Notes in Spanish Gold
Submitted by fyl on Thu, 2012/02/23 - 17:57.
I just got an email from Ben at NotesInSpanish.com about making the audio for the first part of their Gold series available on-line for free. The first one is available here.
The subject is technology which, itself, is interesting to me. The lession is clearly not for a Spanish beginner. What they have done with their Gold series is follow the conversation in Spanish (the conversation is between Ben, a Brit, and his wife Marina who is Spanish) with analysis in English. I found this format to be very good for me. What they would like you to do is buy the printed material that goes with this but, even without it, it is very good. I personally like the fact that Ben's Spanish is not perfect and Marina will correct him.
I have mentioned these folks before. I just want to say there is no payola involved. I just find their format to be an excellent fit for my personal learning style. If you listen, please comment on what you think about their format.
Podcast 2
The second podcast is now available for free. See this page. Note that this podcast is about ways that people are being robbed on the street. While it is about Barcelona I think it applies to Managua.
Thanks for the Spanish Training Podcast Link.
I just listened to the intermediate tape about immigration, and found it very useful, even without the transcript. Marina and Ben, the speakers, talk sufficiently slowly so I can understand most of what they are saying, albeit missing the meaning of words here and there, but the context of the conversation helps to provide the needed meanings.
In the past, I've had a hard time finding helpful audio or video tapes to practice listening to spoken Spanish. This podcast was a big help, and I will follow this pod cast series.. I would like to learn about similar tapes. If anyone out there has their own favorites, I'd appreciate it if you could post the links.
One conversational Spanish series I've found particularly useful for day to day survival in a city where almost no one speaks English, is called Synergy Spanish. (http://www.synergyspanishsystems.com/blog/kickbutt-spanish/). [Unfortunatey, not free, but fairly reasonable, much, much cheaer than Rosetta Stone, which I found useful for vocabulary building but which didn't help me at all with conversation]
Synergy Spansih audio series is taught by an Australian (now fluent in Spanish), his Mexican wife and a Mexican radio announcer. Initially it concentrates on practicing the words you need most frequently. (I want, I need, I can, I think, I hope, I am going to....etc., with infinitives and nouns added to vary the excercises. (I want to eat dinner, I need to go to the store, I can do the job, etc., then switches to other verb forms (you, he, we, they). . It is very basic stuff (I call it my "survival Spanish"), but gives lots of practice speaking and listening to the words as used in every day conversations.
Marcus has developed an excellent, non text-book grammar method, which I have adopted for teaching conversational English to my students, so they can survive in English.
Also, he's a bright, funny, very creative guy who loves to teach. Reading his blogs is equally helpful. He has lots of useful short-cuts for learning. This is not a conventional Spanish course, but a very, very innovativel series which actually works in real conversations.
(And no, I'm not receiving any commissions for this rave review, I just really appreciate a program I can actually use in real life. (And if I worked at it more consistently, I'm sure my Spanish would have progressed much more rapidly, but life and laziness have gotten in the way.)