Blog

Victor’s Adventures Spanish Textbook Audiobook and Parallel Text Novel

Posted by

slider-image

Las Aventuras de Víctor en España.

Victor’s Adventures in Spain.

¡Ya está a la venta! – It’s now for sale!

Now, after what seems like a lifetime, our latest Spanish Textbook, Audiobook and Parallel textbook is available online.

Purchase the book from Amazon.com

Purchase the book from Amazon.co.uk

It’s available from all other Amazon outlets throughout the world.

We are so excited to hear the reaction from the many people who have been anxiously waiting for its release.

There’s a lot of competition out there!

We know full well that there are quite literally thousands of books out there all aiming to help you with your Spanish and we have bought many really exceptional ones, too. However, what we have found is that they tend to be very focussed on one particular style.

They tend to limit themselves by either being a Spanish textbook, a workbook, a parallel text book or an audio book. We’ve combined the lot!

We think we’ve covered all the bases.

What we have focussed on in our book is to provide you, the learner, with a full range of learning that involves every sense. As you make you way through the 32 chapters you will be helped to use all of your learning senses.

You’ll be listening, reading, writing and if you follow our advice, reading out loud as you go.

The story

The story starts out in simple, straight forward Spanish as it tells of a young man called Victor who decides to move to Toledo, in Spain, to start a new life. From the beginning, he finds himself in a series of practical situations and much to his surprise at times, not all of them work out the way he would have wanted!

As you share this adventure with Victor, you’ll discover how to deal with the real, day to day stuff of spending time in a Spanish speaking country. As the book progresses, so does the level of Spanish until, finally, you are guided through to a very decent advanced intermediate Spanish. (Or more!)

Parallel text

Every Spanish chapter is laid out, side by side with its English translation, making it easy to see just how the two languages work to tell the same story. We have aimed to ensure that this parallel text story only uses a language that is modern, practical and a one that you can pick up and use right away!

The audio book

Cynthia, a native speaker from Madrid in Spain and co-owner of LightSpeed Spanish, reads the entire story, starting out at an easy pace and building, just as does the language of the story, to a very decent level of listening comprehension. Of course, the beauty of it all is that you can follow along in the book as Cynthia reads the story, or you can simply listen to the audio and really hone your listening skills. We recommend that you do both.

The Spanish textbook / workbook bit

We believe in making our chapters memorable as well as understandable to all and that’s why we have included a Lesson at the beginning of every chapter. This will help you to comprehend so much more of what you are reading and hearing. These light, brief grammar lessons will truly round out your learning journey and move your Spanish forward at LightSpeed.

The Learning Zone

Using Gordon’s skills from his experience as a hypnotherapist, we have created a series of audios designed to help you get into the learning zone and massively increase your learning ability and memory retention.  Every professional knows that for them to get the very best results they must get into the “Zone”. The very same applies to you and your Spanish!

Vocabulary building and Useful Expressions.

We included a wide range of vocabulary building audios and videos as well as a compendium of great Spanish expressions that will serve you well and help you to understand the book, and even more importantly, Spanish speakers so much more easily.

 We really hope you like it and that it helps.

The most gratifying part of what we do is knowing that we are really helping others to learn Spanish well. We have had so many really wonderful emails and messages thanking us for the information we provide and we will continue to do so as long as there continues to be a demand for what we offer.

We wish you the best of luck in your studies and if you do decide to get a copy of Victor’s Adventures, we sincerely hope it helps you to move your Spanish forward at LightSpeed.

 

un abrazo muy fuerte,

Gordon y Cynthia. 🙂

Useful Songs in Spanish A Great Way to Learn Spanish

Posted by

So, what about songs in Spanish?de donde

There’s something quite special about learning a language through song. It’s as though the combination of music, rhythm and words quite literally glues the information into your head.

Which person can’t think back to their childhood and recall all the words to a nursery rhyme or the tune and words to famous advert that had a catchy jingle to it?

It’s scientific!

Yes, the fact is that science has proven that music helps learning. They have done a plethora of tests in which music was played whilst people studied a certain topic. Later, when they tested the students on their recall they split them into two test groups.

One of the groups simply had to recall the information. The other group was played the same music that they had listened to whilst they had learnt the information.

