Today I used the Inspired Beginners Spanish Podcast from Ben and Marina at Notes in Spanish.  I have already recommended this site because of their videos but today I tried out their podcasts.

Already experienced in creating intermediate and advanced podcasts to help people learn Spanish Ben and Marina have now turned their attention to beginners and I am really glad they did.

Like other podcasts in the Learn Spanish Genre, the format is generally give vocabulary, discuss it a bit, have a dialogue using the vocabulary and then discuss some more.  The thing that I like the most about Notes in Spanish is that it focuses on "real Spanish".  The vocabulary is embedded within a conversation between two fluent Spanish speakers.

Ben and Marina also like to give colloquialisms and "Spanish from the streets" giving you a realistic edge to your Spanish.  I think that this is a great stand alone podcast but also brilliantly compliments Coffee Break Spanish and the edufon.com lessons.

When choosing podcasts you might think that you have to just stick with one.  Well I have found that by subscribing to more than one, I am getting a broader Spanish education but I am also finding that where one podcast repeats something I have already covered elsewhere, it is great revision.  It also means that I have more clues to start making sense of some of the things that might have been difficult to grasp in the other podcasts.

You might elect to study one in depth and use the others to supplement your lessons or you could study them all.  It doesn’t really matter which you choose, although that will be dependend on how much time you have, just as long as you are getting the multiple streams of input.