Australian expat Camden Luxford learned Spanish during her travels in Basque country, Mexico, Guatemala and Peru. Here’s her advice on learning Spanish with music.
Editor’s Note: written back in 2011 so probably a bit dated, but still interesting/useful.
Author: Camden Luxford | Subject: Audio / Video
This podcast is about learning to speak Spanish in every day practical situations. There are pauses for you to repeat what you hear and the more difficult words and phrases are broken down for correct pronunciation and grammar. There are songs, games and other activities to make your learning enjoyable and help you retain what you have learned.
Editor’s Note: there hasn’t been any new … [ Read more ]
Author: David Spencer | Subject: Audio / Video
Andrew offers lots of useful tips and content for Spanish language learners based on his own experiences, with a heavy emphasis on using popular media in the language you’re learning (in this case: movies, YouTube videos, music, TV shows, books, etc. in Spanish).
Editor’s Note: I especially like his Learning Spanish From Music Videos series, though he only has six of them.
Author: Andrew | Subjects: Articles, Audio / Video, Blogs
NPR’s Radio Ambulante podcast is an excellent listening resource but can be challenging for less advanced learners. Fortunately, the show has teamed up with the creators of a new language learning app to launch a new app: Lupa.
The app plays Radio Ambulante-style
stories while you read along on the transcript. A slew of features help
you adjust the difficulty level: to make listening … [ Read more ]
Subjects: Audio / Video, Fee-based Services, Reading Material
Radio Ambulante is a Spanish-language podcast, distributed by NPR, that tells Latin American stories from anywhere Spanish is spoken, including the United States. We seek to bring the aesthetic of high-quality longform journalism to radio. We work with a talented community of storytellers and radio producers from different corners of the continent, while taking advantage of technology to produce, distribute and exchange stories.
Author: Jeff Blum | Subject: Audio / Video
There’s nothing like a catchy tune to make things stick in your mind. Lirica is an app that takes that idea and applies it to learning a foreign language. The app takes the music of artists like Enrique Iglesias and Elvis Crespo and uses it to help you learn Spanish vocabulary and grammar.
With each lesson, you learn parts of the … [ Read more ]
Subjects: Audio / Video, Music, Technology
Here is a collection of four Spanish language learning videos from the Fundación de Español Urgente (Fundéu), each focusing on confusing Spanish words that can be tricky to even native speakers.
Subjects: Audio / Video, Vocabulary
Spaniards in London is a series of shows made available on YouTube about the fictional experiences of several Spaniards recently arrived in London while they live with a British flatmate, work, flirt, date, audition for acting and signing roles, and of course get into various shenanigans. It’s entertaining enough and excellent for beginners because:
Subject: Audio / Video
RTVE, Spain’s state-owned television station, offers a variety of programs from news to dramas for free streaming online with many free from geographical restrictions. Since most programs offer closed captioning for viewers with visual impairments, watching the programs is not only entertaining but can really help you improve your listening skills. You can stream the shows online or you can follow the instructions below to … [ Read more ]
Author: Jeff Blum | Subjects: Articles, Audio / Video, Technology
RTVE is Spain’s state-owned corporate television station, very similar to the BBC in the U.K. or PBS here in the U.S. They’re the largest and most popular broadcaster in Spain, and they show a wide variety of news, documentaries, fictional dramas, reality shows, etc. Since they’re state-funded, there’s no profit motive and therefore less motivation on their part to restrict who can watch their products, … [ Read more ]
Subjects: Arts & Entertainment / Culture, Audio / Video, News / Magazine
These days it isn’t too difficult to find Spanish-language video, either on TV or online. UVideos is a Univision-sponsored site where you can discover, watch discuss and share the best of Hispanic programming anywhere, anytime and on any device.
Subject: Audio / Video
Andrew, from the blog How to Learn Spanish, explains how he uses music videos to learn Spanish, and how you can do the same.
Subject: Audio / Video
The following set of videos were created by the Fundación de Español Urgente (Fundéu) and represent some common basic Spanish mistakes.
Author: Diana Caballero | Subjects: Audio / Video, Grammar / Writing
This is the Holy Grail for Spanish-learners: videos (movies, TV shows, whatever) in Spanish and with Spanish (not English) subtitles, or an exact transcript in Spanish of what was said. But what about online? What about free? That would be the best possible combination in the world, wouldn’t it? Well, it’s taken a while, I’ve been collecting these and scraping them together for over … [ Read more ]
Subject: Audio / Video
For those of you accustomed with BBC iPlayer or other stream-on-demand video services, Spain’s national station RTV also lets you stream and watch Spanish TV series and programmes at high speed and quality for nothing.
While there’s a lot to choose from it’s well worth spending part of your learning day watching RTV’s brilliant “ciudades para el siglo XXI“ (cities for the 21st century) series.
Each episode … [ Read more ]
Subject: Audio / Video
We recently received an email asking for a list of the biggest ‘dead-giveaway’ mistakes a Spanish learner typically makes. We put a call out on the forum asking for help, and this is the list you helped us come up with.
Authors: Ben Curtis, Marina Diez | Subjects: Audio / Video, Miscellaneous
Imagine yourself in a world where a young man finds love thousands of miles away . . . when a family’s dream hangs in the shadow of a corporate takeover . . . and you learn Spanish just by popping in this DVD. Rated E for everyone, Lights, Camera, Spanish! is a revolutionary, look-listen-and-learn approach specially created for you, the movie lover who wants a … [ Read more ]
Authors: Bill VanPatten, Gregory Keating , Michael Lesser | Subject: Audio / Video
Luis & Joan Rojas of La Casa Rojas are releasing free video Spanish lessons weekdays covering everything, from Spanish phonetics to Spanish grammar and idiomatic expressions. They explain:
“Here’s how it works. Each day, Monday through Friday, we publish a new Spanish class in the format of a 10-minute video. Each class builds on the one of the day before. We ask you to do some … [ Read more ]
Author: Luis & Joan Rojas | Subject: Audio / Video
Learning a foreign language doesn’t have to be dry and boring rote memorization. Clever web site Lyrics Training sharpens your skills through music and song lyrics.
Lyrics Training is a really fun approach to helping you pick up a foreign language. Choose a YouTube-hosted music video and select one of three mastery levels; Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert. As the video begins to play, the song’s lyrics … [ Read more ]
Subjects: Audio / Video, Music
Subs.to is a simple subtitle search engine. Plug in the name of the movie or television show—make sure to include the season and episode number!—and the language you’d like to read the subtitles in and Subs.to will return the subtitles in SRT or SUB format.
For most media players all you need to do is place the subtitle file in the same folder as the actual … [ Read more ]
Subject: Audio / Video