Are You About To Invest In An Online Spanish Course?
If you are thinking of investing your time and money in an online Spanish course then do yourself a favour and read this article through to the end. Here we investigate the many advantages and disadvantages associated with choosing to take Spanish lessons online.
Why Are Online Spanish Courses So Popular?
So why are online Spanish courses or indeed online courses in general so popular these days? The answer to this question could really be summed up in a one word answer, and that one word would be ‘Convenience’. With the number of computers in the world having passed the one billion mark back in 2008 more and more people have access to the internet than ever before. Increased access to the internet means increased access to information. The information we are talking about here of course comes in the form of online Spanish learning courses.
People who have good access to the internet are quick to realise the huge convenience that comes with being able to access information in this way. Information is easy to find, can be found very quickly and this is the biggest advantage – can be obtained without leaving the comfort of your own home.
So, if you are considering becoming a user of any online Spanish course, consider the convenience that an online course has to offer – you will be able to access your Spanish learning centre 24/7 from the comfort of your own home at a time of your choosing and the learning material will be right there in front of your eyes in an instant. In the case of some courses (Rocket Spanish is one) the course material will be available to you for a lifetime since one of the features of some online Spanish courses is that you get lifetime access.
Learn At Your Own Pace And When Your Busy Schedule Allows
The modern world that we live in today is, for many of us, a very busy world indeed. Just trying to find the time to ‘get it all done’ can in itself be a challenge. Having a busy schedule is one of the biggest reasons that the more traditional method of learning a new language – and I’m talking here about taking a class or college course of some sort – is just not an option. Having to be at a specific place at a specific time and on a regular basis sometimes just can’t be done.
With an online Spanish course however we get to do our Spanish learning on our own terms. We could grab twenty minutes of learning over breakfast in the morning, we could allocate the occasional lunch hour to our online Spanish course or we could spend a whole day at the weekend learning Spanish if we so choose. This level of flexibility and time freedom offered by online Spanish courses is the main reason why they have become so popular in recent years.
Choosing when you learn and for how long is of course not the only advantage of using an online course. An even bigger advantage for some people is that they get to learn at their own pace. If you were to take a traditional Spanish class there would always be a risk that the class would not suit your level.
If you are a complete beginner and perhaps struggle a little with foreign languages you might find that a class moves too quickly for you and you get left behind. If you already have a good basic level of Spanish you could find that a class moves too slowly and quickly becomes very boring. With an online Spanish course you set your own pace – so no getting left behind and no wasting time on stuff you already know.
Even More Convenience – Do Your Learning ‘On The Go’
A great feature of many of the online Spanish courses that are on the market today, is that you can download lessons from the course in the form of audio files and pdf documents. This is great because if it suits your lifestyle you can actually take your learning with you.
If you drive to work for example you could burn some audio lessons onto a CD and listen to them during your commute. If your commute is thirty minutes, that’s an extra hour of Spanish learning every day making great use of the time you spend commuting which is usually otherwise ‘dead’ time.
If you like to listen to music on an MP3 player while doing some work around the house, while working out at the gym or when out for your daily jog then you could swap your favourite songs for some Spanish lessons and in doing so fit a good deal of language learning into an already busy schedule.
Should your daily schedule involve you having to spend time sat in a waiting room of some sort or perhaps your commute involves sitting on a bus or train for a while then you could spend that time in a useful way by bringing with you some printed out lesson transcripts from your online Spanish course and going back over some of what you have learned.
All in all online Spanish courses give you quite a number of options to bring your Spanish language learning with you on a regular basis and make great use of some of the otherwise ‘dead’ time in your busy schedule. This in turn can greatly reduce the overall time it takes you to learn the Spanish language.
The Modern Technology Of Spanish Learning And Online Courses
The very first online Spanish courses, and I’m talking about those that were available more than ten years ago, were, it has to be said quite basic at best. Many first editions of the popular modern courses originally contained little more than a series of interactive audio files.
Over the years however the companies who produce online Spanish courses have invested a lot of time and research into the ways that people learn and the methods of teaching a language in order to enable them to produce the very effective and feature packed online courses that are available to us today.
One of the more important discoveries in terms of learning a language is the fact that there are basically three different types of learner – people who learn better by seeing (visual learners), people who learn better by hearing (auditory learners) and people who learn better by actively doing (feeling or kinesthetic learners). This knowledge has led the creators of courses like Rocket Spanish to include a variety of different kinds of Spanish lessons which cater for the three different types of learner.
Another scientific discovery that is employed by online Spanish course creators is the fact that it has been proven that we learn much better and retain more information when that information is presented to us in smaller ‘bite sized’ pieces. This has led to a technology known as ‘chunking’ which is used to deliver many online Spanish course lessons. Basically lessons are quite short and much more manageable which helps us to remember a lot more of what we have learned.
So regardless of your learner type you can be confident that the better online Spanish courses will cater fully to your learning needs – this is not always the case with other methods of learning Spanish.
