Spanish Videos Online
As the web and bandwidth have multiplied, learning Spanish online has advanced to new levels. My first experience learning a language outside of a formal school setting was with Foreign Service Institute (FSI) tapes ordered by mail in the 80s. After that, I discovered Pimsleur which was a big step ahead. FSI had more tapes, more lessons, and more grammar, but it required the book and was hard to learn in the car. Pimsleur is more of a “book-less” system, perfect for learning in the car.
So today, with the internet, what has improved? Audios and videos can now be played online, or even downloaded. This wasn’t feasible until high-speed internet became standard in most homes.
Some courses are not delivered with online classrooms, with live teachers. These courses will probably cost more, because the companies offering them must find, interview, select, and pay all their instructors. The classes typically meet once or twice a week, at a prescribed time, the class might have one two to five students, or perhaps even a one-on-one with the teacher. The instructor provides immediate feedback, so this might be one of the best ways to learn. On the other hand, some students with busy schedules might not be able to attend even the online classes at a fixed time.
Another advantage of the web, is the ability to see a word, and click on it to here it. The student can click as many times as desired, and the computer never gets impatient. The student can skip around, to words that are causing him or her trouble. With tapes or CDs, you have to go through a lesson sequentially, and it might be hard to review without repeating the entire lesson. With the web, a student can somewhat skip around and focus on new vocabulary where needed.
Last year, I designed and created my own online Spanish course, based on several dialogs between two or three young people. Each dialog emphasizes the everyday events in life that all students should know. They include topics such as your job, where you are from, how you traveled, and where you live. Families discussion are important, as you will learn how to discuss parents, children, brothers, sisters. Each lesson builds on the prior lesson, and re-emphasizes the most common words, phrases, and sentence constructs, needed to be able to think in Spanish.
Each dialog is first presented in a short video. The goal is to listen once or twice, without understanding, then to go through the longer audio lesson that will thoroughly teach you all the words and phrases on the video. At the end, you should be able to listen to the video again, and understand it completely.
Each dialog includes two other important tools. First, a printed transcript of the video and the entire audio script. Many students have found this lacking with other popular courses. Students like to practice reading, pronunciation, and studying offline. A student can print-out the lessons, and even highlight with a yellow marker if desired, in addition to taking them along to the office or on a trip.
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