So you say it differently if you are speaking of more than one than you do if you are speaking of one only. You learned that as a child and did not even know the word grammar! You learned to say "a dog" "two dogs" and "lots of dogs". You learned it not by mastering the rules, but by knowing that's how you say it if you want to be understood. One dog, two dogs. In other words, you got the substance first and the form later.

When you learned English you started out with simple sentences. Then gradually you learned more and more complex sentences and later, you got into the rules, the "Why" of saying it that way to be correct. But you had learned the language first, then used the rules to organize and improve what you already knew. That makes sense, because the primary function of language is to communicate. Basic communication is more important than the rules of form. That's why we learned it first in our first language. We should do it again with our second language!

It's the same with learning Spanish. So good digital media learning courses use that method. Go directly to what you want to say, get the pronunciation right, converse, expand on that. Keep expanding. Go from idea directly to the expression of that idea. Don't get hung up on rules. The formalization comes later.

The traditional methods of trying to first establish the rules, then learn the language within that framework is backwards and awkward. That makes learning a language boring and too much like work.

Digital media courses use the natural, conversational approach, making it easy and fun. Also, you get some conversational ability, something you can actually use, fast! That's what makes them so superior to traditional methods of learning.

The idea is to approach your learning of a second language in the same manner you approached learning your first language. It's the natural way. Consequently it is easier to absorb, makes more sense, lets you feel your abilities grow and expand. This gives you a sense of accomplishment and greatly encourages you to keep on getting better. That is why digital media learning courses that use these methods are so effective in helping you learn fast and enjoy it!

Jorge Chavez
http://Rocket-Spanish.ya23.com