Visual Link Learn Spanish Newsletter (V:1; I:9)

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Learn Spanish Words of the Week -----
Words taken from Basic Needs, Section 1 of our Complete Course

	English	Spanish
Monday	It's important	Es importante
Tuesday	It's not important	No es importante
Wednesday	to eat	comer
Thursday	food	comida
Friday	the hamburger	la hamburguesa
Saturday	the salad	la ensalada
Sunday	the vegetables	las *verduras
*In some countries "vegetables" are called "vegetales".

Learn Spanish Culture ----- Just Speak to them!! (Part II)

This week I wanted to re-emphasize the importance of learning Spanish by conversing with native speakers. First I'd like to repeat what I said last week. "To truly learn Spanish well, a program like ours is one of the best tools available to get you started, but the most important thing you can do to improve your Spanish skills and really become fluent is to speak with the natives."

The morning after I sent out the newsletter, I received a response from Andi Yarde of Wymouth UK. I wanted to share what Andi said (with permission of course) to help motivate any of you who haven't done this yet.

Hola Dave

I have just received your newsletter this morning and it made me smile because in it you suggest finding someone who is a native Spanish speaker and starting a conversation with them. This is just what I did!

I began to learn Spanish about 2 months ago and have been really thankful for the free Spanish lessons I have found on the internet.

I happened to overhear someone at work speaking with a Spanish accent and although I did not know him, I asked him if he could spare a few moments occasionally to speak with me in Spanish.

Well - you were right! He was so nice and is now spending time teaching me Spanish! And I have a new friend!

Thank you for the newsletter - specially the Culture notes - it is very friendly and easy to read!

Saludos

Andi

Andi, thanks for your response. I'm glad it went so well for you!

I would like to give all of you newsletter newsletter readers the same challenge that I gave you last week. Are you ready? Practice the phrases (in the next paragraph) and set a goal of when you are going to approach a native speaker. Once you have done it and had a conversation in Spanish, send me an e-mail and let me know how it went. I'm eager to hear from you!

Here are the phrases I recomended to you last week to get you started. First you could say "Hola, Qué tal" [Oh-law, Kay tall] which means "Hi, how are you?". Next, you could say "Me llamo Dave" [May yaw-moe Dave], or in English "My name is Dave". Of course, you don't want to say your name is "Dave" unless your name really is "Dave". Finally, to spark some conversation, you could say "De dónde es usted" [Day doan-day es oo-stead] which means "Where are you from".

Hopefully Andi and I have given you a little motivation to start a conversation with a native Spanish speaker if you haven't had a chance to do it yet. Again, please keep me posted on know how it goes.

¡Buena suerte! (Good luck!)


David S. Clark -- President
U.S. Institute of Languages
dave@spanishprograms.com
http://www.spanishprograms.com