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.