On-line Spanish Listening Comprehension Materials and/or Activities



Following up on my previous post about listening comprehension, I did a simply Google search for "how to improve Spanish listening comprehension." That turned up some sites with useful information that I will consider when I continue to develop in-class and homework listening comprehension activities for our Spanish community-based learning students.

  • Materials from Argentina. The audio project has very good materials for real-world uses of Spanish in the US. Click around and find the free newsletters; those have some interesting audio plus video activities that could be useful.

  • Podcasts from Spain. Some topics of the podcasts could appeal to our students and connect to the topics we cover. Seems to concentrate on Spain though, and our students need to become familiarized with Mexican and Central American dialects. I like the fact that one of the speakers is a non-native speaker (but very good!), and the native speaker corrects him.

  • Music. Many students like to listen to music in Spanish and many teachers like to use music in the classroom. I'm not convinced about music's use in a Spanish CBL course, but I suppose it depends on the content of the lyrics and if it relates to the content of the course. This page has some links and written lyrics.

Those sites came up with a very, very simple Google search. Students, you can find all kinds of listening materials on-line if you try. Don't expect your classes to be the only place where you learn (and maintain) your Spanish!

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 16, 2008 at 8:22 AM

    I always give my students Ann Abbott's advice: try to look for ways to do what you would normally do, but in Spanish (rent movies, volunteer, church services, etc.)

    For me, that has meant finding an NPR equivalent in Spanish. SIRIUS satellite radio used to have BBCMundo broadcasts and I miss it so much on my commutes now that it's been removed from the channel line up. But the NPR-style news is available online:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/news/

    My other favorite "listening comprehension" site is the University of Texas CIBER's catalogue of video clips related to the work environment:

    http://www.laits.utexas.edu/laexec/laexec.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousDecember 16, 2008 at 2:22 PM

    One song that it is related to the topic of inmigration, and it is very rich in images, is "Ríos de gente", written and sung by Nicaraguan artist Ramón Mejía, known as Perrozompopo.


    Here is the link in youtube
    http://mx.youtube.com/watch?v=C7_00Sa9Mcw

    Saludos,

    Munia.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNovember 23, 2009 at 1:00 PM

    Hey,
    My name is Julio Foppoli, I am the creator of www.esaudio.net. Thanks for mentioning me here. One comment: the audio recordings are not just from Argentina but actually there is a wide variaty of accents. For advanced students you may check out: www.notilocas.com
    Happy Spanish Learning!
    Julio

    ReplyDelete
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