We will use all modern media, including TV, Movies, etc.
Here:
THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD NOT NOT STUDY SPANISH:
Recommended Movies in Nextflix:
- the mexican suitacse
- pastorela
- salvando al soldado perez
- casa de mi padre
- cross over – harrison ford
- y tu mama tambien
- amores perros
- efectos secundarios * juvenil- romance (on Youtube)
.
LOTS OF CULTURAL INFORMATION:
Nuestra Pagina con mucha informacion interesante:
Spanish Language Discusion and Latino American Culture
Workshops with me
PAST:
Going from Begginer to Basic Conversation
LEARN SPANISH / IMPROVE YOUR SPANISH
SITES:
Introduction to Spanish: courses:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spani…/courses.shtmlGrammar
http://www.studyspanish.com/tutorial.htmVocabulary and grammar for learners
http://www.helloworld.com.es/spanish/learnspanish.htmListening, news, radio,…
http://es.euronews.net/ (news in Spanish (& 8 other languages): videos & transcripts)
http://www.presseurop.eu/en (news in Spanish (and 9 other languages))Bilingual dictionaries
http://www.wordmagicsoft.com/dictionary/en-es/a.php (very good translations and examples, synonyms)
http://www.acta.es/index.php?option=…ados&Itemid=21 (a lot of specialized glosaries (EN-SP-FR))
http://www.elpais.com/diccionarios/castellano/ (dictionary of the newspaper El País: monolingual Spanish dictionary, synonyms, antonyms, bilingual dictionary English-Spanish and translator)
http://www.linguee.es/espanol-ingles/search (dictionaries and examples of translations from other sources)Monolingual dictionaries
http://www.rae.es/rae.html (Diccionario de la Real Academia de la Lengua Española + Diccionario panhispánico de dudas.)
http://www.elpais.com/diccionarios/castellano/ (dictionary of the newspaper El País: monolingual Spanish dictionary, synonyms, antonyms, bilingual dictionary English-Spanish and translator)
http://www.diccionarios.com/ (bilingual English-Spanish dictionaries and monolingual Spanish and English dictionaries)
http://www.diclib.com/cgi-bin/d.cgi?…xamples=1&vkb= (Buscador por el Diccionario de uso del español / María Moliner. Contiene definiciones, sinónimos, expresiones,…)Pronunciation
http://www.forvo.com/languages/es/ (individual words pronounced by native speakers)
More Web sites
A print magazine, podcasts and videos in Spanish, all presented at 3 levels for kids of varying abilities. This could fill an important gap for kids, since so much created for them is either way to basic (Dora!) or aimed at native speakers, so way over the head of kids with moderate proficiency.
Spanish Verb Drills on DoItYourselfSpanish.com
Spanish Flashcards on DoItYourselfSpanish.com
60 Insanely Useful Resources | TellittomeWalking.com
A great roundup of Spanish language learning resources, including several podcasts that I had not come across until finding this site.
A very long list of Spanish learning utilities including the most commonly used Spanish verbs (by number of times the verb was viewed on the Lingolex site) and their complete conjugations, various Spanish vocabulary lists and a variety of odd utilities like “almost all of the uses of dar.”
StudySpanish.com offers online beginner, intermediate and advanced Spanish courses, including excellent explanations of a wide variety of Spanish grammar points as well as a limited number of verb exercises accessible by unregistered users and a much larger number of exercises for registered users.
A free (to students) language learning site that is funded by having students do translations of Web pages for the owners of the page. The translation is done as a language learning exercise, and it is offered to the client for a fee. Offers several levels of training and a placement test to assign students to the correct level.
Books
Pronounce it Perfectly In Spanish
This is a booklet and set of CDs focused 100% on pronunciation, and I’m a big fan. Lots of Spanish books and courses have a few brief notes about pronunciation, but because this book is all about pronunciation, it goes much more in depth. It goes systematically through every sound in the Spanish language and covers things like the different pronunciations of many letters depending on where they are in a word as well as the pronunciation differences between Spain and Latin America. You won’t absorb a lot by and listening to this tape in one sitting. Better to put it in the car on burn to an iPod and listen to a little bit whenever you get the chance. This is my “go to” item to listen to in the car on long trips when I’m tired — I loudly repeat the words and phrases to learn and to keep myself awake.
Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses, Second Edition
This is a great tool for learning Spanish verbs for fans of the pencil and paper method. It explains each conjugation, then provides exercises to allow you to drill them into your head through repetition. This book was actually what inspired me to create the verb practice tool on this site.
A couple of limitations of practicing verbs using this book — the answer key is at the back of the book, so you either have to tear it out or flip back and forth. If you are doing something wrong, you won’t know until you’ve completed a group of exercises and are checking them. And, you either have to make copies, erase or buy multiple books if you want to review a particular form several times and you have already completed that section of the book. Needless to say, all of these limitations are overcome by the verb practice tool on this site.
Advanced Spanish Grammar: A Self-Teaching Guide
This is a pretty good traditional Spanish textbook. Chapters combine vocabulary that’s grouped around a topic (food, banking, etc.) with grammar lessons and lots of exercises. This was the textbook for a Spanish class I took a while back, and I liked it well enough. Be sure not to buy this and Practical Spanish, since they are essentially the same book.
