Yabla is a website that was designed from the ground up specifically and exclusively for helping people learn languages via videos of popular media in the language they want to learn (TV shows, cartoons, documentaries, etc.) that you can watch (streaming) on the site.

Now, if you’re familiar with me, this site, and/or my book you know that this very much aligns with my recommended technique for learning Spanish, the Telenovela Method, where you use Spanish-language popular media such as movies, TV shows, music, and books to teach yourself Spanish.  So obviously I think Yabla is a brilliant idea…

But how well does it actually work?

What it is & How it works

They have a collection of Spanish-language videos that they have amassed over time (1550+ videos at the time of this writing, and they do add more from time to time), primarily consisting of popular media originally intended for native speakers such as TV shows, cartoons, documentaries, and music videos.  This is precisely what you want in my opinion because that way the Spanish you learn is normal, everyday, Spanish – how people actually talk.  It’s not some contrived, weird-sounding (to native speakers) hypothetical that’s been put together for Spanish students (like what you might have seen in a language textbook at some point).

Now here’s where the real value comes in: they have transcribed every single word said in each of these videos into subtitles for you so that you have word-for-word Spanish subtitles, and then they’ve translated all of it into English so that you simultaneously have English subtitles as well. You can turn off either of them at any time thereby allowing you to have just the Spanish subtitles visible, just the English ones, both, or neither while you are watching a video.  Note screenshot below (yes, I have an account with them):

Please note that the above is only the left hand side of the screen, I’ll get to the right hand side in a minute.

Not only that but take note of the additional buttons you see above: “Back” will skip the video back precisely one sentence thereby allowing you to repeat something you’re having trouble with until you get it, “Skip” moves it forward one sentence, “Loop” plays the same sentence (whichever one you’re currently on) over and over again for you (again, very useful for working on something you’re having trouble understanding and/or pronouncing), and “Slow” slows the video down to, I’m guessing, 1/2 speed.

The combination of the “back” or “loop” button along with the “slow” button is just an absolute winner: if you’re having trouble understanding and/or pronouncing a phrase, simply slow it down to 1/2 speed and then play it over and over again with the “back” or “loop” button until you’ve got it at that speed, and then click “slow” again to bring it back to normal speed and play it over and over again until you’ve got it at that speed, and Ta-Da!  Done!  You just learned to comprehend and/or speak a complete Spanish sentence at full speed!  Excellent!

*A quick note on the “comprehend and/or speak” bit: if you’re only working on listening comprehension then you would just replay the phrase until you can understand what they’re saying, whereas if you’re also working on your speaking ability – you want to learn to say what it is they’re saying in the video – then you would replay the phrase and each time repeat after the native speaker in the video, continuing to do this over and over again until you sound just like them.

The subtitles are integrated with a dictionary and flashcards – just click a word you don’t know

Very cool.  Here’s what the whole screen looks like when you’re watching a video (you only saw the left side above):

Note the portion on the right: that’s the integrated dictionary, clicking on any word in the subtitles (either Spanish or English) automatically looks it up, and, if it’s a verb, automatically tells you what form the conjugation is (present indicative, etc.), such as when I click on “tenemos” in the subtitles you see above I’ll get this:

Doing so also automatically adds it to Yabla’s flashcard program for you where you can review it later on by clicking on the “Flashcards” button in the top menu which takes you to this page:

And then clicking on “Review these words” starts the program which looks like this:

Notice how the context the word was originally used in – the video that you added the word from – is linked to down at the bottom so you can click on it and go to it, plus it tells you which specific subtitle (they call it a “caption”) the word was used in (in this case “Caption 2”) thereby allowing you to just skip ahead in the video to the specific phrase the word was used in so you don’t have to watch it all the way through or skip around looking for it.  Nice work, overall.

Videos of a wide variety (including cartoons, my favorite) and they can be ordered by difficulty!

There are many different categories: Action, Animation (cartoons), Art/Culture, Comedy, Drama, Documentary, Economy/Business, Food, Lessons, Music, Musicians, Newbie, People, Science, Society, Sports, Travel, and many more.  There’s something for everybody, which helps to prevent you from getting bored or running out of things you want to watch that you’re actually interested in and will keep your attention.  I believe that using media (TV shows, movies, books, etc.) that actually interest you is massively important – otherwise you get bored and quit – so this is a huge benefit in my opinion.

Not only is their a wide variety, but there’s a wide variety of difficulty in videos available: that is, they have everything from very simple, slowly spoken, children’s cartoons that use very elementary language – which is perfect for a beginner – to TV shows and documentaries intended for teenagers and adults – which would be more suited to an intermediate or advanced learner.

Plus, each video is rated at a certain level of difficulty from 1 to 5 and you can order them by difficulty (or how recent they are, or by title) – this is extremely useful.  You can do this with all the videos or you can narrow them by category first and then order them however you’d like.

Oh, and of course you can also search for videos by entering the title or any word that you can remember from the subtitles or description (each video includes a short description).

How long are they?

