If you are learning Spanish as a second language, one of the challenges is continuing to find new material that is appropriate for your current level. Of course, that changes every few weeks, as what was challenging a month ago might be too easy for you now. With that in mind, I wanted to publish […]
Category: Learning Spanish
Update: LiveMocha no longer exists, nor does the Falling in Love with San Miguel site, so I removed the links below. Oh well! In the lengthy time since my last blog post, I’ve been steadily improving as a Spanish student, mostly through reading and watching shows on DirecTV Más. I was reading through some posts […]
Several years back, I bought Barron’s “Mastering Spanish” volume 1, which included a book and 12 audio cassettes. It’s a good program, and I learned a lot from it. I now know that this product is merely a commercial repackaging of the government-funded FSI Spanish Basic Course.
I mentioned the entertaining Spanish travel show “Fuera de Serie” in a previous post. At the time, I noted that closed captioning wasn’t available on the show. However, the last few of these shows that I have recorded finally do have closed captioning. If you’re using this show for practicing Spanish comprehension, check it out. […]
Among the many Spanish language shows I’ve been watching lately (see my last post), one of the best is “Las Joyas de México”, or The Jewels of Mexico. It’s a half-hour documentary about various sites in Mexico, airing on HITN-TV at 7 PM Central on Sundays. There are repeats at other times as well.
My normal DirecTV satellite TV package included a couple of Spanish language channels, Univision and Galavision. However, I found that only a handful of shows on those two networks were interesting to me. On a whim, I decided to head over to the DirecTV website and see what else I might could get. They have […]
In recent weeks, I’ve been watching a lot of Spanish language TV, and I’ve found the process to be very helpful in my efforts to improve my Spanish comprehension. On History Channel International, they run a show called “El Canal de Historia” at 7 AM Eastern Monday-Friday. The shows are documentaries dubbed into Spanish. For […]
Spanish language newspapers
Students of Spanish may be interested in the these sites that I use for practicing my reading comprehension. I generally read at least one major news story from a Spanish language newspaper site each day. I visit each and try to pick a story I will find interesting. Mexico City’s largest newspaper: El Universal A […]
Here’s another useful resource for students of Spanish. The UltraLingua Online Dictionary will let you look up English translations of Spanish words of course, but it also has a neat useful feature for helping you read entire webpages in Spanish. The site provides a “dictionary enabling” feature, where you provide a web address and the […]
In my daily exercise of reading the top news story in a Spanish language newspaper, I find myself referring to two books time and time again. One is quite obvious. Every student of Spanish certainly has purchased a general purpose Spanish to English dictionary. However, I find myself referring to a second book just as […]