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Hello, friends. I'm so glad to know that people are still discovering this podcast. Are still getting value out of it. Are still learning from it. Obviously, it's been a while since we've added an episode to this podcast. But that's because I've been investing my hours and hours and hours of editing time into other projects. And that's what I wanted to share with you guys. Today we have launched the first of what will be a series of Puerto Rican Spanish courses. If you've ever felt like the conversation episodes on this podcast are a little bit out of reach. Maybe a little too fast vocab level, a little too advanced grammar. A little too advanced. Or if you've just felt like you want more structure in how you're studying Spanish, then this first course that we launched would be perfect for you. We're starting at the beginning a Puerto Rican Spanish for Beginners one course. Later in twenty twenty six, and in twenty twenty seven, we'll be launching our Puerto Rican Spanish for Beginners two course as well as Puerto Rican Spanish for intermediate students. But for now, we just have our Puerto Rican Spanish for Beginners one course. And that's what I'd like to share with you guys. A little bit of a sneak peek preview of what the course looks like. On the back end, I'm going to log in so you guys can see the different modules and how it works, so that you have a really good sense of if this would be a good choice for you. This beginner's one course is based on the natural approach which mimics how we learned our native language. Aka not starting with grammar, your parents didn't sit down and conjugate verbs for you in the present tense in English. So we're not going to focus on present tense conjugations. Ser, estar, the verb gustar, None of that. The natural approach that we are using for this course is going to focus on listening, comprehension, pronunciation and vocab. That's what our beginners one course is focusing on more of a natural way to start to step into the language by getting your comprehension up of real, natural, authentic Puerto Rican Spanish of exposing you to vocab. Vocab that you can guarantee is used here on the island. And finally, pronunciation that is taught by Puerto Ricans. I have so many people who have Puerto Rican heritage who really want to improve their pronunciation and sound more like their family sound when they speak Spanish. Well, the ones who are teaching the pronunciation on this course are native speakers from the island and without further ado. Let's jump in and look at the course. We have a couple very important introductory lessons here right at the start. So that you know how to approach this course, maybe how to schedule your work, the mindset you need to have to go into and using the natural approach as well as things like how to study your vocab. And since we offer monthly live support calls, we have all the information about how to join those calls and when they're scheduled right here in that first sort of introductory module. And then we just introduce you to the voices that you'll be listening to on the course. Like I said, this is a comprehension first focused course. So you'll be listening to us speak each week and we introduce ourselves here. Obviously if you guys have been following the podcast, then you know, Alfredo and I. The other two wonderful women that we have on this course is Annette, who is my right hand of business. Annette is part of the Puerto Rican diaspora. She grew up speaking Spanish. She spent her summers in Puerto Rico, but both of her parents are from the island. But obviously, once she got into school, English became the dominant language. This is the case for many heritage speakers that I work with. Okay. So she knows intimately that struggle that maybe feeling like you have a split identity. But Spanish was her first language, so you'll hear that she has really beautiful pronunciation. And that's part of. What's great about this course is that it exposes you to different voices. Obviously, I will likely be the easiest one to understand because I'm the only one on the course that didn't speak Spanish as a first language. So I have more English sounds than anybody else who's making audios for the course. Annette has a little bit more than Sheila and Alfredo because she grew up in the United States and English is her dominant language. But Spanish was her first language. Then we have Alfredo, who you know, one hundred percent native speaker. It might represent kind of the pronunciation. You'll hear more in the south. And then we have Sheila from the electro boricua. If you guys follow her, if you don't follow her on social media, you absolutely should. She teaches about the Puerto Rican dialect, the origin of the vocab, the accent, the pronunciation. And she helped both create content for this course as well as review the entire course with her expertise so that we could guarantee that this was a product that does justice to the Puerto Rican dialect. After that introductory model of welcome and What to expect, Week One, we get into the Alphabet and Puerto Rican pronunciation again, the lessons around pronunciation are taught by native speakers. On the course it's going to be Sheila and Alfredo that are always teaching anything related to pronunciation because they are the two native speakers who have lived their entire lives on the island. Okay, so Alfredo will go through the Alphabet and then Sheila goes through the Alphabet. A loboricua. Okay, So she does for each letter of the Alphabet, she teaches a vocab word that's particular to the Puerto Rican dialect. Afrea will then walk you guys through a lesson on vowel sound so that you can really improve your overall sound by being disciplined in those only five sounds that the vowels make in Spanish. I go over a lesson about how consonants change between Spanish and English and give examples of that throughout the video with native speakers. And then you guys will have access to all of the words that Sheila goes over when she goes through the Alphabet aloborica. You then have that available to you in a vocab deck here to practice those vocab words. Each module also has an activity where you can kind of quiz yourself on the information you learned in that week's module. Week Two is where you really start getting into our audios. You'll hear each one of us do a short introduction again. If the conversation episodes of our podcast feel a little out of reach, feel a little bit long, then these audios