This program was prepared specifically to train officers of the Foreign Service and of other United States Government agencies who are involved in foreign affairs, and who need to learn to speak Spanish.  While it has been used in its original form for many years by people from all walks of life, and found to be extremely effective, Platiquemos has modified and adapted it for a wider audience, as well as to make it more "user friendly." The course is designed to have as a primary instructor a native speaker of Spanish (or one whose fluency is close to that level) who has received training specifically in the use of these materials, and who teaches under the supervision of an experienced professional person. Platiquemos contains extensive changes to make the program more useable for self-study [although others have, and still are, selling the original program as is for "self-study" with no changes whatsoever]. For more information about the changes we have made, go here.  Use of the audio cassettes or CDs provided with the program is important to success.

The materials in this program have been developed to present Spanish as a spoken language, and the skills of understanding and speaking are accordingly emphasized. The method of presentation may be new to students acquainted with other methods of language teaching. In order to understand the materials, one must first understand the method upon which they are built.

Method of Teaching

The method is known as guided imitation. It may appear new, but actually it has been used by a considerable number of teachers for many years. As it is used in this program, it combines elements of the "direct", "audio-lingual", "communicative", and "grammar/translation" methods. Its goal is to teach students to speak easily, fluently, with very little accent, and to do this without conscious effort, just as one speaks his/her own language without conscious effort.

There are two very important aspects of this method. First, learning a relatively small body of material so well that it requires very little effort to produce it. This is overlearning. If a student overlearns every dialog and drill as he goes through this program, he/she will almost certainly experience rapid progress in learning the language.

The second aspect is learning to authentically manipulate the sounds, sequences, and patterns of the language.  The important implication here is the reality of both the model and the imitation. The model (teacher, recording, etc.) must provide Spanish as people really speak it in actual conversations, and the student must be helped to an accurate imitation. Above all, the normal tempo of pronunciation must be the classroom standard; slowing down is, in this context, distortion.

The complete course consists of 55 units, each requiring some four to six class hours plus outside study to master. The course is a six-hundred-hours course which is studied intensively at the Foreign Service Institute over a period of four to six months.  [Platiquemos has concentrated on flexibility of delivery, so that the intensiveness of progress can range from a period of approximately twelve weeks at a language school abroad, to a total of six semesters each consisting of 45 classroom hours, which are arranged according to the needs of students, etc. If a student takes one level per semester, including summers, the entire course can be completed in two years; that period can be considerably shortened by taking one or more levels abroad, where a level can be completed in two weeks of intensive study. Students should note that, for reasons of cost, time availability, etc., the Platiquemos course does not provide for as much classroom time as does FSI. Achieving equivalent results, therefore, depends greatly on how much time the student invests on her/his own.] Either a native speaker or an instructor with very little accent and no significant errors of pronunciation is necessary as the model for pronunciation.

Pronunciation

The first two units are focused primarily on pronunciation problems. Drills on other aspects of the language are deliberately postponed because of the importance of developing good pronunciation habits from the very beginning of the course.  The importance of pronunciation cannot be over-emphasized. It is the basis of all real fluency. A person is readily able to understand anything she/he can meaningfully say himself, if the correlation between the way he/she hears it and the way she/he says it is reasonably similar.  The more similar, the greater the ease of comprehension.

The basis of the student's imitation is, of course, the instructor, whose pronunciation, if she/he is a native speaker of an acceptable dialect of his/her own country, is the ultimate source of authority. The fundamental classroom procedure for learning new material throughout this book (except the reading materials) is repetition by the student in direct immediate imitation after the instructor.  The imitative repetition may at first be done in chorus after the teacher, and subsequently by each individual, or it may be individualized from the start. In either case the student should wait for the teacher's model.  Imitating after another student too frequently results in compounding the errors of both.  If a person is fortunate enough to begin studying a second language before the age of eight or ten, the powers of imitation are normally sufficient to insure excellent results in pronunciation without resorting to technical explanations of what happens to various parts of the vocal apparatus.  If occasionally an individual has managed to retain this gift that all of us had in childhood, so much the better, but most adults need more specific guidance based on an awareness of the particular problems of producing particular sounds. The drills and explanations in the first two units are devoted to the specific problems an English speaker with his English habits of pronunciation will have in accurately imitating the sounds and sequences of sounds of Spanish.

Aids to Listening

The authors of the original government program devoted most of this section to explaining a phonetic alphabet which they had interposed between the Spanish and English in the texts. Given the fact that Spanish is spelled very phonetically, and that the differences between English and Spanish phonetics are easily learned, Platiquemos has dispensed with the phonetic alphabet.  This decision was also supported by the reactions of many students, both at FSI and in the Platiquemos program. The most important aids to listening remain what they always have been--the audio-cassettes which replicate the major parts of the text--as well as things that weren't available in the United States at the time the original Basic Course in Spanish was written: many radio stations which broadcast in Spanish, as well as Spanish-language television networks that are available almost everywhere.

The acquisition of a good pronunciation is first of all the result of careful listening and imitation, plus whatever help can be obtained from initial pronunciation drills and description, and from the cues provided from "aids" such as radio, TV, or hearing native-speakers converse. It is well to remember that a sizeable investment in pronunciation practice early in the course will pay handsome dividends later; correct pronunciation safely relegated to habit leaves one's full attention available for other problems of learning the language.

Every unit (after the first two) is organized in the same way: part one is the basic dialog with a few pertinent notes; part two is grammar drills and discussion; part three is a set of recombination narratives and dialogues; part four, beginning with Unit 16, is selected readings.

