We have been using a high school course by Abeka to guide our Spanish study. I like the course and would recommend it for a high schooler, but we were feeling like it was moving too slowly for us.
With the days steadily streaming by, I was chafing to get more learned in less time. Over the weekend we talked with our profesores and decided we would try accelerating the program.
We are still going to use the high school curriculum as a guide, somewhat, but we’re going to combine several lessons into one day and cut way back on the writing assignments, focusing instead on listening and speaking the exercises.
Additionally, we will attempt to conjugate and memorize several verbs a week, giving special attention to high-frequency verbs, which tend to be irregular conjugations (as far as I can tell).
At the end of the week–if not before–we’ll reassess our approach. If fluency has increased noticeably without increasing lunacy detrimentally, we’ll continue the accelerated course. If, however, we are weeping while huddled in a corner, we will consider slowing down a smidge.
¡Ciao!
Juan David 