Article by Marcus Santamaria
Creator of Synergy Spanish

Not everyone likes how I teach. Students usually love it, but the
language coordinators I’ve worked with, they are another story.

Once when I was teaching English in Mexico the coordinator came
into my classroom to show me how it was done.

A student asked me the meaning of an English word.

I was about to give him the translation when the coordinator jumped
in and took over my class.

We then went through 5 minutes of craziness. It was somewhere
between a circus, a pantomime and a vaudeville act.

She mimed. She used hand signals. She acted.

Yet, as I looked around the room all I saw was blank stares. I look
back at the coordinator and she’s still going on with the show.

By now she’s practically doing hand stands and juggling. Then about
5 minutes into the festivities, she starts using the word in a sentence.

Now the students are guessing the meaning, but they still they can’t
figure it out.

Finally someone yells out the word in Spanish. The coordinator points
to them with a big smile and says…

Sí, eso es. – Yes, that’s it

The whole circus act was supposedly so we didn’t use Spanish in the
classroom, yet the student translated into Spanish and the coordinator
answered in Spanish.

Why didn’t she just translate it in the first place?

Solo Dios sabe! (God alone knows!)

I’m not sure what it is about foreign language teaching, but people
come up with the goofiest ideas. They either seem to think you have to
pound students with grammar or entertain them with games.

Yet, expressing yourself freely in another language is entertaining
enough. No one needs the sideshow.

It’s thrilling when you discover you can say what you want to say in
Spanish. And it’s exhilarating when you try it in real life on Spanish
speakers and they get what you say right away.

I’ve haven’t found a faster way for you to experience sensation of
success with Spanish than learning the most powerful Spanish patterns
first. They open up the language for you. In fact, there are a handful of
patterns so powerful that just 138 words can be turned into 88, 0000
phrases.

My advice is to forget the grammar, forget the charades and get your
Spanish started with power patterns first.