Breaking out of Beginner Spanish
As the Amazon.com summary says, this book offers hundreds of tips for using the language more fluently and colloquially, with fewer obvious “gringo” errors. I found it to be full of really good information, but where I struggled a bit was in putting what had read into practice. It was all good stuff, but the nuggets of Spanish were in the middle of lots of English narrative, so I struggled to find a way to learn them in a focused way. Finally, I decided to make flashcards from all the best items in each chapter, and I ended up learning a good bit and making my Spanish more idiomatic. However, truth be told I learned a lot more about idiomatic Spanish from watching Spanish TV.
Spanish Abroad offers programs throughout Latin America & Spain by contracting with local Spanish schools. They can arrange lessons for children and adults for periods of a week to several months. We arranged a week in Playa del Carmen through Spanish Abroad and really enjoyed it. The school that they contracted with was top-notch and working with them was very easy.
ISLS Teen Spanish and Adventure Camps
ISLS is a Spanish immersion institute in Costa Rica that specializes in Spanish Camps for children and teens. Camps combine classroom Spanish instruction with a variety of camp options such as surfing, jungle adventure, or community service. Our family did a week camp in Costa Rica last summer in Playa Tamarindo, Mexico and our son enjoyed it. Since he was under 13, our son did the children’s camp, which was 2 hours of Spanish classroom instruction with 5 hours of more summer camp activities such as surfing, snorkeling, jungle treks and zip lining. While the classroom instruction was good, the one knock I’d have on the camp was that the summer camp activities were not really Spanish immersion — the kids spoke English to each other, and one young counselor spoke English to the kids as well.
Software
The toptenreviews.com review of Pimsleur says that their “method of language learning is effective. Pimsleur Spanish Unlimited runs on Windows and Apple computers. One license allows four users on up to four devices. Pimsleur Spanish Unlimited is a convenient method for beginners to learn Spanish at an individualized pace. Access to virtual chat rooms lets you practice with other learners.” They rate it at 9 out of 10 stars.
I just learned about Fluenz and have not used it, but I have to admit that their pitch interested me. I agree with the idea that adults do better learning like adults than like kids (i.e. we benefit from explanations — as long as they are short, contextual and reinforced by practice). Not sure I buy that they need to be in the learner’s language rather than the target language — I learned an awful lot of Arabic in a very short time doing the Middlebury immersion program, and I don’t think that English explanations would have improved things. Fluenz’ pricing seems to be close to Rosetta, but they do have a tour/demo you can try, which is probably worth checking out.
Most people are familiar with Rosetta. I’ve used it, as has my son. The interface is really slick, the voice recognition software seems cool, and you feel like you are really learning when you use it. However, when — during a review — it’s prompting you to answer the same question that you’ve answered correctly 50 times before, you start to wonder how smart it is. The knock that a lot of experts seem to have on the software is exactly that — it’s got a cool interface and the speech recognition is cool, but it does not seem to learn as you use it and zero in on things you DON’T know, which software this expensive should definitely do (and the verb practice tool on this site does!).
Spanish TV
RTV España is the portal for RTVE radio and TV programming. One of the challenges I’ve had in trying to use Spanish language TV as a tool for learning is that I don’t care for a lot of the programming that’s available on networks such as Univision or Telefutura. I don’t care for Telenovelas, I find talk shows like El Gordo y La Flaca boring, and things like Ver Para Creer gross me out. What I’m looking for in a TV program is something more like a cop show or a courtroom drama. RTVE has several of these, including Guante Blanco, Unidad Central Operativo (cop shows), Los Misterios de Laura (mystery), Al filo de la ley (courtroom drama) and Aguila Roja (historical drama, although a bit violent for me). There are also news, sports and novellas for those who like them.
Mitele is a platform for several Spanish TV channels online, including TeleCinco and Cuatro. Like RTVE, it has some content more like what US TV watchers are accustomed to — cop shows like Homicidios, reality like Hermano Mayor and nature shows like Natural Frank. With both this channel and RTVE, you may have better luck viewing via their Mobile Apps (for iPhone/iPad and Android) than through the Web site if you are outside of Spain.
Yabla Spanish is an authentic Spanish video content library and interactive delivery system intended primarily for educators, educational institutions and their students. New content is regularly being added to the video library and will remain available to subscribers throughout the academic year. Videos come from a variety of authentic sources including television, film, and music video. Difficulty level varies from very easy, to moderate, to challenging. Yabla Spanish videos and technology are being used by some of the top academic institutions in the world, including The University of Michigan, Brown university and The International Baccalaureate Academy of Connecticut. Yabla Spanish is produced and published by Yabla Inc. and utilizes Yabla’s unique, patent-pending, technology
Podcast
Pregúntale a Mónica is a weekly podcast of parenting and relationship advice in Spanish. I like listening to Mónica’s podcast because I like the content and — due to the subject matter — it’s a great way to learn words that I would never have learned otherwise (“berinche” for example). Also, since listeners write in with questions, it provides exposure to how people from a variety of countries and backgrouns express themselves about family, children and relationships.
Two different podcast series covering topics in intermediate to advanced Spanish grammar.
Podcasts about Science in Spanish. Ranging from accessible explanations of everyday phenomena to interviews with working scientists. Click a program under Nuestros Programas then suscripción to subscribe via iTunes or other aggregators.
Learn Spanish L.A. Area or Online 