Tips For Subscribers of our Spanish Courses

Beginner student’s question:

One thing I did notice when I looked at the free four lessons:  I wish I could have said Mas Despacio to the Spanish lady who was reading the lines.  I thought to myself, heavens if they speak this quickly for beginners, I wonder how I will cope when they are advanced?

Our Response:

I know what you mean about the speed.  We discussed this before doing the podcasts and wondered if we should slow the speech right down for the beginners course, (it is in fact slowed a little!)  but Matthew, the teacher, felt that it is better to attune the ear to normal speech speed, even for beginners.  If you use the popup player link, (SLS Podcasts - link on the right of each video lesson page) and select the relevant lesson podcast from there, you can pause the podcast where you want, drag the slider back to listen to that section again and again etc.  Do this for the sentence you want to understand - try looking at the Spanish text on the video lesson page at the same time if it helps - if there are words you don't understand, look them up in a dictionary, (if they are not already in the vocabulary list) practise saying the sentence out loud yourself.  All this will help you get used to the sound of Spanish, and you will notice that you will start to understand whole chunks and then the complete conversation pieces. 

It is not easy to do a Spanish conversation to suit the very early stages of learning Spanish, as a conversation is often a mixture of present, future and past tenses and covers grammar that you haven't viewed the video lesson for yet, but don't worry if you don't understand it for a while, as once you have completed more lessons you can go back to the first lessons 'story' and will then be able to make sense of the Spanish conversations.

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Tip 2 - How to access the lessons and some tips on using the materials:

Once you are subscribed, Go to the main website, make sure you are logged in with the username/password you chose, then click the 'beginner’s lesson list' (if you are not logged on you will have the chance to do so on this page)

Once logged in, you will see the complete list of lessons in the first course on this page.  Just click the lesson you wish to study and on that page click the play link on the video.  After viewing the video, you should try the exercise to make sure you understand how the grammar works.  After this, you should click the SLS podcast link on the video page to listen to the story, words & useful vocabulary being spoken.  (Use the SLS Podcasts player on the right of the pages if you want to pause the podcast - see tip above) 

The text to the podcast that accompanies the video lesson is under the video, so you can read along with it.  If you don't understand the conversation at first that is normal.  Our advice is to repeat the podcast several times; some of the words used are in the vocabulary text which should help you understand the gist of the Spanish conversation piece.  Other words you may need to look up in a dictionary (making an effort to look up words helps you remember)  Then you should try doing the Flash and matching games on the same video page which use the vocabulary & useful phrases text written on that page - again this will help you memorise the words and phrases.

Go slowly; don't be in a rush to start the next lesson before you have fully taken on board the previous one. Even if you've already taken a few lessons, we would advise going through the course from lesson one as the videos & story are designed to follow on from the start.   Repeat, repeat, repeat.  After a while you will start to recognise what is being said in the Spanish conversation pieces. Pause the video if you need to when Matthew asks you to have a go yourself at forming a sentence. Say them out aloud, make sure you are in a private place if you don't want people staring at you though...

 

Once you are starting to understand a few sentences, try out the Spanish Speakers video list, (link on right) these are short videos of Spanish people talking at a normal speed - you can choose to read the transcript in English, or Spanish, or none as you understanding improves by clicking the link on each pop-up page.

Use this Spanish Club if you have any questions or problems that you want to ask Matthew, the teacher on the videos.  He will always be happy to help and support your learning.

To view the videos in the second course, just click the intermediate/advanced list and repeat this process. At this level you should be trying to get in some real-time practise. Be brave!   If you have an intercambio group near you, try to attend.  If you are not so fortunate, why not see if one of the SLS club members would like to practise their Spanish with you by using Skype or messenger, or try the many on-line exchange language groups. Next time you are planning a holiday, why not choose a Spanish speaking Country and get some practise in at the same time.