A few people have asked me why Poster Girl is the only No-Work Spanish title with a vocabulary list. Of course, we don’t call it a vocabulary list, but at the beginning of most chapters, the reader, Michelle Thorson says something along the lines of, “Here are some new words you’ll learn in this chapter” and then reads (for example):
today – hoy or hoy día
poster – póster
lobby – la entrada
school – escuela
school lobby – la entrada de la escuela
which is a very short vocabulary list, described simply as “new words.”
Poster Girl, while it is the second No-Work Spanish title published was actually the first No-Work Spanish title recorded. What I discovered listening to Poster Girl, was that some sentences are overly long for the No-Work Spanish technique to work. For example:
She is so annoying. Qué fastidiosa.
It’s pretty easy when you hear the English and Spanish together to learn Spanish from that sentence. Or another example:
I don’t like it. No me gusta.
These are ideal No-Work Spanish sentences, nice and short. The Spanish is eash-to-follow with no prior Spanish knowledge. But Poster Girl has other sentences, such as:
It’s not even due until tomorrow, and she brought it in today. No hay que entregarlo hasta mañana y ella lo entregó hoy día.
As someone who knew no Spanish, I found that sentence hard to decipher, until I learned that ‘hoy’ or ‘hoy dia’ meant today. So, to make Poster Girl easier to follow, short vocabulary lists were added to the beginning of each chapter. And in writing the next No-Work Spanish titles, I simply learned to watch for longer sentences and to break those into two sentences whenever possible.
Poster Girl will probably be the only No-Work Spanish title to have those vocabulary lists, unless of course customers say they like them and ask for them in future titles.