No Spanish Teacher – But You Can Still Ask One!
One of the great advantages of taking a Spanish class is that you have a teacher or tutor that you can actually ask questions of. If you don’t understand something or get ‘stuck’ with your Spanish learning all you need do is ask your teacher and they will likely answer your query and solve your problem in an instant. Although not having access to a teacher is one of the main disadvantages associated with online Spanish courses the creators of many popular online courses have come up with a good solution to the problem.
The solution is that many course producers have included a Spanish learning forum of some kind which is typically built in to the courses online learning centre. This feature is common to many of the online courses on the market today and although the forum does not give you direct access to a Spanish teacher or tutor in the same way that taking a class would it is probably the next best thing.
The people who use these forums are all at different stages in their Spanish language learning and range from complete beginner right up to learners who are almost fluent speakers. No matter what your Spanish learning problem or query about the course you will be able to get an answer or help with your particular problem at the forum. You may have to wait a little while but someone will always have an answer to your question.
Some Online Spanish Courses Won’t Break The Bank!
Let’s face it, one of the biggest factors that will influence our decision as to whether or not we buy an online course of any kind will be the cost of that course. Before we put our hand in our pocket and fork out our usually hard earned cash we want to know that we are getting the best value for money that we can. In this regard all online Spanish courses are not the same.
With regard to the method of paying for the course, online Spanish courses are usually one of two main types – pay monthly or pay once up front. Which option you choose may of course depend on your available funds. The pay monthly courses will usually have a low monthly fee whereas the pay once up front type of courses will require a more substantial initial outlay. Although the pay monthly type of courses cost less in the short term they can sometimes be a bit of a false economy.
Should your busy lifestyle or some unexpected events prevent you from studying on a regular basis you may find that you will need to keep paying your monthly subscription for a much longer than anticipated period of time. This could end up costing you quite a bit of money in the long term and once you stop paying your monthly fee your access to the course will usually be gone forever!
With the pay once up front type of online Spanish courses you will usually get access to the course for a substantial period of time, certainly long enough to learn all the Spanish you can from it. With the Rocket Spanish course for example you will get full lifetime access to a very well designed and feature packed Spanish learning centre for less than $100. Other similar courses would have you pay much more than this.
When you start looking into the option of using an online course to learn Spanish you might find that some of them (not all) can be quite expensive. To make a better judgement as to whether a particular course is expensive or not you would first need to compare the cost of the online course in question to the other methods of learning Spanish that are available to you.
For example, if you were to hire a personal tutor to teach you Spanish at a rate of let’s say, $20 per hour, how many hours of tutoring would you need before you reached your required level of Spanish. If you were to take a class at your local college you will not only have to factor in the cost of the class itself but also the commuting to and from that class.
Before you spend your money on any online course it is important that you do your own research – find out what the most popular courses are, compare the features of these courses, read reviews and find out what people are saying about them. Doing your homework in this way will ensure that you get the best value for your money.
In Summary – The Main Advantages of Choosing an Online Spanish Course
- Online courses are easily accessible. You can usually access your online Spanish course from any computer anywhere in the world 24/7.
- You can fit your learning in around your own schedule no matter how busy your lifestyle.
- You can learn at your own pace – there’s no getting left behind or getting bored with a class that moves too slowly – you set the pace.
- You can take lessons with you to learn ‘on the go’ – listen to audio lessons during your morning commute, while at the gym or out for your morning jog.
- Regardless of your learner type (visual, audio, kinesthetic) there will be lessons that will work well for you.
- The support, help and advice from other learners will be available to you so you can get your Spanish learning questions answered.
- The cost is low when compared to other methods of learning – you could become a confident Spanish speaker for less than $100!
One Online Spanish Course Worth Checking Out
The many advantages associated with choosing an online course as your method of learning Spanish have been clearly laid out in the article above. I chose Rocket Spanish for my Spanish learning and that’s why I recommend it. I myself followed the advice that I have given in this article and that advice again, is to do your own research before spending any money.
In doing my research I found out what all the most popular online Spanish courses were. I then read all the reviews I could find about those courses and found out what real people were saying about them. I then compared all the features of the most popular online Spanish courses and finally the cost of each.
After putting the most popular courses through this ‘analysis’ I personally found the Rocket Spanish course to be the best value for money for me. One or two other courses also had some really great features but the much higher cost of them did not justify me spending my money there. In your research you may find that one of these other courses will better suit your needs and be willing to pay the higher price.
If you are starting to like the idea of using an online course for your Spanish learning then you could do a lot worse than checking out the Rocket Spanish course. To learn more about Rocket Spanish, it’s great features, what people are saying about it and how to get a discount why not read my review at the link provided below. You may also be interested to know that you can actually get a free trial version of the Rocket Spanish course which I can highly recommend. To learn more about the free trial and how to make the best use of it you can read my review of the Rocket Spanish free trial by following the link below.