A Peek at My Spanish Toolbar

My Spanish Toolbar

You probably like clutter about as much as I do, so not many things make it onto my browser. However, a few sites have earned a spot on my Learning Spanish Toolbar. You might like to test drive them too.


Babelfish

The first site that made its way to my toolbar was Babelfish. This is a translation program and does a reasonably good job of helping you to get the gist of whatever text you cut and paste into the text box. The grammar in the results is not great and the program translates within a medium to narrow band of vocabulary, so don't expect laser-like accuracy. At times it shows the original and translated word as one and the same. When this happens you have to dig a little deeper.


WordReference.com

To do the deeper digging, I use a site called WordReference.com. It describes itself as an Online French, Italian and Spanish Dictionary, though it will also translate Portuguese into Spanish.
It also functions as a regular definitions dictionary for both Spanish and English. You might also be interested in the Spanish synonym feature. I highly recommend this resource and am rarely disappointed in the results I get from it. Not only can it handle verb conjugations, It will give you a number idiomatic expressions based on your entry. You'll probably spend a bit of time just playing with this tool. Did I mention that I like it?


Wikipedia in Spanish

A third resource on my toolbar is Wikipedia in Spanish. Wikipedia is not known for its complete accuracy nor its depth, but even knowing this I like it anyway. It provides a quick overview of the vocabulary of a topic and allows me to better follow an audio, video or live discussion of the subject.

Improve Your Fluency: Don't Let Mistakes Slow You Down

Written Language
Formal written English is just one type of English. We can craft our written words into the exact form we wish. We can go back and add, change or delete things until everything is just right. However, we rarely speak formal, written English except in speeches or when making excuses to a police officer. Spoken language has different expectations. Our speech is laced with sentence fragments, false starts, abrupt shifts in topic and so on, and nobody cares. These types of errors
would be unacceptable in written language but are not really errors in spoken language; it is what normal spoken language is.

Just Get your Message Across
Making mistakes in Spanish is nothing to worry about. What matters is getting your message across, not whether you use all the right words, If you get stuck on a word, use other words. For example, if you are talking about the United States and cannot remember the word estadoudinenses to describe U.S. citizens, use other words such as "the people of the country to the south of Canada" instead.

Symbols Can be Anything
Remember that words are only symbols to which we attach and convey meaning. There is nothing sacred about any particular word. Sometimes you don't really need any words to convey a message. We can convey meaning nonverbally. Think of back catchers, gang signs and any teacher in a classroom. The same meaning can be conveyed many ways.

Extroverts Learn Spanish Faster
Act out what you are trying to communicate. Use humour, exaggeration, facial expressions, gestures, tone, pitch and pace of voice - even funny noises, to convey your meaning.

Don't try to sound like a Spanish textbook, talk like a Spanish speaker.

Spanish Videos

There are quite a few good video sites on the web. YouTube and Google are probably the best known but there are others with lots of Spanish videos in them.

One interesting collection is at SumoTV. (This site is worth checking out in and of itself. ) Many of the Spanish videos on the site look like they were made by high-school students as a project for Spanish class. Some are quite entertaining and fairly easy to understand.

This video is from Sumo.TV is about testing a new car entitled Prueba De Audi A4 2.0T Del 2007 En Espanol Por Camillo Alfaro.

There is a bit of wind noise in the background but it is visually easy to follow and you can imagine what he might be saying even without the sound track. See how much you can catch.


Sorry this Video was removed.

Online Shortwave for Learning Spanish

Online shortwave is a real boon to learning Spanish.

Some sites have been particularly useful to me in improving my listening skills. The greatest site hands down is the BBC. You owe it to yourself to spend quite a bit of time poking around there. You'll find language instruction, news stories, video, photos, and tons of written material.

Another great site is Radio Netherlands. In terms of its focus on programming, including a lot of joint productions with networks all over Latin America, it is probably the best source for audio programmes. They have daily news, and weekly shows varying from science, agriculture, and Dutch news, to a very interesting "answer letters, emails and phone calls show".

Another good shortwave station online is Radio Canada International or RCI. Monday to Friday they have a daily one hour show in Spanish which is well worth listening to. Saturday there's a one hour show with highlights from the week's stories interspersed with Canadian music. Sunday is my favourite show, a listeners show similar to Radio Netherland's Sunday show. Coincidentally, the two listeners' shows on Radio Canada and Radio Netherlands team up and do a couple of shows together each year. The last one was at Christmas time.

There are other excellent sources of online shortwave programming but we'll get to that.

Tip 4. Skype, Yahoo, Jaha and Lycos

Tip 4. Skype.

If 35 cents is too much to chat on the phone to a mayor's assistant, sign up for a service like SKYPE and talk to millions of people in Spanish for FREE if the other party also has the Skype service, or very inexpensively if you call a non-Skype phone.

Some of their services you, as a Spanish learner, might be interested in are:
Skypecasts, Skype Chat, and Skype Video Calling.


The skype article in wikipedia
will give you a good overview of the services before you head for the Skype Site itself.

Other competing services are low-cost by not free such as Jajah and Yahoo. A third competitor to Skype is Lycos which has free calling but you have to put up with their advertising.

Self Assessment Tool for Learning Spanish

Learning Spanish with the BBC

For a bit of fun try the wonderful BBC Spanish section. In their placement test you answer a series of multiple choice questions. You keep going until you choose a wrong one. Then you'll get your final score plus a guide to those parts of the BBC site that might be most useful for you at your level. They have a lot of stuff. There is a course based on using video clips of typical situations and news-style listening exercises with scripts and comprehension exercises. There is a lot of help and you're bound to find lots to choose from. BBC Spanish Placement Test

What Level is Your Spanish

What do I need to learn?
Are you a beginner, quite fluent or somewhere in between? Here is a technique you can use to determine your current level of Spanish and use that information to to help yourself improve.

Rate Your Spanish
One important standard is the ILR scale developed by the US Foreign Service. It has five levels:

* Level 1 - Elementary proficiency
* Level 2 - Limited working proficiency
* Level 3 - Professional working proficiency
* Level 4 - Full professional proficiency
* Level 5 - Native or bilingual proficiency

To see details of the five classifications, you can check out the Wikipedia article on the ILR scale.
While you read them make a note of what you can and cannot do.