Spanish Listening Practice
Thursday, June 16, 2011 @ 6:40 AM
I've been writing a lot at Squidoo recently which seems to be a great community of writers who like to share information. It doesn't suffer from spammers as articles have to be high quality to be featured. I wrote my newest article, Spanish listening practice, earlier today and it got some good feedback. I'm going to summarize the article a little here for those who are interested in improving their Spanish listening.
If you are a beginner, it is difficult to get a alot out of real Spanish (the television, radio etc.) It's a much better idea to focus on listening exercises that are adapted to your Spanish level. I found a couple of great resources a little while ago:
These are two fantastic and free websites that have different listening audio related to either your level or the topic you're interested in. The article that I wrote was targeted towards those who don't live in a Spanish speaking country, but I feel that you can still get a lot out of it. When I first moved to Spain we didn't have a television, so I had to rely on streaming television programs online. When I finally got one my evenings took a different shape. I was also at a level where I could understand what was going on and took a lot of enjoyment out of watching my favorite shows. My favorite show is Españoles en el mundo.
Before I started learning and teaching languages, I was under the impression that things are just soaked up. That you can just listen to people speak Spanish and you will just pick it up. Unless you put yourself through true immersion, this doesn't happen and you have to find time to study and practice your Spanish listening and Spanish in general.
Let me know your thoughts on how you improve your Spanish listening, especially if you are a beginner.