Jan
5
Spanish toolbox: 10 language-learning resources
Today’s entry is a guest post by Karen Bryant from the Teaching and Learning Spanish blog. Karen has a very fine blog where she writes about Spanish learning tools she comes across in her search to teach her sons Spanish and to keep her own Spanish skills current. Here is her recommended Top 10 list of Spanish Resources:
Choosing my top ten Spanish language-learning resources was no easy task since there are so many out there and more keep popping up every day seemingly. After some thought and research this is what I came up with—in no particular order of preference.
- Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish
by Joseph J. Keenan – Written by a native English speaker who learned Spanish, this book offers numerous tips and explanations about the language that you just won’t find elsewhere. I have read this book several times and I always find something new.
- Destinos is an instructional series of Spanish videos produced by Annenberg Media. They introduce you to different cultures in the Spanish-speaking world, and teach speaking, listening and comprehension skills all the while telling a good story. Yes, it’s dated, but I still think it’s worth watching for those who are starting to learn the language and those who need a review. (Free)
- Phonetics: The sounds of English and Spanish – I have found this site to be very helpful, because it explains how to pronounce the various Spanish sounds in detail. For instance, for each vowel and consonant, you’ll find an animated diagram, step-by-step descriptions and a video of the sound being used in context. This site is mainly for students of foreign languages, but I think it’s also good for those who are teaching the language either at home or as refresher for those who are classroom teachers.
- Online television programs – If you have high-speed Internet access, then you have access to Spanish-language television. Here are a few of my favorite sites: http://delicious.com/Karen427/Spanish+online_tv I just try to enjoy the shows without worrying too much about understanding every single word. (Free)
- Spanish Proficiency Exercises from the University of Texas at Austin is a comprehensive collection of brief video clips from native speakers describing everyday situations. The clips are available at different levels from beginner to superior with transcripts in English and Spanish for many of them which I find very helpful. (Free)
- ShowTime Spanish is an upper-level podcast from the Radio Lingua Network—the same folks who also do the very popular Coffee Break Spanish podcast. I really enjoy listening to this podcast because of the variety of topics offered weekly accompanied by easy-to-understand grammatical explanations. (Free podcasts, membership fee for extras.)
- Spanish NewsBites – Here you’ll find timely articles about news and culture with audio (listen online or download mp3 files), links and glossaries as well as transcripts with the new vocabulary and more. I think it’s so important to learn about the culture as well as the language and with this site you can do both. (Free)
- SpanishPod, a part of Praxis Language Ltd., offers audio and video podcasts at five different skill levels. To me, the presenters seem like old friends stopping by for a conversation. I have found myself laughing at some of their dialogues and really enjoying myself. They also have a knack for explaining difficult grammar. Interestingly enough, I have learned things here that I did not during my four years of college Spanish classes. (Membership fee)
- The Spanish-English Wordreference forum is one of my main sources for finding answers to vocabulary and grammar questions. If after searching I don’t find my answer, then I just ask. So far, I have received the help I needed in a timely manner from native Spanish speakers. (Free)
- Board games in Spanish – If you’ve never done this, you should try it. Playing board games in Spanish is a stealth way to practice vocabulary and have fun at the same time, especially if you’ve got young children learning Spanish. I recommend ¿Advina Quién? and Cranium’s Cadoo in Spanish. You can find these board games at Walmart, Target or Amazon.
Those are my top ten, but truly there are so many other resources out there such as the online magazine TECLA and the BBC’s Spanish Learning site, among many others.
Now it’s your turn. Which Spanish language learning resources have you discovered in the past year that you enjoy using?
I finally decided to write a comment on your blog. I just wanted to say good job. I really enjoy reading your posts.
Oh my gosh, I was just working on a list like this. Yikes!
Good one though…
Hi, Karen – greetings from New Zealand. Thank you for such an interesting and helpful list. Like yourself, I am always looking out for programmes which make the ‘learning Spansh’ journey that much more fun – if it is fun it seems to ’sink in’ more easily. I am 82 this year and am studying at university to achieve my BA – nearly there. I find that playing Spanish music for a few minutes before a study period gets both halves of my brain working in ’sync’.
I have found a site called AUDIRIA invaluable with free transcripts, grammar exercises and interesting daily podcasts on a variety of subjects and one can choose the desired level and the subject of choice. Also music and games – with a particular appeal to children – http://portallanguageservices.com/ – partial payment here.
Un saludo,
Elizabeth
Mundo: News in Spanish from the BBC: excellent excersize
Hablamos de cine: podcast for filmbuffs in spanish > hard work!
Tango city tour: For those who also like Tango and want to practice their argentinian spanish
Un idioma sin fronteras: Promotional podcast for the spanish language
All available through itunes !
Have fun.
And I am looking forward to ramses’ list
I think a very good complement to this kind of sites is to practise with a real teacher like in Linkua, live language tutoring.
Classes are done via videoconference
Hi,
I’m still in the process of writing the programs but I’ve created a web page for practicing verb conjugations and another for learning vocabulary. I’ve got about 18 verbs up with more each day. There are 3 vocab quizes so far. It’s all free. If anyone has any corrections, criticisms or ideas for quizes I’m all ears.
Thanks,
Tom
http://www.tomediger.com/spanish/
Thanks for the comments and the links. I can’t wait to take a look at them.
This is great! Really helpful. Cheers.
I only recently discovered the site and podcast and both are excellent.
A good roundup this of useful resources, well done!
Enhorabuena!
Thanks everyone for your comments. Happy to hear that Karen’s listing is helpful to all. (Gracias de nuevo, Karen)
Saludos.
Great article! I agree with you with wordreference forum, very useful. But as far as the best online dictionary for Spanish and English, I think it is at Word Magic’s website: http://www.wordmagicsoft.com
They have a free online dictionary, and it is the most complete I’ve found so far.
Hope you enjoy it.
Ricardo,
I’m not at all familiar with Word Magic. Will have to take it out for a test drive. Thanks for the recommendation!
You are welcome! Thanks…
My new favorite site is http://www.babbel.com, which has extensive theme-based sets of vocabulary to practice with various little “games”, and also writing assignments that you can then ask your “friends” (usually folks who are native speakers of the language you’re learning) or the “community” to correct your work. They are also building a library of tutorials to work on grammar, and there are other features such as a chat room, a forum for questions, etc.
Another fun little site that certainly won’t teach you to speak Spanish, but might help you practice some vocabulary, is http://www.freerice.com. Once you’re on the site, you can go into the section marked “subjects” and choose Spanish. It will then give you Spanish vocabulary quiz questions, and for each one you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice to the UN world food program. There are only 10 levels, so the vocabulary tends towards simpler words, but it’s still fun to do now and then (and you can help others at the same time!)