Cynthia Smith-Durán - Victors Adventures in Spain: A Parallel Text and Audio Spanish Workbook

Copyright 2014 by LightSpeed Spanish

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2014

ISBN 978-1-502-98591-0

eBook Designed by Acepub

LightSpeed Spanish
7 Simpasture Gate
Newton Aycliffe,

Co. Durham DL5 5HH

www.lightspeedspanish.co.uk

Dedication

This goes out to all of our students and supporters who have excouraged us to continue on our quest to demystify the Spanish language and make it accessible to everyone.

Contents

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all of the people who have contributed to the writing and publishing of this book. It could never have been written without the many hundreds of patient hours that our students have spent with us whilst we nattered on about the Spanish language.

To those and everyone else who has contributed in some way to this book, we thank you for all your support and encouragement.

Preface

This book is designed to be useful to students from Absolute Beginner to Intermediate and beyond. The reason we say this is that there are many levels on which you can use this book to improve your Spanish. We will explain how this can be done as you make your way through the workbook.

Victors Adventures is a fun story that incorporates all the latest learning techniques and methods designed to help you learn at your optimum.

IMPORTANT AUDIO INFORMATION!
There are no CDs with this book. All the audios are downloaded online.

The story comes with a full audio book, read by Cynthia Smith-Durn, as well as additional Vocabulary and Idiom Builder audio resources along with an Into the Learning Zone mp3, all of which can be freely downloaded from the website address:

www.lightspeedspanish.co.uk/victors-adventures

All you need do is to add this address into your browser, a password that you can find in this book and the audio files will be downloaded to your PC.

Victors Adventures is designed to walk you through some of the key grammatical structures of the Spanish language without making a massive deal of them. Grammar can be frightening to many people and for that reason we want you to be able to learn and retain the information whilst having the most fun possible.

As you set about working through this book, go at the pace thats right for you. There is no hurry and its not a race.

The most important factor in learning at speed is that you enjoy the process. If it feels like its becoming work, take a break. Listen to the audio instead, have a beer, just do something else and come back to it later when youre fully refreshed.

We recommend that you aim to do some learning each day. This helps information to go into your long term memory and helps your Spanish increase at a decent speed.

Finally, dont limit yourself to this book. There is a wealth of resources out there. Spread yourself about. Keep your learning varied and interesting. And remember: use all the free resources we offer in our webpage:

www.lightspeedspanish.co.uk

You learn so much more when youre having fun!

Your introduction to our system.

Here at LightSpeed Spanish we have designed a progressive learning system, which, by simply following along with us, will allow you to quickly build your Spanish comprehension and your ability to formulate great, well structured sentences.

This will be the first in a series of books that will assist you in developing your Spanish at a comfortable but rapid rate. This is not a complicated grammar book, but rather, it contains straightforward explanations in an easy to understand way that have been incorporated into a progressive learning pace that is sure to suit you.

Our Recommendation.

Everyone has different ways of learning and distinct learning styles. Some of our students will undoubtedly whizz through the book whilst others will be more methodical, taking one step at a time. Our only advice is that you go at the pace thats right for you and, even more importantly, that you follow the guidelines we offer you throughout the course. Naturally, this isnt a one-time-learning exercise and the beauty of this book is that you can keep coming back to it in order to increase your knowledge and confidence.

The Audio Transcript.

Each chapter has its own corresponding sound track which you will find on the transcript audio by going to: www.lightspeedspanish.co.uk/victors-adventures
We suggest that before you begin a specific part you listen to the spoken dialogue so that you become familiar with the sounds and pronunciation.
Remember: You dont have to consciously understand what you hear. You can trust that your mind will be making notes on how certain words are pronounced and sentences are formed.

Grammar and Vocabulary Lessons.

Accompanying each chapter is a lesson that takes you through a step by step guide of the main grammatical structures that appear as the story unfolds. Its worth studying this before moving on as it will help you gain so much more from the experience. Of course, whether you look at it before or after you read the chapter is entirely up to you.

The Vocabulary Builder audio.

Using the proven method of linking known words with new words, we have created a audio of key words and verbs from the story for you to learn. With this system, you can easily learn and, more importantly, retain a wealth of new vocabulary that will help you understand Vctors Adventures even more easily and quickly.
We have also provided you with a quick memory guide to complement the audio on page 241.

The Learning Zone audio.

Using the most modern techniques to assist you in achieving your optimum learning capacity, this pack contains an audio that is specifically designed to help speed up your Spanish. In it, we guide you into the ideal learning zone and show you how you can get into the zone easily and quickly each time you begin to learn. Purely optional, this guided learning track is available for those who really want to take their learning to LightSpeed.

Breaking down verbs.

In the index on page 201 there is a section on breaking down or conjugating verbs. We strongly recommend that you complete this part along with the exercises before you begin to read the story. This, too, will assist you greatly in identifying and understanding the verbs used within it.

The Best Way to Read the Story.

This is a parallel text story, and so therell be a great temptation to read the Spanish whilst taking a sneaky peak at the English translation. Although sometimes that will be appropriate, we recommend that you cover up the English text until you finish that particular page and spend some time working out what everything means. Youll be very surprised at how much you already know! Trust your intuition.

For the More Advanced Learner.

If you are finding that translating from Spanish to English is a little too easy for you, then simply work the other way around. Read the English and translate it into Spanish. Its always more challenging that way. Remember: There are many ways to say the same thing in Spanish, so if you come up with something different to whats in the text, it could still be correct. Buena suerte!

Lesson 1. Masculine and Feminine words. Palabras Masculinas y Femininas.

As you read this first chapter perhaps you can notice that its filled with words like el, la, un, una etc.