Product Summery
INTRODUCTION
Spanish is a dominant language in the West and it is spoken by almost 500 million people around the world. It is also the second mother tongue in the world by number of speakers, after Mandarin Chinese, and the second most studied language in the world—in 2019, the number of people studying Spanish as a second language was more than 22 million. Moreover, in 2060, the United States will be the second Spanish-speaking country in the world.
However, for most adults, learning Spanish can be daunting, because most of the programs are focused on memorizing difficult grammar rules, verb conjugations, and endless lists of words. Furthermore, students are forced frequently to use boring textbooks and have to take stressful exams to evaluate their proficiency.
Spanish To Move® was founded in 2013—under the slogan “Learn Spanish Online: It’s Time to Move Forward!”— as an online platform for helping people learn Spanish in an easy and effortless way. Our programs were designed by experts, on the basis of psychological and linguistic research, to ensure effective and long-lasting learning, under the direct (natural) method of teaching, developed to immerse the learner in Spanish in the same way as the learning of the mother-tongue: in a natural way—teaching is done in Spanish, grammar is taught intuitively, there is a focus on speaking and listening, and only useful everyday language is taught.
After several years of offering audio and video lessons online, we are now publishing Short Stories to Learn Spanish , where the readers will find interesting stories, written for beginner or advanced students, which will help them learn or practice their Spanish, acquire new vocabulary, and go over the most used grammar structures without even thinking about grammar. Also, by focusing on short texts, students will remain engaged, focused, and motivated when they achieve specific learning goals.
Vol. 1: For Beginners and Intermediate Students offers 39 stories written mostly in present, past, and future tenses, for beginner and intermediate students—levels A2, B1, and B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
Vol. 2: For Intermediate and Advanced Students comprises 50 stories for intermediate and proficient Spanish learners—levels B2, C1, and C2 of the CEFR—in virtually all the Spanish tenses, or at least the most used in everyday life.
These stories have been written in plain language, without technicalities or difficult vocabulary that requires continually looking up for words in the dictionary, and cover subjects such as history, philosophy, psychology,geography, biography, language and literature, and topics of general interest.
Our goal in writing these stories has been to help readers gradually progress in their knowledge of the Spanish language while reading stories on various topics of general interest.
Keep in mind that you don't have to study grammar—at least at the beginning—to learn a foreign language. When we focus on grammar, we analyze the language and we think about the verb tenses and the correct way to place the elements that are used in speech. This works if one is trying to write a letter, for example. But when our goal is to speak a language, which is what most people are interested in, there is no time to think about grammar constructions or prepositions, much less when someone asks us a question and we need to give a quick response.
Grammar should be learned in the same way a native speaker of any language learns it: by reading and listening, again and again, to create subconscious patterns. Grammar needs repetition to record itself unconsciously in the brain. Many studies have shown that the key to effective learning is listening and reading.
In addition, research shows that, when learning a new language, students who read for pleasure make the most progress on vocabulary acquisition and are better at understanding grammar structures. Everything is easier when done for pleasure.
At the end of the day, we offer you this book intending to make your Spanish path fun and interesting. We hope that our goal is accomplished and that soon you can read and speak Spanish fluently.