Español para principiantes

Rating:
Summary: The kids remember everything taught because of these songs!
Review: Only by chance did I come to know about these wonderful tapes. I was vacationing in Quebec one summer, and a friend purchased the French version, "Francais pour debutants", for me. (I was teaching French and Spanish to young children.) I was so pleased with the gift that I immediately went and purchased the Spanish version, "Espanol Para Principiantes", for myself.

I teach Spanish and French to English-speaking children as an enrichment program in several public and private schools and I am always looking for lively materials to use in my classes. I teach children how to speak Spanish in a way that they learned their own language, i.e. through a natural method of conversation, through songs, and through game playing.

My classes begin with a song because this seems to lighten the atmosphere of the classroom. My favorite song that we sing is "Contando con los Animales". I make stick puppets for all my students and as we're sing about one of the animals, we hold up the appropriate puppet. Each student has a complete "barnyard" of the ten animals and they enjoy singing as they hold up the particular animal. When we sing "Las Partes del Cuerpo", we point to that part of the body we are singing about and we dance as we sing. The children always request to sing "El Alfabeto". What is evident is that the children remember the vocabulary that is being taught because these songs are so lively and full of fun.

This may seem almost hard to believe, but I only teach each of my classes one hour, one day per week, and the children remember everything that is taught to them by means of these songs.

Rating:
Summary: great resource but too advanced for most beginners
Review: This cd has songs that are interesting, catchy and fun. The lyrics cover excellent material for learning beginning Spanish. However, the recordings are generally too fast for beginners to catch on and learn. Most of the songs are so complex, that the vocabulary and concepts are lost in the shuffle. There are other products, even by this composer, that make a better purchase.

The accompaniments without lyrics on the cd are great, but again, so fast it is hard for the beginner to follow.

One exception to this criticism is the Alfabeto song where the repetition of singing it three times with catchy accompaniment and tracing the letters, helps the chilren learn and reiterate the song without boredom.

Still, I would probably recommend you keep looking. I teach Spanish to K-2 and have taught adults beginning Spanish, but I don't think I would buy it if I had to do over.

Rating:
Summary: great resource but too advanced for most beginners
Review: This cd has songs that are interesting, catchy and fun. The lyrics cover excellent material for learning beginning Spanish. However, the recordings are generally too fast for beginners to catch on and learn. Most of the songs are so complex, that the vocabulary and concepts are lost in the shuffle. There are other products, even by this composer, that make a better purchase.

The accompaniments without lyrics on the cd are great, but again, so fast it is hard for the beginner to follow.

One exception to this criticism is the Alfabeto song where the repetition of singing it three times with catchy accompaniment and tracing the letters, helps the chilren learn and reiterate the song without boredom.

Still, I would probably recommend you keep looking. I teach Spanish to K-2 and have taught adults beginning Spanish, but I don't think I would buy it if I had to do over.