In this video I’m going to give you a quick walkthrough of The Flow of Spanish, so if you decide to sign up for it you’ll know what you’re getting into.
The first thing you should know is that The Flow of Spanish is an online e-course, which means you can access it from your phone, tablet, and computer as long as you have an internet connection. But there are also audio files you’re able to download and train offline.
Introductory Units
After you log in, the course starts out with a series of primers to get you into the flow of things. The first one will teach you about the training method, and another about the Sound System Primer. Our goal in this primer is to review the basic of Spanish phonetics.
First, we learn about how we make vowels, and how you adjust your tongue position to get the correct vowel. Then, we review what the Spanish vowels are. We use a lot of audio and visual material to get a better idea of what each Spanish vowel is and how to compare it to similar sounds in English and what the differences really are. This will really tune your ear to the unique Spanish pronunciation of vowels.
We also will look at – if you’re a native English speaker – some tendencies you might have in your pronunciation of vowels, and the difficulties most people have with Spanish vowels. Once again, you’ll have a lot of audio to train your ear.
Then, we’ll go over all the consonant sounds in Spanish, especially the ones that usually trip people up when learning Spanish pronunciation. Once we’ve reviewed all of the sounds of Spanish and all the basics of the phonetics, we’ll have your first recording activity where you record yourself saying the most important sounds in Spanish, which combines vowels along with a few consonants.
Song Lessons
Before we get into that process, I want to move on to the song lessons. In one unit you’ll be learning a song called “Clandestino” by an artist named Manu Chao. What we’re going to do in these lessons is walk you through the process I created to help you learn how to pronounce these Spanish lyrics with a perfect accent.
The first step is to go over the rhythm, and that’s what these audio files do. When you click on and listen to them, you’ll be chanting along with a very simple rhythmic version of the phrase. Once you have the rhythm down, you can listen to each syllable individually here.
For instance, you have: “Per, di, do, nel, ko, ra, son.” Your goal is to use this as a reference, but really listen to the pronunciation of the syllables here. Once you have the rhythm and the syllables down, your next task is to reconstruct the phrase bit-by-bit. In these audio files I have those syllables combined in chunks of three, four, etc. You’ll keep doing this until you get those things committed to memory. It’s awkward at first, but through practice you’ll develop the motor memory in your mouth.
Finally, once we have it all broken down into pieces, we put it back together through the memorization process. We start out with audio files that combine the lines which we loop over and over. You’ll be singing along until you get that committed to memory.
Recording Process
Finally, when you’re done it’s time to submit a recording. You’ll do this through a site called SoundCloud, which allows you to record yourself, save that recording online, and then share it with me so I can give you feedback.
When submitting, you can of course sing the lyrics if you want, or if you’re not comfortable singing you can just chant it the way I did. We’re not here to make you a better singer, we’re here to make you a better speaker of Spanish.
After you record yourself in SoundCloud, you’ll get personalized, precise feedback on your recording. For Spanish, we currently have two native teachers who I have trained personally. They will go in, listen to your recording and pinpoint the exact syllables and sounds that you’re mispronouncing, then tell you exactly what you need to do with your mouth, your lips, and your tongue to fix that error. You can check the video around 5:16 to see what I mean.
This is the process we repeat in every single lesson. You go through the content, do the training, submit a recording, I tell you what you’re doing wrong, you submit it back to me with the errors fixed and we continue until you get it perfect. The whole idea is that the only way for you to really learn these things in pronunciation is to have somebody point you in the right direction and for you to practice until you get it.
Now, usually doing things repetitively can be really boring, but thankfully we’re using music instead of recorded, monotone phrases. The learning environment’s really fun and engaging, so you’ll enjoy it and learn very quickly.
Pronunciation Drills
A few more notes on The Flow of Spanish course: Along with the song training and the basic phonetics, we also have a section dedicated just to what we call the Tap Drills. For instance, the Spanish R sound is the sound that most trips people up who are learning. And what’s tricky isn’t just pronouncing the sound by itself, but also saying it in combination with other consonant sounds.
We have a series of drills for you to specifically target this weakness and strengthen it. No matter how weak your Spanish R sound is right now, if you do these drills and you practice on a daily basis, you’ll have a very strong R. Personally speaking, I was not able to make this sound for the first 19 years of my life. But one day I finally hit it and now I can do whatever I want with that sound. That’s all because I put in the work and practice, and that’s what you get in this course as well.
Conclusion
I hope you have a better sense now of what you’ll be getting into if you sign up for The Flow of Spanish. I promise you there is nothing else like this out there on the web, nothing as in-depth and as personalized for your pronunciation errors. I’ll be with you every step of the way to make sure you get this Spanish pronunciation down. And once again, I have a 100% money back guarantee, so if you are not satisfied with the training in any possible way, then I’ll refund you your entire purchase, no questions asked. That’s how confident I am in this training. I really hope I see you on the inside!
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