Alioth's Journal: Podcasts

By the simple expedient of typing "podcast español" into Google, I found on the first hit a Spanish podcast for people learning Spanish. The podcast is given entirely in Spanish (apart from a couple of sentences at the beginning), teaching Spanish in Spanish. Which is just what I want. I've now learned enough that I can hear all the words when spoken, even if I don't understand all of the words. So a podcast teaching more Spanish in Spanish is what I really wanted.

The podcast is at http://www.spanishpodcast.org/

I've listened to two so far. The format so far is a short "story" on some subject. For the first time, she tells the story speaking quite slowly. Then she explains some of the words and grammar constructs (slowly and clearly in Spanish), then retells the story at the speed people in Spain speak (which is VERY fast, I find. I find the news on telemadrid about 5 times harder to understand than BBC Mundo, which seems to mostly have Latin American presenters).

I've probably done most of my learning of Spanish by being taught in Spanish so far (using Rosetta Stone, which doesn't use translations, but rather images of scenes and a description written and spoken), by reading the BBC Mundo website http://www.bbcmundo.com/ and listening to their news podcast, and watching the videos. While at first it was very hard (especially trying to use BBC Mundo which is NOT a language teaching tool but the BBC's Spanish service), it's starting to pay off.

I've also been put in touch with someone from Spain who is flying for Manx2 (one of the local airlines) who needs practise at English, so hopefully I can get together with a native speaker and actually do some speaking with a real live person at some point.