Just for something fun to do, I decided to apply to review "How to Become Fluent in Spanish" by John Del Gaudio. At the time, I had expected to have a lot more time and energy to apply some of the techniques I learned in this book. Unfortunately, life happened and I didn't have quite the time I had planned on. Regardless, I will review this product to the best of my ability and as always, honestly. Besides, the author even points out that it can take years to really master a language. Here's a brief description of the book:
"Most people think they need a great Spanish teacher or immersion to become fluent in Spanish. And while both great teachers and immersion can definitely help improve in Spanish, many students find that typical courses and short-term immersion are not sufficient to become totally fluent.
In this Kindle ebook, I recommend a self-training system that will allow the intermediate student to learn Spanish daily and become fluent much faster by training himself how to learn.
This little guidebook might just save the student a lot of time and frustration on his journey to become a proficient and fluent Spanish speaker."
I was provided with a Kindle e-book. The first thing I have to mention about this is for whatever reason, the page numbers for this e-book are all really messed up. According to Amazon, this e-book is about 25 pages long, but the pages are into the hundreds. Every new page seems to be off by 20 pages or so. It's a bit confusing. I'm not sure why this is, but I thought I would mention it because it does effect the functionality of reading the book.
Half of this book talks about the author's experiences with trying to become fluent in Spanish, which is kind of nice because you see that he has experience with learning a new language and understands how difficult it can be. While he obviously promotes his method in his book, it does seem to me that immersion does seem to be a big chunk of what helped him learn the language (he was living in Spanish speaking countries at the time.) Not everyone who learns the language has this type of lifestyle, nor can they immerse themselves in the language the way the author did, so it does seem a bit contradictory to me.
With that in mind, however, the method the author presents does logically make a lot of sense. I don't feel it's new at all, parts of it are very similar to how I learned English, other parts remind me of my days of speech therapy. The author is correct, this method does come across as requiring a lot of work and effort. I can't really speak about how effective it is, since I didn't have the time to apply it as I had planned, but logically I can say it does seem as though it would be effective. I feel this method would work for any language, not just Spanish.
There are a few technological requirements for the author's method, which kind of surprised me. I don't quite have the resources to use those methods at the moment. Hopefully some day I can put this method to the full test and try it out to see just how effective it really is.
Oh, also - I do want to mention, the author presents this method as not being for beginners. I wouldn't let that put you off at all if you feel hesitant about reading this. I feel this book could be read, and applied at any stage of the learning process. I'm not an expert on foreign languages by any means, but if you're you know English and have some interest in reading this book despite not knowing another language, you'll be fine.
Website: http://howtolearnfluentspanish.com/
I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.
