Want to learn Spanish fast?
Joseph Hughes failed at every method in the book before he found
Rocket Spanish Premium.
"Why I ditched the classroom and decided to learn Spanish fast online instead."
"I have always wanted to learn to speak Spanish. Being able to communicate that beautiful language has been a dream of mine for as long I can remember. But it's also been my nightmare – because I could just never manage to learn enough to actually speak Spanish fluently.
"It all started when I was five years old. My parents took my brother and me to Mexico City. Dad had some business there and Mom thought it would be a good idea if we followed him and made a vocation of it. And although I can’t remember the details of our time there, I can recall the smells and sounds. Particularly the sounds – the voices, the music… I fell in love the atmosphere.
"So it was inevitable that, once I was old enough, I'd want to learn that incredible sounding language.
"The first time I tried to learn Spanish I was still at school. We had an impatient Spanish teacher called Mr Lopez. If you didn't 'get it' straight away he lost interest in you and that was the end of that for the rest of the semester. I tried, believe me! But I was one of those kids who just needed a bit more time.
"The next time I tried to learn Spanish was when I was studying Engineering at Penn State. I was given the option to do one of several unrelated subjects and seeing Spanish on the option list I decided to try again. This time the problem was nothing to do with the teacher – she was perfect and very patient. No, this time the problem was my dedication. Or lack of it. Okay, okay, I know how it sounds but the classes were at 8am on a Monday morning. C'mon people, you know what I'm saying.
"It was several years later before I would try again. I was working fulltime and, on the way home one evening I picked up a free paper on the subway. As I scanned it, the first thing that jumped out at me was an ad for Spanish evening classes. That's it, I thought, and the next day I booked my place. A week later I was sat in a room of eight students, literally bursting with enthusiasm. Third time lucky, I thought.
"My enthusiasm lasted. Ten weeks later and I was still going strong. I watched other student pick up the language, reciting their verbs, and holding basic conversations with each other. I thought, if I just hang on in here I'll be speaking Spanish with the best of them in no time. And so I waited. And waited. And, yes, you've got the picture, I waited some more. After 20 weeks I threw in the towel.
"I still don’t know why it didn’t work for me. Perhaps I was too tired after work. Maybe it was the wrong teaching style for me. I don't know. But at the time I had only one theory in my head: that I was stupid and I was kidding myself to think I could ever learn Spanish. And that dark thought stayed with me, tearing my self-confidence to pieces, for many years.
"Now, I know it sounds like a cliché but it was at a dinner party when everything changed for me. I was sitting opposite a Spanish guy, called José, and his American girlfriend, Jen. José didn’t speak much English so Jen, who was fluent in Spanish, was doing a lot of translation for him.
"Perhaps inevitably, I got talking to her about learning Spanish and told her about my miserable experience. I praised her mastery of the language and asked her how she'd learned, expecting her to tell me that she'd been born in Spain or had a Spanish mother or something.
"I've only been speaking it for a few months, she said. What?! My face must have betrayed me because she laughed and went on to tell me about how she'd learnt online, and that within three months of starting it she was able to speak Spanish confidently enough to travel to Spain alone, where she met her boyfriend.
"Her story was an inspiration to me and when I got home that night I was straight onto my PC. There were literally hundreds of courses to choose from, each of them offering different ways and methods. I selected five, then narrowed it down to Rocket Spanish Premium (to be honest, it was the special offer that swayed my decision), and subscribed.
"And yes, there is a happy ending. Eight weeks later I was talking to Jen on the phone… in Spanish!
"So the moral of my story is that if traditional methods of learning something, anything, don't seem to work for you, don’t worry. It's not you; it's the way you are learning. Thanks to the Internet there are hundred of new ways to learn. If it's not Spanish, it might be car maintenance or flower arranging. Whatever it is you want to learn, don’t give up. Just turn on your computer and see what's going on out there. You'll be surprised by what you find. And, I just have to say, if you want to learn Spanish fast, then you need Rocket Spanish Premium."
Joseph Hughes is a writer and now, at long last, a speaker of fluent Spanish. Find out what other people think about Rocket Spanish Premium...
