Learning Spanish with La Musica!

Forget the claims to help you learn Spanish in 30 days.  You are not going to read one book or listen to one series of lessons in your car on the way to work and learn the language.  It is not going to happen.  Learning a foreign language is a steep climb as well as a rewarding adventure.  The best you can do is find some kind of learning tool which gives you a toehold on the language so you can get started.

The Rapenese tapes offered here gave me just such a toehold when I moved to the border in 2000.  I played them hundreds of times, until the printing on the cassettes was faded from turning them over and over again.  Not only did I enjoy listening to them, but I was suddenly able to get a few things done in Mexico.  When I used the phrases on the tapes, people no longer asked me to repeat myself. 

There are five tapes.  They were created by Robert D’Amours, a Canadian school teacher.  On each tape he partners with a young woman from Mexico, and they go through each lesson two times.  The first time takes the form of a dialog between Robert D’Amours and the female Spanish speaker.  The lessons are worked into an ordinary conversation between them.  Then comes the music!  Robert D’Amours sings the English version of the phrase, and then his partner sings the phrase in Spanish back to him.  The music is very well done and is soft rock in style.  I’m surprised the female singers on these tapes have not all gone on to become star recording artists, because each one is that good. 

The musicians on the tape are first class.  The music seems to trigger some relaxation mechanism in the mind, because very soon you lose that “I’m speaking Spanish and actually rolling my r’s” feeling and find yourself simply singing along with the music and enjoying the experience enormously.  With a little repetition, pretty soon you’ve mastered everything on the tape.  A little extra study helps, of course.  The tapes all come with printed versions of the lessons.  I found it very helpful to get out pen and paper and make my own copies of the phrases so I would know how to spell the words in the lessons as well as pronounce them.

Like everything in the guide, the tapes are here because I can personally vouch for them.  You can buy them here one at a time in any combination you wish.  It is not absolutely necessary to use these tapes in sequence in my opinion, but you might want to start with one of the first three.  You will find a description of each tape in the table below.