R. Diez de la Cortina Cortina Method Intended for Self-Study and for Use in Schools

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Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The great advantage of this method is that it enables the learner to acquire a thorough knowledge of the Spanish language in the shortest possible time. It simplifies learn ing greatly, by studying it, as John Locke remarks, With out the drudgery of grammar, but introduced from time to time, and, as Erasmus advised, kept within proper limits. The student, if reasonably diligent, may count upon being able to speak, understand, and write in Spanish quite fluently in the Short space of twenty lessons. It is a well-known fact that, by the old methods of study, only a few students obtain any degree of fluency in speaking a language that is foreign to them. It is true that many of them can, after a number of years Spent in study, conjugate, decline, analyze, and perhaps translate a sentence into English, but they are seldom able to put an English sentence into an idiomatic foreign one. Such learning, although laboriously acquired, is of little, prao tical value, and the tourist or commercial traveler finds himself in an awkward dilemma when forced to ask for even the every-day necessaries of life in a foreign tongue.