Introduction to Reading Spanish, On-Line Course

Introduction to Reading Spanish, An On-Line Course

Reading is the true foundation skill in a foreign language. Understanding written Spanish is simpler than understanding spoken Spanish. To "speak" or write Spanish, one must understand what is spoken or written to one, or a conversation cannot take place.
Reading is the gateway to self-education.
The Internet provides us with vast amounts of written material in Spanish and other languages. Previously this material was costly, slow, or impractical to obtain.

To enable students to read standard Spanish, as found in a newspaper.
To teach use of a dictionary, including the differences in structure between Spanish and English dictionaries.
To give a solid foundation to students for future writing, listening to, and speaking Spanish.

A key feature is that this course provides a simplified and restructured Spanish grammar, decreasing the attention given to less important elements.
The learning process is simplified by focusing on written Spanish only. Students do not have to mentally "decode" the sounds of oral Spanish.
The course provides a number of unique tools, written for this approach. These include an alphabetical, comprehensive list of irregular verb forms, and an alphabetical list of verb endings, with identification of each.
The course will require a time commitment from you. As with any language course, it involves some memorization.

If you do not have a good Spanish-English dictionary, you will need to by one. Previous students in this course have found small paperback dictionaries inadequate. Information on dictionaries is included in Lesson 1.
Any graphical web browser with table support is adequate for this course. Test to see if your browser supports tables. However, since there is no cost in upgrading your browser, I suggest upgrading to the latest version. Thus you will be able to 1) hear the sound files, 2) see the backgrounds to the pages and tables, 3) see all the special characters, such as Á,É,Í,Ó,Ú (all of which should have a hyphen over them.). Click here to upgrade Netscape Communicator. Click here to upgrade Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Translation software has its place, but it only gives a general idea of the content, with many serious errors. Here is an example of why translation software has a long ways to go.
To date there is no software which can be relied upon for an accurate translation.

My name is Daniel Eisenberg. I have a Ph.D. in Spanish from Brown University.
At present I am Professor of Distance Education and Liberal Studies at Northern Arizona University.
Previously I was Distinguished Research Professor of Spanish at Florida State University.