Best Spanish Podcast Sites: SpanishPod

Podcasts are an excellent way to keep your Spanish skills tuned up. There are many podcasts available but for the language learner not all podcasts are created equal.

Featured Podcast : SpanishPod

This site features Spanish Lessons in podcast format. Each session consists of two or occasionally three speakers. If there is a third speaker, it is usually a guest. In all but the advanced level there is a native English speaker who usually explains things in English but is also fluent (to my ear) in Spanish. The native Spanish speaker almost always uses Spanish only.

This is a prolific website. There are weekly podcasts at five different levels, each with its own archive.

To date the archives contain the following: newbie (33 lessons), elementary (26), intermediate (18 lessons) , upper intermediate (13 lessons), and advanced (8 lessons).

If you dig a little you can find the Extra section. It is called Del Taco al Tango. These are in Spanish only and are very interesting.


This description is from their website.

"Del Taco al Tango is a show about the various cultural difference in Latin America; from Mexico to Argentina and everything in between! In this series, we will have guests from around Latin American sharing their slang, their national dishes, their jokes, and much more! We are trying not only to help you learn Spanish, but also to help you understand how we think, talk, and behave in the Spanish-speaking world."

PRODUCTION QUALITY

These podcasts are professional studio quality. The sound is very clean with no distractions. Each lesson has an annoying little plug for their CD lessons but is a small price to pay for the free podcasts.

NOTES

The type of Spanish on these podcasts is very clearly spoken, i.e. well-enunciated, grammatically correct and spoken in full sentences. There is little slang except to draw attention to a word or phrase. In other words this is not street- Spanish nor even the spontaneous fragmented rapid-fire Spanish spoken among friends and family.

The topics are of general interest with nothing too too esoteric or specialized. The presenters are always professional and personable and have no axes to grind.

All in all I highly recommend this site to Spanish learners at all levels wanting to improve, especially their listening comprehension skills.

Spanishpod main page