Spanish Music and Dance Are Great For Weight Loss

Spanish music and dance has become very popular over the past decade. It has especially had a big influence on inner city youths mainly due to the popularity of singers such as J-Lo and Shakira. Spanish music has a fast beat that is punctuated rhythmic thumping of drums. When you hear this type of music, you simply cannot help but start to sway to the motion of the beats. It is simply hypnotic.

Spanish music and dance has experienced resurgence with the popularity of weight loss programs that feature moving to the beat. Zumba fitness DVDs pair pulsating Spanish and Latin rhythms with dance steps that were specially choreographed to get you moving. The idea behind programs like Zumba is that you will have so much fun listening to Spanish music and dancing that you won’t even realize that your are exercising.

Of course, you don’t need a Zumba DVD or fitness club to use Spanish music and dance as a form of exercise. Find a Spanish music station on the radio and start swaying your hips to the beat. You will work up a sweat in no time and will have fun doing it. It is a lot more fun if you have a dance partner. Call up your best friend and invite her over! If she isn’t available, your child will enjoy dancing and exercising with you.

The most popular of the traditional Spanish dances is the Flamenco dance. Flamenco dancing is difficult to learn from watching a video. If you are interested in learning this type of Spanish dance it would be best to sign up for some dance lessons. The best way to learn to dance is to dance with someone who knows how. Most dance studios have promotions where you can take one dance lesson for free to see if you like it before signing up for a series of lessons.

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Using Music and Rhymes to Help You Pick Up Vocabulary

Studying vocabulary, while fun, can also be exasperating. In fact, after doing it for extended periods, you can feel like you’re performing a chore instead of enjoying the process. As such, it isn’t uncommon to try and find ways to spice it up a bit, in order to keep it interesting.

One of the things I frequently do to kick things up a tad is to play with words by using music and rhymes. Put in that context, new phrases just become easier to remember, often staying in my head even when I’d rather not have it linger endlessly.

As such, songs and poetry, especially ones with memorable rhymes punctuating them are among the most effective ways to integrate a new vocabulary into your arsenal. In fact, I’ve seen some language classes done exactly with that, incorporating creative songs and poetry to craftily engage the students into learning.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen this technique explored much in terms of educational products such as language learning software. For the most part, it is considered largely childish – as if it is more professional to learn language by being totally serious using a boring audio book. If you can find language learning materials especially for kids, I’m almost 100% certain they incorporate some form of songs and rhymes, so you may want to look at that option as well.

Alternatively, you can do what I do: I sing my vocabulary lessons along to my favorite songs on the radio (e.g. I just replace the lyrics with the words I’m trying to memorize, even if they have absolutely no relation to the song). I wouldn’t be caught dead doing it just because it’s so weird, but it’s almost been a staple activity every time I study on my own.

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