Basic Dialogues

The basic dialogues are the core of each unit. These dialogues are recreations of the real situations a student is likely to encounter, and the vocabulary and sentences are those she/he is most likely to need. The dialogues are set in a mythical country called Surlandia, which is described as a typical Latin American republic, insofar as it is possible to extract common features from so diverse an area. To further provide information in context, many of the notes suggest regional differences in both the language and the culture that will be encountered in various areas of Latin America and in Spain. [Platiquemos has also provided authentic period illustrations based on a rough time-line from pre-Hispanic to modern times, with sometimes rather extensive explanatory captions.  The purpose of these illustrations and captions is to spark interest and discussion of some of the facets of the Spanish-speaking world's fascinating history and cultures.]

In the first part of the book, new vocabulary is introduced mainly in the basic dialogues. Occasionally, in the illustrations of grammatical points, new words are introduced in order to fill out patterns needed to do the exercises. New words are always clearly indicated by placing them on a line by themselves, indented between the lines that are complete sentences. Since each new word is introduced in this fashion only once, the student should make every effort to learn each word as it is presented. The authors have taken pains to make sure that each word introduced will reappear many times later in the course, to help the student assimilate each word in a variety of contexts.

The student should very carefully learn both the literal meanings of each individual word or phrase that is given on an indented line and the meaning that appears in the full sentences. It should not be cause for concern if the meaning in context is strikingly different from the literal meaning.  In the construction of each dialogue, the Spanish was written first, and the corresponding English is its closest equivalent in meaning, not necessarily a literal translation. You should therefore not be surprised if the Spanish does not seem to "follow" the English perfectly--or sometimes at all. 

The student should learn the basic dialogues by heart. If they are committed perfectly to rote memory, the drills will go easily and rapidly. About half the time spent in class on each unit normally should be devoted to the basic dialogues.

Drills and Grammar

Each unit can in some ways be likened to a musical theme with variations. The basic dialogues are the theme, and the drills provide the variations. Patterns of the structure of the language which have been learned in the basic sentences are expanded and manipulated in the drills.

There are four kinds of drills in each unit (three before Unit 6). Of these, two are designed to systematically vary selected basic sentences within the structure and vocabulary the student has already learned. A further two are oriented toward the structure of the language to provide a systematic coverage of all important patterns.

All of these drills are planned to be easily and rapidly answered. They can be done orally and with only the instructor's book open.   The method of conducting the drill is clearly shown by the format of the text, and all answers are available for the teacher's convenience and for the student to refer to when studying outside of class. If you find a particular drill to be "hard", the difficulty probably arises out of inadequately mastering the dialogues and earlier drills. The drills are not problems to be worked out like mathematics, and the ability to do them, not figure them, is indicated by the nature of the course. There are no tricks in them, and they are not intended as tests.

Pattern drills are presented in a format which provides both practice and explanation. First appears a presentation of the pattern to be drilled, then various kinds of drills, and finally a more detailed discussion of the pattern.

The presentation consists of a listing of basic sentences (and a few new sentences when necessary) which illustrate the grammar point to be drilled. Then there is an extrapolation which shows the relationships involved in the pattern in a two-dimensional chart, which is further explained by a short note or two. This presentation should provide sufficient clues to enable the student to understand and use the pattern correctly in the drills that follow.

These drills are mainly exercises making substitutions, responses, and translations, highlighting the grammar points covered. They are devised for oral answers to oral stimuli.

After the drills there is a more detailed discussion of the pattern drilled. These descriptions are written in a condensed and somewhat technical fashion. While an effort was made to keep these discussions clear and readable, it has to be recognized that a description of a language is a technical subject, and simplification can only be attained by sacrificing accuracy or at a cost of a great many more words than space allows. The student who works through these discussions by a careful reading will find that she/he is acquiring a set of analytical tools that will be useful throughout the remainder of his/her career of interest in languages. 

Conversation

The conversation section of each unit is designed to help bridge the gap between the more or less mechanical stimulus-response activity of the drills and the skill of free conversation which is the ultimate aim of the course. These recombination monologues and dialogues extend the abilities of the student into ever more natural situations. The narrative is an anecdote type description of an event or situation which is then recast as a directed dialogue in which the instructor acts as a prompter for students who take the parts of the actors. The prompter gradually withdraws her/his help so that in the end the conversation is carried on freely.

Readings

Beginning with Unit 16, reading materials are introduced for outside preparation with perhaps some classroom discussion of the questions provided. These readings can also be used to provide content information for oral summaries.

Up through Unit 30, the readings tell a continued story about an American family living in Surlandia, expanding on matters of interest hinted at in the basic dialogues. These require no new vocabulary except for easy and obvious cognate loan words that can readily be guessed. From Unit 31 through Unit 55, the readings are much longer, and they do introduce a considerable number of new words.  This vocabulary is introduced through basic sentences which summarize the content of the following reading.

The readings are designed to provide information of interest and value about the culture which the Spanish language reflects, and to provide insight into the practical problems an American is likely to encounter in adjusting to life in a Hispanic area.

Now that you have read the introduction, you may wish to have a more detailed look at the program itself, including brief descriptions of all of the 55 units, and three units (Units 1-3) in its entirety. Go to the Course Material page to download your free units.

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The numerous changes and revisions in platiquemos are, we hope improvements.  we have tried to build on the original course rather than replacing it.

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