Besides the CDs I’ve been listening to in my car (I’m up to lesson ochenta-something) here are a few web sites and resources that are pretty good.
Spanishdict.com is indispensable. Every web site should be designed to be this usable. And all of it is, as far as I can tell, free. There’s a translator, which takes any word or phrase and translates it. One especially nice touch is, whenever you tab over to that browser window the input window is automatically focused and highlighted, so you can just start typing. There are handy buttons so that if you aren’t using a European keyboard layout you can click to add accented characters.
They also have a series of lessons, a verb conjugator, quizzes, phrasebooks, flashcards and … best of all … a mobile app with a built in dictionary, and phrase books where you can click the speaker icon and hear the phrase. F. wondered, “why don’t we just hold the phone up to them and press play?”
The Spanish Blog is run by a young woman, Laura Garrido Eslava, from Bilbao, and is packed with video clips (80 or more) on various topics where you can hear a native Spanish pronunciation. It’s amusing sometimes to watch her obviously reading off her laptop screen while the camera is recording her, but still her Oxford-English accent is muy hermoso.
Each lesson has a transcription underneath. What I especially love are the travelogue sections — groupings of posts about the different cities in Span. You first listen — just listen — a few times, to see how much you can get. Then scroll down a little and read the Spanish transcription while listening. Then finally, scroll down a little further and read the English translation. It’s a perfect way to present the material.
Reading is good, yes? So why not go with some Spanish news sources. La Vanguardia.com was recommended to me by our Spanish host as a good site for events and culture. I often find stories on the same topics I read about in The New York Times, which gives me a head-start on vocabulary.
20 Minutos has local editions for whichever city or area you’re visiting. There’s a lot of sports, a lot of politics, especially local politics. If you’re interested in reading about the progress of the Catalonian independence movement.
Also stories of global interest, technology, arts, and the economy. General interest stuff where again, if you’ve read your own local paper, you’ll have a good idea what it’s about so that you don’t have to look up every other word.
Finally, Languages on the Web has parallel Spanish-English (and other languages) translations of simple, well-known texts. They also have the cute “Daisy” stories. I developed a weakness for these. They’re simply written but not children’s stories or dumbed-down too much. There are kidnappings, bank robberies, humor, food, shopping, but all written in an facil apprender manner.