Here at Expanish Spanish School, we’re often asked by our students about what they can be doing to improve their Spanish outside of class. The bad news is, there is no magic answer. Just time, practice and hard work. However, the good news is, in the age of the internet, there are lots and lots of Spanish learning tools available online, that can make a Spanish student’s life a whole lot easier.
Here are a few of our favourites!
Grammar, Spanish in general
Free vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation (explication and tutorial in English), plus a premium service (for a cost)
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~eyepes/newgr/ats/
Summaries of every important grammar topic and a number of interactive excercises
http://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-spanish.html
Here you’ll find all the tenses and the conjugations of all the regular and irregular Spanish verbs
Dictionaries
Provided by dictionary publisher Larousse this site offers Spanish-Spanish or Spanish-English and provides the translation and some examples of contexts where you might use the word
http://es.pons.eu/espanol-ingles/
PONS is one of the most renowned dictionaries in Europe, this online dictionary provides translations in most major languages
è A great tool, used by many of the bilingual staff working at Expanish! Includes contexts, grammar notes and a synonyms dictionary: www.wordreference.com/sinonimos
http://argentineslang.wordpress.com/
è For those who wants to learn some “lunfardo” (argentinian slang)
Spanish level tests
è A multiple choice test, very thorough (30 questions for each level) and an explication about the levels according to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR)
http://www.universpain.com/test/
This is a comprehensive test, providing reading comprehension and writing tests (i.e. not just multiple choice). You are asked to insert your name end email address and send it to the organization so it can be corrected
http://www.transparent.com/learn-spanish/proficiency-test.html
Very thorough test split into 3 parts: grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension
Listening comprehension
è For those who know already some Spanish and want to improve their listening comprehension, can try to listen to a radio play like the reading of Don Quijote de la Mancha. You`ll find a lot of examples at www.youtube.com
Reading comprehension
è To improve your reading comprehension and enrich your vocabulary you can also check out some journal homepages (from the Spanish speaking country your interested in). For example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/ (news and articles about the whole world in Spanish)
www.parati.com.ar (some easy going reading for women)
