FSI Spanish Basic Course, Volume 1

The materials in this book have been developed to present Spanish as a spoken Ianguage, and the skills of understanding and speaking are accordingly emphasized. The method of presentation will likely be new to students acquainted with more traditional methods of language teaching. In order to understand the materials, one must first understand the method upon which they are buiIt.

The method is known as GUIDED IMITATION. It may appear to be new, but actually it has been used by a considerable number of teachers for many years, though its greatest popularity has come since the second World War. Its goal 1s to teach one to speak easily, fluently, with very little accent, and to do this without conscious effort, just as one speaks his own language without conscious effort.

There are two very important aspects of this method. First, learning a relatively small body of material so well that it requires very Iittle effort to produce it. This is OVERLEARNING. If a student overleans every dialog and drill as he goes through this book, he will almost certainly experience rapid progress in learning the language.

The second aspect is learning to authentically manipulate the sounds, sequences, and patterns of the language. The important implication here is the reaIity of both the model and the imitation. The model (teacher, recording, etc.) must provide Spanish as people reaIIy speak it in actual conversations, and the student must be helped to an accurate imitation. Above all, the normal tempo of pronunciation must be the classroom standard; slowing down is, in this context, distortion.

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Student Manual, Volume 1

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