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Spanish I (DVD course)

School of Tomorrow's Spanish 1 course is one of the best methods for studying that language. It consists of 12 DVD's, twelve Activity Pacs, and four scoring keys.

The DVD video presentation is outstanding. Two fluent Spanish speakers truly teach the lessons. Unlike most School of Tomorrow video courses, this one is absolutely dependent on the video presentation—primary instruction comes from the videos with practice and reinforcement activities found in the Activity Pacs. The videos also make use of technological enhancements such as graphics for vocabulary and superimposition of images of other scenes and places as new vocabulary is introduced. They also vary the "stage setting," sometimes bringing in additional "actors" to present new vocabulary. Students hear Spanish so much on these tapes that it greatly enhances their pronunciation and listening skills; they will get far more auditory exposure with this course than they will get with most other courses available to home educators. Careful attention to pronunciation, common and uncommon usage, geographical variations, and other details of actual language usage make this course especially practical.

The course combines both conversational and grammatical approaches so that students are quickly able to use short Spanish phrases yet develop long-term understanding of how the language functions.

Like most Spanish 1 courses, it covers typical topics like food, relationships, clothing, calendar terms, numbers, etc. Geographical and cultural information on Spanish speaking countries as well as occasional Bible verses, biblical proverbs, and wisdom principles are scattered throughout the course. "Witnessing" vocabulary is also addressed in one lesson.

Students complete exercises and tests in their Activity Pacs, although both are usually dependent upon video presentation of exercise and test questions to some extent. (One of the DVD's contains test material.) The presentation is a well-balanced mix of vocabulary, written work, translations, listening, reading, and other activities, although all of these are not used in every lesson.

The only things lacking are a dictionary and an index. Ideally, students should be compiling notes of their own as they go through the course, but I expect most will not. Even if they do, a Spanish/English dictionary and a grammar handbook with grammatical summaries and conjugation charts will be extremely helpful for quick reference.

Although only Spanish 1 is available at this time, students should easily be able to go into other Spanish 2 courses until School of Tomorrow completes their own Spanish 2.