The results showed that the group that had the same music played to them in the background whilst they recalled the information did significantly better than the group without music.

They even did it with alcohol!

Would you believe that the same study was done with a group of learners who were given alcohol whilst they studied a certain topic. Later, one group was tested on their recall in a sobre state. They did pretty poorly.

However, the other group were given alcohol again and, amazingly, their recall was far superior!

So, to learn Spanish should I just get drunk!

We don’t recommend the alcohol learning method simply because to recall all you know you would have to keep getting drunk! jeje.

It has to be said, however, that the majority of our students do affirm that their Spanish seems to vastly improve after two or three glasses of wine!

That’s why we made these songs in Spanish

We had the idea of creating some useful songs in Spanish to help our students learn more easily.  We came up with two songs that deal with the verbs SER and ESTAR and are designed to help our learners get the conjugations firmly fixed into their minds.

It’s not just for children

The song, ¿De dónde eres?, was written for our children’s after school clubs that we used to provide.(We gave them up because although they were fantastically well paid they were also fantastically difficult to control!)

Children aren’t the only ones who can learn from music, however, and although some people may find singing along to a song a little childish, it’s probably one of the fastest ways of increasing your memory retention.

Así que, ¡venga! Canta con nosotros and learn some really useful frases.

 

Gordon 🙂

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Ordering a Coffee in Spanish Some Practical Help

Posted by

The most popular video.a-cup-of-coffee scale

Recently we uploaded a very brief video of Cynthia and myself in a cafetería in Madrid. It wasn’t a particularly long or complicated video and yet it has been one of the most popular ones we’ve uploaded in a long while. here you can find the transcription of the video.

What’s so important about ordering a coffee in Spanish?

More and more it seems that the coffee culture that used to be found around the Mediterranean countries has made its way into most of our modern day society. Thanks to Costa and Starbucks, most people find themselves having a coffee more often than ever. (There’s something to be said for our addiction to strong coffee that keeps us coming back!)

So, whilst on holiday in our favourite Spanish speaking country, more than anything else, we find ourselves ordering a coffee in Spanish, or at least attempting to get the waiter to bring us what we want. Having the required vocabulary, then,  is vitally important.

Spain loves its strong coffee.

There is no country more in love with it’s coffee culture than Spain.  Every morning, lunch time and evening you’ll find the street cafés filled with Spaniards having a coffee and chatting with friends.

One of the clues to just how important coffee has been in Spain over the years is the way it has insinuated itself into the language.

A tomar un café.

When Spanish people want to meet up, they just about always refer to the forthcoming meeting this way:

¿Quieres ir a tomar un café?

It certainly isn’t the case that everyone will have a coffee. In fact, many times no-one will have one. Yet, they still refer to the act of going out for a drink and a chat as “Ir a tomar un café.”

Es por eso…

So, that’s probably why our video in the café was so popular. Most people want to be able to do the basics in Spanish. Most people want to be able to order a coffee in Spanish, well, and no amount of verb conjugation training or understanding when to use the subjunctive will take the place of simply knowing how to.

In this video, however,  you don’t see us ordering the coffees but rather talking about them. To know how to order a coffee in Spanish then you should also listen to our podcast on this very subject. You can find the transcript for this video here.

Then, if you ever meet us in Madrid you can maybe invite us “a tomar un café” with you.  🙂

Un saludo,

Gordon 🙂

Video & Transcript for This Spanish Lesson

transcript-download-button

Common Spanish Verbs Speed Learning System

Posted by

Victor’s Adventures in Spain.

Las Aventuras de Víctor en España.

designcrowd_153037_4808964_809250_vector print-page-001

Learning the Common Spanish Verbs.

As part of the comprehensive Spanish learning program we offer in our Parallel text book which comes out in December of 2014, we are very happy to offer a ‘speed learning system’ that has a proven track record of helping learners quickly build up their language skills.

Why Learn Common Spanish Verbs?

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I think it’s important enough to repeat myself again. (For emphasis, of course jeje.)

When I first started learning Spanish I stumbled across a learning system like the one we use in LightSpeed Spanish. It was designed to help me learn, what seemed to be at the time, an impossibly long list of Spanish words.

However, I was amazed to find that after just a very few days I had managed to memorize the entire list!

A Big Problem!

