Sep 26 2007

How To Learn Spanish For Free - Day 15

 

 

Today is a special day.  It is Wednesday, it is 26th September and that can only mean one thing - Yes you have guessed it, it is the annual European Day of Languages.  This annual event as decreed by the Council of Europe sets out to do these things:  

 

  •  Alert the public to the importance of language learning and diversifying the range of languages learnt in order to increase plurilingualism and intercultural understanding
  • Promote the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe;
  • Encourage lifelong language learning in and out of school. 

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    Probably like you, I’d never heard of it before but what a great idea to help promote wider language learning (which is what I think plurilingualism means).

    Quite neat that it falls right in the middle of my experiment to see how effective the best free learn Spanish resources are combined with the best of my knowledge of memory and learning.

    I hope that these blog entries and my efforts are inspiring you to do more to learn another language but if you still find yourself on the fence, let me share with you another great resource I have found.

    I have mentioned previously that watching videos will really help you get to grips with your Spanish (providing they are in Spanish of course!).  Now you could go out and buy lots of Spanish DVDs, or you could do a search on You Tube to see what is out there. 

    Well to save you the time, why not go check out Ben and Marina at their Notes in Spanish website.  I am amazed that I missed this site and have only found it halfway through my experiment, still better late than never.

    It has sections for beginners, intermediate students and advanced which is something I have not seen before.  They have normal podcasts but I have yet to explore them so I can’t comment on them just yet (but I expect them to be pretty good).  But what they do have which I have looked at are a whole host of videos in Spanish, some generated by Ben and Marina, the rest from subscribers to their podcasts.

    I really like this site because you know that the videos they have here will be appropriate for you as a student of Spanish otherwise they wouldn’t put them up.  I like the look and feel of the whole site and have been impressed with the videos I have watch so far.  Not sure if there are free transcriptions for them and if I find them I’ll let you know.

    If you have any resources that you think would be useful for students of Spanish to know about then do drop a comment on the blog and let me know (especially if they are free!).

    Hasta pronto!

     

    Filed under How To Learn Spanish, Learn Spanish in 33 Days by Michael

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    2 Comments »

    Sep 26 2007

    Michael :

    I was going to assume you had found all of the same resources that I have, but if you didn’t have Notes In Spanish (what?! you didn’t find that earlier?), then perhaps you haven’t found these, either:

    http://www.spanishsense.com
    http://www.coffeebreakspanish.com

    As you mentioned, YouTube is a nice source of free video. You can also view live TV stations from basically every country in the world here:

    http://wwitv.com

    As you’ve found, Central American Spanish is pretty easy to understand. Check out stations from Costa Rica or even Mexico.

    -Michael

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    Sep 27 2007

    Russ Draper :

    Michael,

    Thanks for the tip on the “learning Spanish in 33 days.” I’m here in Bulgaria trying to learn this language and teaching English. Perhaps you’ll have a chance to look at my blog. Anyway, I appreciate your efforts and use some of your memory techniques in learning Bulgarian. I will keep up with your progress day to day. Good luck my friend.

    Russ

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