You know, I get a lot of love for my Synergy Spanish and Bola de Nieve courses.
But every now and then I get a nasty email…
Like this one that came in the other day…
Well, with all your hype about having a ‘better way’ you are still doing one thing which ALL systems (but one) do wrong! You start verbs in the present tense which is awkward and nearly useless. At least 80% of what one talks about to another is in the past tense as in what one did –this morning, yesterday, last week, etc. But with your (and all other systems) one is left saying, “I go to the store this morning” or “I buy six books yesterday” or “I wash my hair this morning” Why don’t you start with preterito, as Madrigal does? I know people who have lived in MX for several years and are still stuck in the present tense which is an awkward and nearly useless tense. You keep bragging that your system is better and more in touch but it is no different form the archaic academic model. You are not better than the system which my French son-in-law ridicules because at age 10 he was taught to say, “My tailor is rich.” He and his school mates laughed because none of them had a tailor and they all knew tailors, NONE of whom were rich.
If you want to say you are doing something different ……. do something different.
Voy a responder a las criticas
Firstly, this person hasn’t done the Synergy Spanish course. They are judging my complete body of work on a portion of the free samples.
Secondly, in the attack-Marcus email itself, only 17% of the verbs were in the past. In that same email, 24 of the verbs were in the present tense.
There goes the theory about the present tense being useless and that 80% of verbs we use are in the past.
We have to be careful what we accept as the only way to do something…
The word for that is dogma…
I’m constantly examining the way I teach and looking for better ways.
That’s why it took me so long to release the follow up to Synergy Spanish – Bola de Nieve.
I wanted to make sure that it would be as easy to use as Synergy Spanish, and when it came time to teach the past it would flow naturally from what you already knew.
And speaking of the past…
I’ve found the fastest way to speak in the past is to use frequently used Spanish patterns.
Here’s an example of how we get you started speaking in the past. It comes from the second advanced concepts lesson in Bola De Nieve.
Here’s an excerpt from advanced concepts 9
The past tenses in Bola de Nieve – Advanced concepts 9 may be beyond your current skill level, but if you become a Bola de Nieve member, it’s simply another easy step.
Notice on those audio lessons, I don’t mention grammar labels.
However, if you’re into grammar you will notice the use of 3 different past tenses…
- the preterit indicative
- the imperfect indicative
- the perfect tense indicative
and all that happened in just in a few minutes of audio. However, the important thing isn’t the grammatical labels, why do the names sound so intimidating, what’s really important is being able to use the language. Here’s what some of first group of Bola de Nieve students have to say about actually using the language.
Hi Marcus!
Although I tend to agree in principle with what your ‘friend’ was trying to say – ie, that all of our life is in the past and that is what we usually want to talk about – I haven’t found a satisfactory way of teaching this perspective from day one. Especially since it instantly brings up the issue of preterite v imperfect, which is one of the trickier points for most english students of Spanish.
Frankly, I prefer your method because of its modular approach.
Hi Team Synergy
Estoy de acuerdo con todo el mundo – who said that your methods are very effective. For me personally the proof is in the pudding.
Following a lot of travel independantly in S.A knowing no Spanish and being forced to get by with what I learned by absorption, fellow travellers and my guide book, then for the following trip I employed the tapes and attended a teaching college with some improvement which leads me to my most recent trip to Argentina, after using Synergy and some Bola I was really on top of things so much so that I thought I might go a step further and enrol myself at a Spanish School in B.A. What I found there though was my knowledge of Spanish and more importantly my ability to utilise it was so much deeper than my class mates from North America who had been learning from High School and all the way through college – naturally I was pretty stoked about such a good return on a small investment!!
Thanks again Marcus – Welcome back to Aussie.
Billy
PS For those with gripes about the cost, please consider the rest of the world in particular your Antipodean friends who watch the price almost double with the exchange rate.
I just wanted to say that I love your method of teaching. It allows me to just get stuck in. The person that sent you that email obviously didn’t realise that you have produced lessons using the past tense. I would have been a bit confused if you had started off using the past tense, so you did right by starting off using the present. When I very first started to learn at school, my teacher there started off with present too and didn’t go into the past tense until much later. Thanks for keeping going despite negative comments. You have a very special thing going on and many loyal students. x
Hola Marcus!
Como esta? i hope your doing fine with your daily job. don’t mind those unnecessary critics if they can’t benefit your ways of teaching techniques…
wel, just want to share that i am just one of those who are eager to learn how to speak and understand spanish but i just don’t have the time. i have few pages of printed lessons from other site containging the basic words in spanish and now i havent continued because i don’t have the luxury of time. i just go to work, after work, i go to sleep if i don’t have any appointment. i just hope one day from who ever of whereve i could learn spanish.
keep up the good work!
saludo!
Marcus I’m studying Spanish at school, have been for two years, yet in the few short months since I found your site, I have improved to a point that my teacher might not have been able to get me to by herself. The way you explained the personal A (just to name one example) was really great, you said in one sentence what my teacher has been trying to make me understand for a year and I never got it. Like so many people have said, don’t worry about people who are hellbent on finding some way to be dissatisfied. Geez, if it’s such a problem with the present tense, buy a spanish dictionary or one of the books with the conjugation tables in it. They’re everywhere. Once you learn the rules of conjugating, you don’t need a million lessons on all the different tenses, I think it’s more useful to concentrate on nouns and everything in your lessons. Trust me, the way my profesora teaches is confusing as hell. We spent ALL of our time on tenses and even after two years we barely know how to say any adjectives, nouns, colloquial expressions. Oh we know verbs and conjugations enough to make you sick, but nothing we can use as well as what you’ve taught.
Wow, I appear to have slipped into a rant. Anyway, I really enjoy your lessons and they ARE useful. You have a lot of support.
i really don’t speak english very well but, believe me, it’s the best way that i can learn Spanish and english in the same time.
gracias a ti Marcus,i like your method…..what i say??? i like???, sorry… I LOVE IT