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Success with Real Spanish

This is the transcription of the video above. We all have our own reasons for wanting to improve our Spanish. What are Jim and Sophie's reasons? What are yours? Meet Jim, having lunch with clients who flew in from Spain. The boss knows Jim has been taking Spanish classes so she asked him to host them for lunch. Well, it’s the big day, there’s Jim, but he’s having a tough time! And here’s Sophie, on a blind date with this charming Colombian man. But, uh-oh, she’s stuck, even though she’s also spent a lot of time, money, and effort learning Spanish. Jim and Sophie need help… they need REAL SPANISH! REAL SPANISH is an online learning platform that helps you learn Spanish through engaging clips from popular Spanish TV shows and movies. Real Spanish will help you take your Spanish to higher level. With Real Spanish you can: • Improve your comprehension• Increase your vocabulary• Use the colloquial expressions that native speakers use• Enhance your grammar• Appreciate the culture and history of the Hispanic world• Take your Spanish to the next level! What are your reasons for learning Spanish? Tell us: we'd love to hear from you! We focus on colloquial language in order to help you participate in real conversations with native speakers. Enjoy your Spanish with us! Click here to view all our great materials

25 de January de 2025

«Ponte las pilas!»: Improve your vocabulary by reading extensively

This blogpost is about the importance of reading to improve your Spanish. You'll get some useful advice on how to choose your reading material. You'll also learn how the Día del Libro, also known as the Day of Sant Jordi in Catalonia, is celebrated in Spain on April 23rd each year. Read extensively to improve your vocabulary and broaden your cultural knowledge According to applied linguists such as Stephen Krashen, the best way to improve your vocabulary is to read a lot, just slightly above your present level. According to Paul Nation, a leading expert on vocabulary development in a second or foreign language, to be able to get meaning from what you read, and to be able to figure out the meaning of most of the words you don’t know, you should already know at least 95% of the words in a text. To check the readability of a text, read a page without looking anything up but underlining or highlighting each new word. Count the number of words in several lines. Average out the number of words per line then multiply it by the number of lines on the page. Then count each underlined or highlighted word once, no matter how many times it appears on the page and whether it appears in only one form or several (e.g., mentira, mentir, mentiroso/a). Then calculate the percentage by dividing the number of known words by the total number of words. If this comes to more than 5%, this material will be hard going. Struggling with text is not motivating, so save it for later and look for something more accessible for now. You can read whatever interests you: novels, biographies, magazines, press articles, children’s books, graphic novels, practical or informational books or articles on cooking or gardening or the climate crisis… But read a lot! The first time you meet a new word, decide if it is essential to your general understanding of what you are reading. If not, skip it! It will surely come up again, and each time it does you will get a clearer idea of its meaning. Alternatively, if you don’t like ambiguity, use a reading app that has a built-in bilingual dictionary. Click on the word, and it will pop up with a translation. Sometimes you will encounter a known word that the writer is using in a more figurative or idiomatic sense. For example, if you know the word leche but you don’t understand how the writer is using it, click on the word and you’ll get not only a definition but also various expressions such as tener mala leche (to be bad-tempered) or estar de mala leche (to be in a bad mood). (Check out our post on the many ways of using leche in Spanish.) If you can find audiobooks, so much the better… you will improve your listening comprehension too! You can also look for a good text-to-speech app if you are reading electronically. Once you know the text well

18 de April de 2023

How to get to the next level in Spanish: Complement your online courses with language exchanges

How to get the most out of online Spanish courses Since the beginning of the pandemic and lockdowns, there has been a boom in opportunities for online learning. Unfortunately, most online Spanish courses don’t take you much beyond level B1. If you have reached that level, you probably still find it difficult to participate in real conversations with native speakers.You're not alone! Many high intermediate-advanced learners express this frustration. If you are serious about improving your Spanish, our online Spanish courses aim to help you fill that gap in your knowledge and skills. We focus on colloquial language spoken at native-speaker speed. But when you are studying online, there is sometimes a tendency to be a passive consumer of the lesson, listening or watching the audio or video, or reading a text, only once, rushing through the exercises, and then considering that lesson "done", possibly within an hour or so. This won't work. You have to put in the effort if you really want to move ahead. Ideally, we recommend that you complete one lesson a week, repeating each component of the lesson until you understand everything, can distinguish every single word in the audio or video, score 100% in all the activities, and can read aloud, chiming in with the actors or presenters, keeping up with their speed and copying their intonation. In the pronunciation lessons, repeat the lesson, especially the interactive component, until your pronunciation sounds more like that of the virtual teacher. In fact, the only way to improve pronunciation is to listen and repeat many times, not only for an hour or two one day but also during the days and weeks that follow, until you can automatically coordinate the position and movement of your tongue, and your lips, your teeth as well as the flow of air through your mouth. In order to produce more authentic Spanish sounds. How to participate in language exchanges We realise that in Real Spanish, as in most language-learning websites, there is a missing component: authentic conversation with native speakers. For this reason we recommend that you find a partner for a language exchange through online videoconferences. A language exchange enables you to practise in conversation with a native speaker of your target language. Two people who are learning each other’s languages and whose level in the target language is high enough to maintain a conversation (even though it may be filled with errors), learn from each other while talking about topics of mutual interest. You can work with a language partner in another city or country from the comfort of your own home. You learn the language in a more natural way, talking about everyday topics that interest you both. You learn what life is like for your partner, as well as interesting information about the history and culture of his or her country. Right now there is no shortage of important things to talk about: in each country the situation is changing every day. Intercultural communication between two

11 de April de 2022

Why learn Spanish online?

