We are officially going to start the idea we presented last week of teaching you Spanish with a Guide/Instructor and Personal Trainer.

STARTING DATE: Wednesday January18th! (Be sure and let friends, relatives, barbers, beauticians and dog groomers know about it.)

There will be no cost to follow the lessons that we will lay out for you. You simply watch the daily prerecorded lesson and I will give you tips and show you what lessons in the software you should be learning to keep up (I will be your Guide/Instructor). You will need to have the Visual Link Spanish lessons to follow along with what we teach. You can order them in the online store.

After going through the recommended lessons, you’ll be able to come to our blog and leave your comments about the lesson and Jake (your personal trainer) will give you direction, answer questions and get you pumped up to learn more. So far, it looks like we will have a couple of guest bloggers who have volunteered. We will contact them and get their comments, as they go through the course, that we can put up on the blog.

We have a lot of people excited about this. Please keep in mind that this is a new thing, and we are experimenting with this type of delivery – please be patient with us. We would also love your suggestions along the way of how we can improve things.

Our goal is to help and motivate you to learn Spanish.

¡Hasta luego Amigos!

We have something exciting for you that we’re going to start in the next week or two to help you better learn Spanish. It is designed to help provide you daily motivation and encouragement to learn.

I will be giving you daily guidance, instruction and a recommendation of how much of the Visual Link Spanish course you should be learning every day. I will provide material for 5 days a week with you studying 30-40 minutes per day.

I will recommend which lessons from the Visual Link Spanish software specifically to learn each day and show you a few minutes of each lesson.

Then, Jake will become your personal trainer to help you get pumped up to learn. He will provide training and encouragement here on our blog, on Facebook and Twitter.

Our goal is to involve as many of you and get you motivated to truly learn Spanish. If some of you are interested in being “guest bloggers/learners”, please let us know and we can get your daily feedback as you go through the Level I course with us. We’ll then post your comments on our blog. “Guest bloggers/learners” who make it through the whole course giving us daily updates, will get the price of the course refunded at the end of the course. We just ask that you give us at least 3-4 updates a week and stay caught up over the weekend. We’ll probably limit the daily “guest bloggers/learners” to 3 or 4 of you.

If you don’t want to contribute officially on the blog but just want to come along for the ride, that’s great – you are the real reason we are doing this – so you can accomplish together with all of us!

We will also answer your questions on the blog as we go through the course.

Before we get going, we would love your feedback.

Let us know what you think and if you have any ideas for us. We hope you will help us create one big Spanish-learning “virtual gym” – an environment where your “español” can blossom.

Hasta luego!

A new year can bring new hopes, dreams, challenges, and more more things to your life. One of my goals for this year is to give you a challenge on each of my blog posts this year. If I’m not challenging you and helping you learn Spanish, then I’m not doing my job as well as I should.

I want to make sure that I’m providing you with information you’d like to know related to learning Spanish. So today’s challenge will be quite simple:

Challenge:
Answer these questions in the comment section:
What would you like to learn this year from this blog?
How can we improve?

Yo creo en Santa Clos/Papá Noel. | I believe in Santa Claus.
Me porté bien este año. | I behaved well this year (I was a good boy/girl this year.)
Me alegra estar con mi familia. | It makes me happy to be with my family.
He perdonado a mis hermanos. | I have forgiven my brothers and sisters.
Me portaré mejor el año que viene. | I’ll behave better next year.
¿Podrías darlos a mis padres algo bien? | Could you give my parents something nice?

We would like to give you something special as well this Christmas season. It’s currently Day 12 of our 13 Days of Christmas. Click on that link to view all the free audio downloads we are giving away from our Level 1 course. We used to sell these audio lessons for $100, and you can download them and put them on your mp3 device or phone for free. That’s our way of saying Merry Christmas to you. Help us spread the Christmas cheer by sharing that link with your friends, neighbors, family and acquaintances.

Whatever way you choose to celebrate this Christmas season, we hope that you celebrate safely and that you enjoy every moment. Remember to be nice to everyone, because Santa is watching!

If you didn’t learn anything for Junior High or High School Spanish, don’t worry – you’re not alone – neither did I or anyone else I’ve ever talked to…or at least not enough to carry on a real conversation with native Spanish speakers.