are ideal for you because there's not a single one of them. On this course, that's longer than three minutes. And what we've done as per the natural approach is use what's called comprehensible input. That means that we're sharing images on the screen to help you understand more than your current vocab level permits. So, for example, let's say you don't yet have the word mascota in your vocab. But since we're sharing a picture of our cat, you know that it has something to do with animals or pets. Una mascota is a pet. Let's say you didn't yet have the word correr in your vocab. You'll see here that we're using an image that helps improve your comprehension even without understanding every word. That's what comprehensible input is all about. Of course, we also have a transcript of every audio that you'll be hearing translated into English so you can follow along that way as well. The activity that week is for you to then practice introducing yourself, we've given you kind of the skeleton you just have to fill in the blanks with your personal information and you can practice some of the good pronunciation that you learned in week one by recording yourself, doing a brief introduction of yourself in Spanish. In week two, in weeks three and four, we get into sort of daily use vocab because we talk about routines. Week three, we focus on the days of the week. We introduce the vocab of the days of the week and then we talk about our routines personally from Sunday to Saturday. In week four, same idea, but we focus a little bit more on morning and nighttime routines to then introduce you guys to sequential vocab. Before, after, then, I do this sort of the connectors that help you feel less robotic in your speech. Again, you'll be listening to each one of us talk about our routine. So by the time you listen to Alfredo, who we decided will likely be the most difficult to understand. Then you've already heard a lot of this vocab in three different audios. And it's less hard to understand because of the repetition of the context that you're hearing as each one of us talk about our routines. As always, there is a vocab deck that helps you learn the most relevant vocab from that week's modules. The second half of the course is where we get into a little bit more Puerto Rico specific things. Of course, we're all speaking the way we would speak naturally here in all of our audios. That's the point. But we get into more things like how to order food in Puerto Rico, talking about family and places, sort of cultural things like weekend vibes. ¿What's el domingueo y el chinchorreo in Puerto Rico? We talk about weather and sounds that you guys can learn that basic vocab as well as get more familiar with the geography. The life on the island Again, we're hoping to reach a lot of people in LA people that have Puerto Rican heritage. So just trying to strengthen their connection with the island continue to educate them and hope that they feel more connected to life on the island. Something I wanted to point out in module five is that I have a lesson on the features of the Puerto Rican accent. And again, if you feel like you've really struggled with comprehension of Puerto Rican Spanish, I'm going to break down What is it that seems so different about maybe the other Spanish you've listened to. If you listen to Mexican Spanish and you don't have such a hard time with that, if you listen to Colombian Spanish, you don't have such a hard time with that. ¿What is it that? ¿What are some of the letters that are being dropped and that might make it feel more difficult to understand this dialect? I go over that and of course I use over and over again examples of native speakers. I'm not a native speaker. I cannot perfectly imitate the accent. So in every single feature that I go over the Puerto Rican dialect, I then use examples from native speakers so that you guys can hear real authentic examples of that. So again, if you're looking for a bit more structure, a little bit less grammar first approach, if you're looking to improve your comprehension, if you're really struggling with comprehension of Puerto Rican Spanish, if you're wanting to improve your pronunciation and try to get closer to that Puerto Rican pronunciation, then this course is an excellent option for you. There are two options. When purchasing this course, you can do the standard access which gives you sixteen weeks access to complete an eight week course or you can get lifetime access. OK. One time purchase, You have access to this course forever. You have access to the vocab dex forever. You have access to the support calls every month forever. The link to this page that I'm looking at right now will be included in the podcast notes. There we've got a little bit extra information about the course, although having taken a look at the back end of it is pretty much the best idea. I can give you of the course. I just had a student who bought this course for her daughter and she said her daughter wasn't the greatest student in school. Definitely can't force her to do things she doesn't want to do. And she is really enjoying this course. It's such a different approach to language learning than what you typically see like I said, and this is how I myself learned. Very much grammar first approach. And then you've been studying Spanish for years and you still can't actually understand what people are saying and you can't actually have even the most basic conversation. We don't want you to go through that. So we are starting with a more natural way of learning the language. Listen to it a lot to gain, a little bit more of instincts of how things are said work on improving your vocab so that you're understanding more of what's being said and can start to get the words out even without perfect grammar. If that seems like an approach, that's good for you. Then I think you're really going to enjoy the course we worked so hard on it. Okay. Just one audio that I edited of Alfredos that was three minutes long. Took me three hours to edit. So hence, why we've not been producing more podcast episodes, been investing a lot of time into it, and it's because we think it's what's really needed and because we truly think we've created a good product for you guys. So we'd love to see you in the course we'd love to see you on the support calls. If you have any questions, feel free to send a message through the contact form on my website. I'll also link that page in the podcast notes. Thanks for your ongoing support of the podcast and hope you all are well.