Free

Free Resources for Learning Spanish Online

The key to learning a language is to approach it from as many angles as possible. Everyone learns in different ways: some are more than happy to settle down after a hard day at school with a pile of text books and work through some heavy grammar exercises. Most students, though, benefit from a range of different approaches - and that's one of the ways that free resources for learning Spanish online comes in.

With a good selection of free resources for learning Spanish online at your disposal, you can top up whatever you've learnt when classes have finished for the day. Also, once your study period in Castile and Leon is finally over and it's time to go home, you can make sure you don't forget everything you learnt. Here then is our pick of free sites and resources for learning Spanish online...

The BBC

Not content with being one of the world's biggest online sources of information for news and sport, the BBC made a move to provide free resources for learning Spanish online some years ago now. They've got audio and video, a nice little 'word of the day' section, RSS feeds, downloadable apps and some excellent online clips of a TV series.

Before you start, you can even gauge your ability with the handy tool provided; then you can get stuck into a free 12-week beginner's course that would allow you to turn up to your language course in Castile and Leon having already acquired a fairly good grasp of Spanish.

Find out more about the BBC's free online resources for learning Spanish here: www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/

Spanishdict.com and Wordreference.com

If there's one thing that every budding Spanish student needs, it's a good, free online dictionary. Which is just what Spanishdict.com is. Beyond that, though, it also provides a series of handy flashcard mobile applications to help you with your vocabulary and pronunciation.

Another free online dictionary that's worth having a look at is Wordreference.com. As dictionaries, there's precious little to choose between them; with its slightly more basic interface, though, Wordreference doesn't have some of the additional free resources that Spanishdict.com offers (although you can also download it as a mobile application for free).

Find out more about Spanishdict.com and Wordreference.com's free online resources for learning Spanish here: www.spanishdict.com and here: www.wordreference.com

Colby University Online

The free online resources that Colby University make available to users of their site are practically unparalleled amongst universities. The site is packed with exercises to help you with your grammar and vocabulary and clear up any common issues that students encounter. There's also an extensive archive of articles that, as well as being genuinely interesting, focus on specific aspects of the language.

Find out more about Colby University's free online resources for learning Spanish here: www.colby.edu/~bknelson/SLC/

StudySpanish.com

StudySpanish.com features some of the best free online resources for learning Spanish online. They provide a wide variety of different vocab lists which are broken down into easy to navigate and essential topics such as the airport, restaurants, hotels etc. They also have an excellent selection of online verb drill quizzes on top of extensive grammar resources.

Find out more about StudySpanish.com's free online resources for learning Spanish here: www.studyspanish.com/travel/index.htm

In addition to this selection of free sites to help you learn the language, you can also see our picks of some of the best paid online resources for learning Spanish online.

More Free online resources to learn Spanish

Spanish classes sometimes fall short and Spanish students need more practice to learn Spanish easy and fast.

It is difficult for foreign students to practice everything they learn outside the classroom. In this sense, the Internet can be a useful tool to practice outside the language class for free.

In this article we suggest a series of online Spanish language resources where our students can practice different skills for free.

1. Free online Spanish dictionaries and Spanish translators

There are plenty of free Spanish dictionaries and Spanish translators on the web. It is convenient that our students have a dictionary and a translator always at hand to work on their essays and to look up new vocabulary of the Spanish articles and reviews that we suggest them reading.

Some of them are:

http://www.traducegratis.com/

http://www.tusbuscadores.com/traductor/

http://traductor.ya.com/

http://www.diccionariostraductores.com/

http://www.diccionarios.com/

http://www.wordreference.com/es/

2. Language exchanges

Linguistic exchanges promote contacts with people whose mother tongue is Spanish that want to talk with people who speak other languages. Using this system, your students are able to choose to speak only in Spanish as well as practice speaking in other languages.

Some interesting links are:

http://websou.usal.es/interlin/buscail.asp

http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/

http://freelanguage.org/learn-spanish/web-resources/websites/spanish-language-exchange-communities

3. Penpals

Your students can improve their Spanish writing signing up on a list of penpals. In this way they will correspond with somebody in Spanish. Even with a beginner level students are able to write simple sentences.

http://www.abroadlanguages.com/penpal/ http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=42402157623

4. Pronunciation Practice

Your students can practice their pronunciation by repeating simple phrases and examples of everyday Spanish that can be found at:

http://www.practique-espanol.com/pronunciacion.htm

Another alternative for pronunciation practice is to repeat song’s lyrics in Spanish that can be listened and read at sites like:

http://www.nacnet.org/assunta/cancion.htm

http://www.educaplus.org/letras/ http://www.redmolinos.com/hablar_espanol/trabalenguas.html

5. Podcast

Your students can also download Spanish podcast audios to improve their listening comprehension. There are sites specifically designed for learning Spanish where podcasts are classified by levels. Some of them are:

http://www.newsinslowspanish.com/home.php

http://eledelengua.com/

http://spanish-podcast.com/es/category/instituto-cervantes/

http://www.spanishpodcast.org/

http://radiocervantes.es/podcast/rss.asp

6. Graded readers

Students who need additional readings can found free material classified by level on the following sites:

http://cvc.cervantes.es/aula/lecturas/

http://elenet.org/multimedia/enlinea/lecturas/

http://www.edinumen.es/

7. Other alternatives

Your students can visit sites of Spanish recipes and tourism and culture sites to learn new vocabulary, grammar and Spanish culture.