Let me be clear up front that the fault usually doesn’t lie with our Spanish teachers – they’re generally very creative, hard working and underpaid. The challenge is the old-style curriculum they’re required to use. They’re using the same tools that have been used for hundreds of years – text books…and in this economy, some don’t even have text books. Granted, some are slightly more advanced technologically and have “software” that comes with the text books. However, it is usually a glorified picture dictionary on CD or simple quiz system. It’s not a system for teaching Spanish.

To put it succinctly, Junior High and High School Spanish curriculum isn’t meant to teach you to converse in Spanish, it’s meant to teach you lists of vocabulary, grammar rules and verb conjugations.

I’ll continue on my personal vendetta in a minute, but first, I want to show you my favorite Spanish YouTube video that illustrates what is learned from the first semester of Spanish in the academic school system. This video is so funny because it is completely true!

Hopefully you thought that was as funny as I did.

Now back to my personal vendetta.

Unfortunately, you really don’t learn to converse with native speakers in academic Spanish (Junior High, High School and even most colleges). Sadly, in many cases it is simply a waste of time.

My first daughter took Junior High Spanish and regressed from the Spanish I had taught her as a child. She was embarrassed to speak with proper pronunciation because nobody else in her class did (including the teacher unfortunately).

Personally, after taking 2 years of Spanish in Junior High, I finally learned Spanish after living abroad for 2 years. I also got a degree in Spanish and taught it for 3 years at a university.

From my frustrating experience teaching academic Spanish at a university using the horse-and-buggy approach, the Visual Link Spanish course was born.

I knew there had to be a better way – a way that could teach proper, grammatically correct Spanish, without having to memorize word lists, rules and focusing on verb conjugations – similar to the way kids learn, but using the resources of the adult mind.

After years of research, heavy collaboration from native speakers, and teaching hundreds of people in the community and business setting, we had developed a system that gets you conversational quick by categorizing words into different groups that can be used like building blocks to form sentences. We then spent the next 10 years turning it into the software and online Spanish lessons we have available for you today in a 1-month free trial.

Now, there you have it, the birth of the Visual Link Spanish course – a result of over 16 years of intense research and development to give you the best experience out there for learning Spanish. We firmly believe that statement and our customers also affirm it.

¡Gracias por estar conmigo! (Thanks for joining me!)

¡Hasta luego Amigos!

fútbol americano | football
Me torcí el tobillo. | I twisted my ankle.
El caminar me duele. | It hurts to walk.
Comí demasiado. | I ate too much.
Me siento enfermo. | I feel sick.
Necesito bajar de peso. | I need to lose weight.
La comida no me apetece. | Food doesn’t sound good to me.
Mi único deseo es dormir. | My only desire is to sleep.
El pavo me hace cansado. | Turkey makes me tired.
¿Cuántos días hasta la navidad? | How many days until Christmas?

Are there some other phrases that I left out? I would love to hear any useful, clever Spanish phrases that you have used over the past few days. Leave me some suggestions in the blog comments. I look forward to reading them.

I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving! It’s never too late to be thankful. Show your gratitude for the people and things that are in your life. Now it is time to turn your attention toward the Christmas holiday season…

I couldn’t cover anything in the video, so here is a little bit more vocabulary that may be helpful to you on Thanksgiving Day. I dedicate this post to Thanksgiving food.

pavo | turkey
papas | potatoes
arándano agrios | cranberries
zanahorias | carrots
remolacha | beets
pastel de manzana | apple pie
pastel de cereza | cherry pie
pastel de calabaza | pumpkin pie
relleno | stuffing
habichuelas tiernas | green beans
maíz | corn
fútbol americano | American football
Comí demasiado. | I ate too much.
Me alegra poder estar con mi familia. | I am happy that I can be with my family.
Me alegra poder estar con mis amigos. | I am happy that I can be with my friends.
Gracias a todos ustedes. | Thanks to all of you.
Estoy agradecido por estar vivo. | I am thankful to be alive.

Whether you have a lot or you don’t have much, be thankful for what you have. As Kenny Chesney says in one of my favorite songs:

“As for me I’d like thank my lucky starts, cause I’m alive and well.”

Express your gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving!

