#I was listening in spanish free

Listen again all the way through (see how much you understand).Listen to the dialogue all the way through (just listen).This way you can listen to both the Spanish while reading the English and vice versa. has a pretty wide variety of dialogues, monologues, short stories, mini podcasts - all with transcripts and English translations, side by side.

#I was listening in spanish free

La Muerte y Otras Sorpresas by Mario Benedetti Where to get Listening Practice at Different Levelsīelow, let’s look at 3 different FREE websites (one for beginners, one for intermediate learners and one for more advanced learners) where you can listen and read Spanish at the same time.Īs a beginner, it can be tough to find resources that are useful, interesting, and near your level (and aren’t Peppa Pig in Spanish).īut luckily there are some decent resources out there. Listening while reading helps you associate the words on the page with the actual sounds that are coming out of the speaker’s mouth.Īnd it’s worth doing at each stage of your Spanish-learning journey, because you’ll be listening to more and more complex things as you progress.

:īeyond vocabulary, improving your comprehension is mainly a process of getting used to new sounds. Listen to as much Spanish as you possibly can every day.If you want to improve your listening comprehension, there are two main things that you can do. Ways to Practice Your Spanish Listening Skills So one hour might be 20 minute active (full focus), 40 minutes passive (multitasking).įor best results, re-listen to things passively that you’ve already listened to actively. I recommend roughly 30% active listening, 70% passive. You can get tons of the necessary exposure by swapping out English shows, content, and news for the same in Spanish, and by listening to audio while doing the dishes or walking the dog. And listening practice doesn’t have to be 100% active. You can understand the vast majority in much less time than that. To understand the nuances of Spanish like a native speaker, you need thousands of hours of exposure to the language. How long does it take to understand spoken Spanish? Multiplied across all the words in a given spoken sentence, this can make Spanish sound faster.Įnglish words also have more consonants on average than Spanish words, so we have fewer chances to run our words together without mumbling. Same goes for “bueno”: its bue-no, no bu-ey-no. We say “Thee End”, or we put a tiny gap between the two words (a “ glottal stop”).Īs English speakers, we also have the tendency to see Spanish words like nuevo and think they have 3 syllables: “nu-e-vo”.

In English when this happens, we typically change the vowel sound to separate the two words. When one word ends in a vowel, and the next one begins with a vowel, Spanish speakers merge the two words.Īnd Mi hermano y yo vimos a la abuela de Ernesto becomes Mihermanoyyo vimos alaabuela deernesto One of the key reasons is a phenomenon called Sinalefa. Why is it so hard to understand Spanish speakers?

So how do you start understanding more Spanish? Let’s explore some specific techniques and free resources below. This can impact how good you feel about your own level of Spanish. It’s unpredictable!Ī million different factors (including origin, personality, mood) can influence how somebody speaks and therefore how well you understand them. In my experience, comprehension is the hardest part of a new language because there are so many different ways people can speak. So if you’re struggling to understand Spanish, you are not alone.