Did you know every day there are more students who have decided to learn Spanish with a podcast?
Podcasts to learn Spanish have grown a lot these years.
There are more and more.
They talk about a huge variety of topics.
You can learn more and better Spanish every time.
Podcasts are so revolutionary because you can listen to Spanish anytime, anywhere.
You can learn Spanish while driving, walking the dog, cooking, doing the dishes … in all those moments of your daily routine.
You only need a mobile phone and an Internet connection. And it is free!
And this is the key to learning any foreign language: learn a little bit every day.
Learn a little bit in small pills of audio in podcast format. Audio that you can wear inside your pockets.
Therefore, in this article, I want to give you 5 tips for starting learning Spanish with podcasts right now.
If you don’t know how it works, you will learn how to take advantage of this educational tool.
Tip 1: Choose the right content of your Spanish podcast
There are many types of podcasts to learn Spanish: podcast of grammar, vocabulary, beginners, intermediate and advanced levels, of a Spanish variety of a certain Hispanic-American country, to pass the DELE exam, for business in Spanish…
So whenever a student asks me which podcast to choose, I always recommend the same: listen to as many as possible and stick with the one you like the most.
The most important thing when choosing a podcast is the content. What topics are you interested in? What topics would you like to hear on a podcast in Spanish?
Grammar issues? Issues related to cultural aspects of Spanish life? Current news from a Hispanic country? Fashion? Cinema?
The important thing is that the topic is motivating enough so you don’t need to force yourself to listen frequently.
Interesting enough that you don’t miss any of its episodes.
If you don’t enjoy listening to a podcast, find another one.
Tip 2: Decide on your goals and the length of your podcast
Second, I always ask my students about their goals when listening to a podcast.
Podcasts are typically listened in two ways:
- Intensive listening: an episode of a few minutes is listened very carefully. It is heard focusing on some aspect of the language.
- Extensive listening: listening openly, without focusing so much on specific linguistic aspects. It is listened just for pleasure.
For example, one way to listen intensively to a podcast is to listen to a news podcast in Spanish.
You can listen to a short story (2-5 minutes) and extract information such as the “how”, the “where”, “the who”, “the when”, and the “why / how”.
You can listen to the same news multiple times using the different speeds of your podcast player.
Instead, extensive listening can be applied to a longer episode (10-20 minutes) and then summarize the content.
Or, even better, share your opinion with another colleague who has also listened to that podcast. In Spanish, of course.
Also, depending on your level, the length of the podcast will vary.
If you are a beginner student, you can probably only listen to short fragments of an episode, so I recommend intensive listening.
If you are an intermediate or advanced student, you can already listen to longer episodes in an extensive way and even “actual podcasts” (podcasts recorded and directed for Spanish natives).
And remember most important of all: listen to the episodes as often as possible.
If you normally listen to them while driving to work and it’s a 20 minute commute, look for episodes that could be heard in those 20 minutes.
Tip 3: Learn to use transcripts
There are some podcasts to learn Spanish that include transcripts.
The transcripts are nothing more than the written text of the audio that you have listened to.
In some cases, extra vocabulary or similar grammatical structures are also added to help you go deep in your listening.
How can you use podcast transcripts?
- You can do two initial listening and then verify the information in the text.
- You can do a dictation: you write what you are listening to and then verify it with the transcript. Beware of spelling mistakes.
- You can “hide” certain fragments of the transcript, try to write them while listening and then verify by listening again and reading it later.
- You can perform Shadowing exercises: first read while listening, paying attention to the intonation of the voice. Then try to reproduce that same intonation just by reading. Then listen and reproduce the same intonation without text.
Tip 4: Become a podcaster Spanish student
Convince your Spanish teacher to include podcasts in your classes.
And if you can’t do it, dare to record your own podcast episodes to improve your Spanish.
Recording a podcast is so easy that you can do it directly with your mobile phone.
And what can you record yourself speaking Spanish on? These ideas come to mind:
- Learning journal in podcast format: explain what you have studied this week, what aspects were difficult, how you have progressed, what material you have used … but instead of writing it in a blog, record it in audio in a podcast. Many teachers and students of Spanish will want to listen to you to learn how you study Spanish and will want to exchange opinions with you.
- Interviews: you can interview your Spanish teacher, your friend from Mexico, another Spanish student … anyway, conducting interviews in podcast format is something hilarious that also helps you meet new people and learn Spanish .
- Start your own podcast club: Do you know about book clubs? Well, instead of reading a book, convince your friends to listen to the same episode and hold monthly meetings to discuss it together, as is done in the Radio Ambulante Listening Clubs.
- Create your own niche Spanish podcast: Are you a football supporter? Record a football podcast in Spanish. Do you like movies? Create a Spanish movie podcast. The important thing is to find something motivating enough to be speaking for several minutes in Spanish.
Tip 5: Write to your podcaster Spanish teacher
Do you know we love when students who listen to our podcasts write to us?
Do not be afraid and write to your podcaster Spanish teacher by email or through their social networks.
Give them feedback on the content of their podcast and explain what you like most, what you don’t like so much and how they could improve it.
Personally, these feedbacks help me a lot to create better content in my podcast for my students.
And, as a Spanish student, it will help you to establish a relationship with your Spanish teacher who you listen to so much while you are practicing your Spanish writing.
Hey, if you want to send this feedback through a voice message, notice that applications like Anchor allow it. Your podcastrer may even include your feedback in one of their episodes 🙂
Bonus: Visit our directory and find more than 80 podcasts to learn Spanish
Are you looking for a podcast to learn Spanish?
In our directory we have more than 80 podcasts recorded by Spanish teachers.
Visit it and subscribe for free to one of them.
Also, if you subscribe to our newsletter, we send you the new episodes to learn Spanish every Tuesday at 11am.
BIODAT
This article was written by Sergio Delgado, founder of Podcasts ELE. A podcast network to learn and teach Spanish as a foreign language.
If you liked the article leave your comment. You can tell us which podcasts you have chosen to continue learning Spanish.