If you are here, you know that learning languages online has many advantages: You can learn at your own level instead of in a class where many of the other students are at a higher or lower level than you. You can learn at your own speed, repeating lessons or segments of lessons as many times as you like. In fact repetition is recommended so that you can really internalise everything in a lesson. You are not bound by a class schedule. You can learn whenever you want: evenings, weekends, early morning— whatever suits you. You can learn wherever you want: in your living room or kitchen, in bed, in a park, on the beach, on the bus, or in a café. Online Spanish courses are usually much cheaper than classroom courses. When you first visited Real Spanish it was probably as the result of a search for “online Spanish courses” or “Spanish lessons online”, or something similar, and pages of results popped up. Many online Spanish courses offer free materials in the expectation that many users will then go on to buy a paid subscription. Our approach is similar: we offer free mini-lessons on YouTube as well as complete sample lessons on this website so that people can try before they buy. So what sets us apart among so many options? Our online Spanish courses were developed by a team of qualified and highly experienced language teachers. We have taught in many different countries and at various levels. We also write curriculum materials and give workshops and training sessions for teachers. For more information about the Real Spanish team, click here. Our online Spanish courses focus on intermediate-advanced levels because many people who have studied Spanish to B1-B2 level, whether online or in face-to-face classes, still have trouble understanding and conversing with native speakers, especially if they don’t normally live in a Spanish-speaking environment. Many other courses don’t go beyond B1-B2 level. Our lessons are highly visual, consisting of animated videos and graphics as well as clips from movies and TV. The visual content is engaging and provides maximum support for language learning. Our online Spanish courses focus on colloquial language spoken at native-speaker speed, because this is what many intermediate-advanced learners find most difficult. We base our lessons on short clips from TV and movies in which the actors, presenters or interviewees use authentic natural language, including many colloquial expressions that you may not find in conventional language textbooks. We even explain vulgar expressions that are used in the clips. This is why our target audience consists of adults aged 18+. Our approach is intensive: that is, we take short clips and analyse them in depth, highlighting the vocabulary, expressions, and grammar points in the dialogue. It’s surprising how many language points come up in a two-minute video clip! Language occurs in a cultural and historical context, and we have a strong focus on the history and the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world. Our online Spanish courses don’t

18 de February de 2020

Test Yourself with El País

As you know, you can learn lots of vocabulary and expressions with our online Spanish courses. In this blog we also offer information and advice about how to keep up to date in your use of the language. Are you a perfectionist? Are you (or would you like to be) a star in the technical aspects of the Spanish language: i.e., spelling, punctuation and grammar? At the beginning of 2019 the newspaper El País decided to help Spanish speakers to improve their spelling and grammar, publishing a new lesson and test every month. The year 2019 ended with a final exam based on the 12 topics dealt with during the year. Some of the questions require us to be up to date with the changes in spelling and grammar authorised by the RAE ((Royal Spanish Academy)). The RAE defends the Spanish language, authorising (or discouraging) changes in the language, and publishing yearly updates. For example: The RAE defends the language against the introduction of an Anglicism when there already exists an equivalent word in Spanish. The RAE authorises neologisms such as emoji (newly added in 2019). The RAE authorises changes in the use of grammar, such as the use of le as a direct object pronoun when it refers to a person (= him). The RAE authorises changes in the use of accents, to make life a bit less complicated. For example, the RAE recently approved solo as an adverb instead of sólo, and the pronouns este and esta instead of éste and ésta. Now if only they would deal with aun and aún… English doesn’t have a defender like the RAE. The function of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) mainly deals with vocabulary. It is a compendium of all the known uses and variations of each word, in different varieties of English, past and present, as well as the etymology history, pronunciation, and so on. The OED documents new words and usage but makes no attempt to discourage neologisms. In fact, English has always embraced words from other languages or created new ones, such as television (from the Greek tele = far, distant, and the Latin visio), or to dejunk (to get rid of useless or unnecessary stuff). The OED also publishes updates on a regular basis. So teachers and students of Spanish need to stay up to date with the latest decisions of the RAE. As for the end-of-year test in El País, you can start from zero with the first lesson and test from January 2019, or if you are feeling confident you can try your luck right now with the end-of-year exam. ¡Ha llegado el momento de mejorar tu español con nuestros cursos de español online! Prologamos la oferta de una suscripción anual a mitad de precio hasta finales de enero: ¡aprovéchala!

14 de January de 2020