I was initially euphoric, believing that I had found the way to be fluent in Spanish in a very short space of time. That euphoria soon gave way to frustration, however, when I discovered that the designers of the learning program had made a glaring mistake.

They had only given me TWO verbs conjugated into first and third person! These were Tener (to have) and Querer (to want).  So, unless I wanted something or I had something, I was stuck. Oh, I knew the names of lots of things, but what was I going to do with them? I couldn’t go along the street shouting words like: ‘¡Vaca!, ¡Silla! ¡Abeja! So, although I was convinced that the system worked exceptionally well, I was frustrated that the makers of the learning program hadn’t considered it necessary to give me a few more action words.

The True Structure of Language.

I often compare language to the human body.  I imagine that the flesh that surrounds the bone structure is the vocabulary that we learn; the words, names, describing words etc. However, the grammar that holds everything in place and in an orderly fashion is the skeleton, the strength of our language.

What would a body be like if it had no skeleton to hold it up? It would be a floppy, unrecognisable mess. (Like an octopus out of water!) The same applies to Spanish if it has no structure or form to it. It becomes messy.

I have often heard people talking in both Spanish and English and making a complete pigs ear of it. They have plenty flesh on their language but no shape or rules to it and so they go about plonking their words into ungainly sentences that often make little sense.

Everything Hangs off the Verbs.

For this reason, we have produced a series of videos that complement our book “Victor’s Adventures in Spain” and provide most of the common Spanish verbs that figure in the story. We used this Speed Learning System to help you quickly assimilate the verbs into your vocabulary and begin to use them with skill and dexterity.

We recommend that before you read the book you work your way through these common Spanish verbs builder videos so that you will  sail through the story with the greatest of ease.

Esperamos que os gusten.

 

Gordon 🙂

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Video for This Spanish Lesson

 

You can find the remainder of this series in:

YOUTUBE

Leismo and Laismo The source of SO such confusion

Posted by

AVISO: Because of the way the search engines work, I am unable to put an accent on the words grammar scaleleísmo and laísmo in the following text. As you read them, please insert a mental tilde. Thanks!

Is Leismo an illness?

Firstly, let’s state that, no, it’s not ‘una enfermedad’. It’s simply a way of using the direct (Shoot AT ME list) and indirect pronouns (Furniture remover’s list) in a slightly different way.

The issue is, however, that if you don’t understand what they are and how they affect spoken and written Spanish then you will be confused.

No, wait, you will be more than confused. You will tear your hair out with frustration.

And so this is why…

I’ve created this blog and video to complement the series on Pronouns that I have just recently uploaded to Youtube.

You see, no matter how well you think you know the pronouns, the Leistas and the Laistas (people who practice el lesimo) will apparently break all the rules.

Rules within aparent chaos

At first glance the way lesistas and laistas use their pronouns may see a bit random and chaotic but trust me, it isn’t. There are very clear rules about how they are used and when the official rules should be broken and when they should not.

To understand it you have to watch the video

Rather than duplicate the same information here in the blog, to understand just what Leismo and Laismo is, just watch the video. However, what I intend to do in this blog is to give you some further insights into this language phenomenon.

I practice Leismo and Laismo, but I’m working on it

After nearly eleven years of living with my beautiful leista/laista wife, I have become one myself. It wasn’t intentional, I have to say, it just happened naturally.

What has happened lately, however, is that more and more of our students are coming from the USA and so it’s very unfair to teach them a regional idiosyncrasy that doesn’t apply to Latin America.

So it’s for that reason that I’m working now on changing that. Trust me, it’s not as easy as you might imagine. Once you have your language into the ‘unconciously competent’ level of learning,  it’s a bit more of a challenge. However, by teaching it, I end up teaching my own self again.

Loísmo

Just as Spain has it’s variations, so do some countries in Latin America. Their issue is loísmo which is the over use of LO when they should be using LE. So, the best thing to do, to ensure that you learn it correctly the first time round is to watch this series of videos on Youtube and really get a good understanding of how they work.

AVISO: Just as a last warning, be prepared for people to correct you when you use the pronouns. However, do not accept their correction without analysing why they are correcting you. It could be leismo they are teaching you or laismo or even loismo.

Enjoy the video.

Gordon 🙂

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Audio for This Spanish Lesson

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:29 — 15.1MB)