warrenhardy.com  The Warren Hardy (obviously a gringo) started his method here in SMA. Besides himself, all his teachers are Mexican native Spanish speakers.

 A few people have asked about this great Spanish language system, which you can do on your own with workbooks and CDs (and flashcards and game cards, which I don’t think are essential) purchased at warrenhardy.com. As I mentioned before, the system is designed for adult minds, which are no longer wired to learn language. There’s loads of repetition and in class you work with a partner. As you learn, you feel successful because you’re building in an inspired manner. Just the right new material is added, at just the right time. (Each session as it is taught in San Miguel is 2 and one half weeks). The system is being introduced at a couple U of TX branch schools. And Warren is now reversing it to teach English to bright impoverished Spanish speaking college age kids from the countryside around San Miguel.

I did Level I at home with the book and CDs on my iPod. I studied Level II, which is considered the trial by fire; I’ll do Level III at home.

Level I – you learn and conjugate 6 “power verbs” in the present tense, which you join with hundreds of different infinitives to make sentences, ask questions, to help you get you around. Very effective. The 6 verbs are:

puder – to be able – (I can…)

necesitar – to need (I need)

le gusta – to like

ir a – to go to (I’m going to…)

querer – I like

tener que – to have to (I have to…)

And then they slip in a few reflexive verb infinitives; ser and estar; when to use por and para, etc.

Level II – you learn the preterite (simple past) tense; direct and indirect objects (which is hellish because the syntax is so different)—with a special emphasis on learning the 12 irregular verbs; the idea being that you learn the past tense (rather than present tense) so you can talk about what happened).

Level III – you learn all other tenses including the present, imperfect, future, conditional, commands, present and past subjunctive, participles, gerunds. And keep adding vocabulary.

Level IV – I don’t know what they teach in level 4

Traditionally one learns the present tense first, but who wants to go around saying, “I go to the store; I run in the street; I play the guitar.” It’s so much more logical to be able to tell about what you did in the past: “I went to the store; yesterday I ran in the park; I played the guitar for 3 hours; We traveled to Guanajuato by bus, had a great time, bought earrings for my sister so we can give them to her on her birthday. ”

So that’s the quick run down. Check it out on line or ask me about it. It’s really working for me. See how well I can write it in English.