Spanish Course for Beginners
The Spanish video lessons were created for native English speakers with little or no Spanish speaking ability who relocate to Mexico.
Each lesson is designed to build on previous lessons, so resist the temptation to skip around.
This is not your “traditional” Spanish course full of long lists of verb conjugations. This course teaches techniques to convert your English into Spanish, work around difficult aspects of Spanish grammar, and teach you plug-and-play phrases that will allow you to construct your own sentences in your head in real time.
This course was originally called Spanish for Retirees Living in Mexico but we later changed it. The old name still appears on several of the early lessons.
Lesson 1: Basic Pronunciation and Some Cognates
Lesson 2: More Pronunciation and a New Cognate Trick
Lesson 3: Making Spanish Verbs from Cognates
Lesson 4: Creating Your Own Sentences from Cognates
Lesson 5: Creating Simple Sentences with Hay
Lesson 6: Even More on Pronunciation and How to Express Location
Lesson 8: Putting It All Together
Lesson 10: Useful Expressions with Tener
Lesson 12: Desire, Ability and Obligation
Lesson 13: Going Places (Part One)
Lesson 14: Going Places (Part Two)
Lesson 15: To Be or Not to Be (Part One)
Lesson 16: To Be or Not to Be (Part Two)
Lesson 17: Expressing Possession
Lesson 18: The Verbs Saber and Conocer
Lesson 19: Direct Object Pronouns
Lesson 20: More Work With Direct Object Pronouns
Lesson 21: Spatial Relationships
Lesson 23: A Look at the Subjunctive (Part One)
Lesson 24: A Look at the Subjunctive (Part Two)
Lesson 25: A Look at the Subjunctive (Part Three)
Lesson 26: Expressing the Future with Ir
Lesson 27: How to Say You Like Something (Part One)
Lesson 28: How to Say You Like Something (Part Two)
Lesson 29: How to Say You Like Something (Part Three)
Lesson 31: The Present Progressive (Part One)
Lesson 32: The Present Progressive (Part Two)
Lesson 33: The Verb Poner (Part One)
Lesson 34: The Verb Poner (Part Two)
Lessons for Intermediate/Advanced Students
Once a student reaches the intermediate level, they already have the basics under their belt and their focus turns to filling in the gaps in their knowledge. These lessons were created with those learners in mind. They don’t follow a specific order; however, they all address aspects of Spanish grammar that intermediate students typically struggle with.
Translating phrases like: whatever you do, whatever you say, whatever happens
Translating hypothetical if-then clauses
A Little Bit About the Creator of the Course
The course is still under construction. It’s being created by Paul Kurtzweil (Q-Roo Paul).
Paul learned Spanish on his own while working as a deputy sheriff in Florida. The jurisdiction where he worked was home to approximately 80,000+ Hispanics, the majority of which were Mexican. He learned Spanish out of necessity and along the way he developed several shortcuts that allowed him to reach fluency quickly.
During his 25-year career, he conducted several thousand work-related translations, occasionally represented the agency on Spanish language television, and even did public speaking in Spanish at events hosted by the Mexican Consulate.
Paul started to sharing his techniques for learning Spanish with his fellow law enforcement officers. He developed an online Spanish course that was taken by over 3,500 law enforcement officers across North America and he also wrote the book Functional Police Spanish.
In 2015, Paul retired from law enforcement and he and his wife moved to Mexico. Paul decided to create this course after meeting several expats from the U.S. or Canada who were struggling to learn Spanish.