Allow me to introduce you to Jeffrey, my mentor while I was co-teaching English at the SENA institute in Valledupar, Colombia.
Jeffrey rarely spoke to me in Spanish, if at all, during my time in Colombia. At that time, I was not able to understand 90-100% of what he said to me in Spanish.
He talks FAST. Even with the transcript it will be difficult to follow, but it will help.
Heck, Jeffrey himself couldn’t understand the same part that I couldn’t understand, which I’ll place in (parenthesis) in the transcript.
This clip is actually great for learning how to grasp the idea and not concern yourself with every single word that is spoken. In fact, that will be the listening task for this audio:
This is the third clip of a series of messages that my friend from Colombia, Dayana, left me in response to me asking her how her business project was going. “¿Cómo te va el emprendimiento?“
You can listen to the first clip here, and the second clip here.
In this audio, Dayana talks about her business venture and uses a couple of high frequency expressions that you can start using today.
Listening Task
Count the number of cognates (words that are similar in spelling and have the same meaning in English) in this clip and write your answer in the comments section.
Can you spot the false cognate (words that have similar spelling but a completely different meaning in English)?
Audio File
Transcription
“Eh…elemprendimiento que estoy realizando, allí hay unos suplementos y unas vitaminas que son muy buenas.
This is the second clip of a series of messages that my friend from Colombia, Dayana, left me in response to me asking her how her business project was going. “¿Cómo te va el emprendimiento?”
This audio clip is part of a series of messages that my friend from Colombia, Dayana, left me in response to me asking her how her business project was going. “¿Cómo te va el emprendimiento?”
As her business adventure has to do with health and wellness, she begins to talk about how she’s been feeling lately and what changes she plans to make in her life to feel better.
This 1 minute long clip is loaded with verbs that we use to talk about daily routine and activities and other expressions that are used frequently in daily conversation.
Listening Task
Which two verbs does Dayana use to talk about her sleep/wake cycle? Write your answer in the comment section below.
Audio File
Transcription
“La verdad yo me siento muy cansada, me da mucho sueño, no me dan ganas de hacer nada…
In this audio, one of my former co-teachers from Costa Rica talks about her family.
Here are a couple of key structures that she uses in the audio:
Se llama (verb – llamarse) – his/her name is
Tiene # años (verb – tener) – he/she is # years old
Esta casado/-a con (verb – estar) – he/she is married to
Here are my suggestions for using this audio to improve your listening comprehension and oral production abilities in Spanish:
Listen to the audio at least 3 times – once without reading the script, once while reading the script and once again without reading the script.
Listen for overall understanding. If you don’t understand every single word, don’t worry about it.
Pull out the words, phrases or structures that you would use to talk about your family. Write a short paragraph about your family and then read it out loud several times. This will help you convert passive vocabulary to active vocabulary.
Let’s listen to Jesse talk about her family:
Script
Mi familia es muy pequeña. Estoy casada con Benjamín Peña Guerra. Él es panameño, tiene 56 años y tenemos tres hijos. Mi hija mayor tiene 23 años, su nombre es Fiorela ella estudiaba biología marina en la universidad y está cursando el nivel de licenciatura pronto se graduará.
Mi hija del medio, ella se llama Génesis ya tiene ocho años y está en tercer grado de la escuela y mi hijo menor tiene cinco años. Él está en preescolar o kínder, se llama Joshua y mis hijos son muy diferentes entre ellos. Bueno, mi mamá, ella se llama Leticia. Solamente tengo una hermana que se llama Endrina. Ella está casada con Diego y tiene tres niñas. La mayor Isabella tiene siete años, la del medio se llama Sophia y tiene cuatro años…cinco años y la bebé acaba de nacer tiene 14 días, 15 días con hoy y se llama Belén. Esta es mi pequeña familia. Solamente somos nosotros.
Questions
Answer the following questions and post them in the comments section:
What verb does Jesse use as a synonym for “estudiar”?
If you have ever thought to yourself that Spanish sounds like the fastest spoken language in the world, you are wrong.
Spanish is the second fastest language in the world behind Japanese.
However, just because Spanish is fast doesn’t mean you should throw your hands in the air and give up. There are techniques that you can apply during your listening practice that will help you understand even the fastest of the fast.
“I want to become fluent in <insert foreign language here>”
I hear this phrase so often and can’t help but be reminded of my early days with Spanish and strangely, my time spent working as a personal trainer.
There’s nothing wrong with the desire to become fluent. In fact, that desire is what inspires us to start the process to begin with.
However, “I want to become fluent” is a result oriented and future oriented goal much like these commonly stated fitness goals:
“I want to lose weight”
“I want to get stronger”
“I want to look better naked”
Etc.
The desire is natural, but if you don’t take the additional step that I’m going to propose in this post, you’re likely setting yourself up for failure.
It was February 26, 2017, and I was wrapping up a 10 day training in Bogotá, Colombia.
After an intense week of a learning how to teach English as a foreign language and how to integrate ourselves in Colombian culture, the organizers awarded us with a free day to rest and explore the city.
Myself and two other volunteers decided to hike to the top of Mount Monserrate, so that we could get some exercise and take in a beautiful view of the city.
The hike up the mountain was pretty intense, so we decided to go down in the cable car.
We blew an opportunity to try the local cuisine and ended up eating lunch at a Subway of all places.
At that point, I was ready to head back to the hotel. After all, the only plan that I was aware of was to climb Mount Monserrate.
But Athena (we called her “A”) was like a leaf blowing in the wind and wasn’t ready to land just yet.
Have you been thinking about learning a foreign language but don’t know where to start?
Are you considering investing in a language learning course or app such as Rosetta Stone , Pimsleur, Duolingo or Babbel and you’re not sure which one to choose?
I hope that I can make that decision a little easier for you in this post by comparing two of the language learning app giants – Duolingo and Babbel.