Here is a list of the Spanish numbers and how they are written out. Knowing the numbers in Spanish will undoubtedly help you in your travels and everyday speech and writing. Without further adieu…

0  cero
1  uno
2  dos
3  tres
4  cuatro
5  cinco

Spanish for Your Cruise

One of the best ways to practice your Spanish is with native speakers, and one of the most economical ways to do a vacation to a Spanish-speaking country is a cruise. Cruises are my favorite way to travel. They’re fun, there’s great food (as much as you can eat) and you don’t have to make many decisions on a cruise. So, if you are travelling with others, you rarely get in disagreements about what to do or where to go. On a cruise, there are usually 2-4 days of shore excursions (depending on the length of cruise you take). Now, depending on how you want to do your shore excursion, there are different options. You can either pay for a pre-planned tour excursion sold by the cruise ship, or you can go create your own adventure. However, take note, if you plan your own adventure, if you don’t get back to the cruise ship on time, you may miss the boat (literally). The boat does wait for shore excursions that are late – if they were planned by the cruise line. Anyway, as I mentioned, talking with the natives is a fantastic way to practice Spanish. Especially if you’ve already had the chance to learn Spanish online with Visual Link Spanish. Below is some great vocabulary to use on your tour excursions.

After learning the vocabulary, come practice with us on the Visual Link Spanish Facebook Page. Remember, practice really does make perfect.

Here is the vocabulary from the video:

I sure hope you have the opportunity to go on a cruise soon to practice your Spanish. When you do, please come to our blog and comment. We’d love to hear how it went and if you could understand the Spanish you heard from the natives.

Future Facebook Fiesta Friday Topics:

November 18, 2011 – Thanksgiving Spanish Lesson

November 25, 2011 – Black Friday Spanish Lesson

December 2, 2011 – Winter Spanish Lesson

Level 3 Question:

Hola Dave,  I just started on level 3 and am a little confused on a couple of things. I’ve noticed that on some infinitive verbs you have place an “a” as in “to” before some verbs and not others. I thought that the infinitives included the “to”. For example, nadar means “to swim” but you have placed an “a” before the verb. Just not sure when to do that and when not to do that. I also noticed that in level 3 you have gone to “le” instead of “lo” and “les” instead of “los”. Again, not sure when to do that.  I would appreciate some clarification on this. I’m sure you’ll get some more questions from me as well. I am really enjoying the course and have recommended it to several people. Hasta la proxima.—–Anonymous User—-

Hola Amigo!

That is a great question and one of my favorites to answer. In Spanish, there are many times when you use two verbs together. For example:

Quiero comer (I want to eat), necesito caminar (I need to walk), puedo hablar (I can speak).

However, there are certain initial verbs that always have a preposition afterwords if followed by another verb. The prepositions or “helping words” really don’t mean anything, they simply have to be put on in Spanish to “sound correct”. Here are a few examples:

Vamos a comer (we’re going to eat), tengo que caminar (I need to walk), enseñar a jugar (to teach to play), aprender a leer (to learn to read).

The verbs that do this just have to be memorized. The verbs that do it will always do it.

Book Recommendation to Help:

I highly recommend the 501 Spanish Verbs Book. It has a section that shows the verbs that use prepositions and many other useful things. It is my favorite non Visual Link Spanish language learning book. It shows all of the conjugations and tenses for 501 Spanish verbs.

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon:

To answer your question about “le” vs “lo”, “le” is an indirect object pronoun and “lo” is a direct object pronoun. Now, I realize that is pretty technical, so I’ll give you a few examples. Here is the brief and simple answer. For a more in-depth answer, please see our Online Digital Learning Center which has many in-depth lessons on grammar.

Direct object pronouns use “lo” (the “lo” is what receives the action).

Don’t hit him.   No lo pegues.

She loves him.   Lo ama

She hates him.  Lo odia.

Indirect object pronouns use “le” (the “lo” changes to “le”): If you can put the word “something” after, then use the “le” which indicates is is an indirect object pronoun. Here are some examples:

I want to tell him. Quiero decirle (I want to tell him “something” – you can add “something” on afterward so you use “le”.)

She should ask him. Debe preguntarle. (She should ask him “something”.)

We are going to send him the letters. Vamos a mandarle las cartas. (In this case, “something” could take the place of ”the letters” so you use the indirect object “le”.)

That is a brief answer. However, this topic goes much more in-depth that this and is covered well in our Digital Learning Center.

Hopefully that answers your questions.

¡Hasta luego!