Opinions wanted on self-study courses

Opinions wanted on self-study courses
 

As I seek out learning resources, I've come across quite a bit on the Internet and it sometimes is overwhelming. I wonder if any of you have any experience or thoughts on the following:

-studyspanish.com- and their 'Camino del Exito' course

-spanishpod101.com- and their overall site

-spanishprograms.com- and their Visual Link course

-synergyspanish.com- and their product by the same name

These are but four, that I've narrowed down among several others, for possible purchase. Like most of us, I hope to avoid shelling out dollar after dollar on different programs. Just one 'preemptive" comment: I realize that I can learn without a formal course and many of the members of this community have attested to that approach. I'm all for that and incorporating a lot of those practices. My work as a community organizer (meetings and events day and night) inhibits my taking a formal class so self-study is the way. I'm seeking out a course to give me structure in the midst of all the things that frequently call for my attention.

If you know of any courses (online or CD/mp3) that employs Krashen's (I have a related post on his stuff in the Forum) Natural Approach to Spanish, that would be great. From the little I know, it occurs to me as an approach that appeals to my learning style. I’ve come across a lot of the theoretical stuff about his work but not a program or course using it.

Thanx!

Have a look here:

http://forums.tomisimo.org/showthread.php?t=7498

Thanks Don Jose

Thank you for the lead to the other thread. There is a brief mention of Visual Link and I hope this thread might generate more comment on that and the other courses. In the meantime, I'm doing my own self constructed study.

Dude, honestly, you don't need to spend much money. Go to your local bookstore and pick up a english/spanish dictionary(cheap), a book that conjugates spanish verbs(cheap), an idiot's guide to beginner's spanish(cheap), and since you live in D.C., get a Spanish newspaper(cheap), and for under $25 you won't need anything else. CNN en enspañol and BBC mundo will provide plenty of translation matierial. Spanish ain't that hard once you learn the pronuncations

Reading is important, in fact so important that one might be tempted to neglect to spend an equal amount of time cultivating the listening skills as well. Many people can read it and write it better than they can speak it and understand it - and vice versa - so you might want to work on developing all four components.

Most of the time, what I hear is that you understand but cannot read, write and speak it. :)

Some then go onto reading a lot and then still cannot write it (!?&*%) and/or speak it.

That is true, and sometimes has to do with how old one is when he begins learning. The best advice I ever got was to learn the same way that a young child learns, first by listening and then speaking, and later on by reading and finally, writing. But then, everyone has his own approach.

But that's just a misconception, and one has to de-phase oneself in order to do that.

How can a grown person, fully functional, try to pretend not knowing anything?

:confused:

So, if you know how to read, write and express yourself in your language, then you don;t have to learn all that in the foreign language. At the most, you have to translate what you already know in your language to the target language. Right?

;)