I noticed that all the videos seem to be 3-5 minutes long, which is just about the perfect length for a beginning to intermediate level Spanish learner.  In the case of TV shows or documentaries where each episode is obviously longer than that, they just break them down into parts (Part 1, Part 2, etc.).

Which dialect/accent do you want to learn?

I ask because each video is labeled (next to the listing in the search results and on the video page itself) with the dialect/accent used by the speakers, e.g. Colombia, Mexico, Spain, etc., as you can see below right underneath the title (also note the difficulty rating):

Very useful!

 The Game

They also include a nifty little game you can play while you watch the video that allows you to simultaneously work on both your listening comprehension and spelling by writing out the specified blanked-out word in the subtitles.  To start it all you have to do is click the blue “play game” button on the bottom right of the video player seen below:

Doing so then starts the game up and it looks like this (note the blanked-out word after “¿De” in the second sentence):

It plays the portion of the video where the phrase shown is spoken and then waits for you to type in the missing word over on the right and then hit the “check” button, which results in this:

I intentionally misspelled “dónde” to see what it would do (I didn’t accent the “o” as I should have) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that if you otherwise spell it right, but miss an accent mark, it’ll give you half credit and tell you that the problem was a missing accent mark!  This is a surprisingly well thought out system.

Oh, and your score is kept track of via a point system with 10 points for correct answers, 5 for correct but without the right accent marks, and 0 for a wrong answer.

For Teachers (create classes and assignments, track progress, discounts!)

Yabla allows teachers to create “classes” that their students can later join and do homework in.  The teacher as well as each student gets their own account with its own login and password.  The homework consists of watching assigned videos, playing the game (described above), and getting points for doing so.  As the students complete the assignments you can monitor their progress with detailed reporting, thereby ensuring that they’re actively engaged and to what degree each student is completing the assignments.

They also offer discounts for educators looking to use this system with a whole group of students, here’s the pricing table that I looked at (prices are from August 18, 2014, and note that the regular price for individual users is $9.95 per month so even the most expensive, on a per-user basis, plan below is still far cheaper and comes out to $8.33 per person per month):

To learn more about the school/group program and check current pricing go to the School & Organizations section of their website here.

What’s it cost?

$9.95 a month for individual users as of right now.  That’s it.  Which is damned cheap all things considered.  I’m not going to tell you that you should buy it – I don’t know your exact situation so I can’t say for sure – but I will say that I think it’s an excellent overall system, it’s great for teaching yourself Spanish, and I think that it’s a very good deal.

Go here to check out their website, watch the intro video, try out some of the demo videos for yourself, and sign up if you like.

Hope that’s helpful for you, don’t hesitate to let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Andrew

This simple, easy-to-learn secret that even the most linguistically-challenged can master literally overnight is used by many of the most respected and skilled polyglots and language teachers in the world, and it’s never really been laid out, explained, and demonstrated (on included videos!) in full, point-by-point, step-by-step detail until now.

Hi, my name’s Andrew Tracey, I own and run the blog you’re currently reading (and enjoying, I hope). I’ve had a passion for learning languages since I was 12 years old when I decided to take up French on my own (using an old ‘50s era Berlitz book and Pimsleur cassette tapes, for those of you old enough to remember what those are), which led to me taking 4 years of French in high school during which time I went on a school trip to France where I learned…

I didn’t speak French worth a damn!

3 years of French (the trip was after my Junior year) and all the work I’d done on my own time: wasted! Pointless! I later tried to learn German, Swedish, Spanish, and Japanese…on my own and by taking classes while at university. All failed. The textbooks, classes, and audio tapes didn’t work. What does this have to do with you? Well, first of all it probably sounds depressingly familiar since I’ll bet a lot of you have experienced something similar, but secondly and most importantly…

I NEVER GAVE UP: A few years ago I stumbled upon a centuries-old language-learning technique that allowed me to become fluent in Spanish in just 6 months and talk just like native speakers did (not some strangely-weird Spanish awkwardly spoken and learned from a textbook that just confuses native speakers and embarrasses you)…

And it’s something that anyone – no matter how inexperienced, language-learning-impaired, or time-crunched – and I mean anyone, can learn overnight and start applying the next day to teach themselves Spanish. If I, someone who couldn’t learn a language by almost any other means (years of classes at both high school and university, all sorts of courses and workbooks, etc.), can do it then you can do it…and I’m going to tell you how you can learn to do it right now.

Let me ask you something: when you’re watching a TV show or movie (in your native language), do you have a hard time understanding the actors? Meaning: do you have to stop and think about what they mean or look things up in a dictionary? Do they sound completely different from how you and your friends and acquaintances talk every day? Unless you’re watching a Shakespearian play: no, of course not! They talk normally, just like you and everyone else does.

They’re speaking the language normally, in precisely the way that someone wanting to learn that language would want to learn to speak it! Ah ha! Eureka!

When characters in a movie or TV show are speaking the dialogue, unless it’s set in a previous period like the 1800s or something, they speak normal everyday English (or whatever your native language is). So if you wanted to learn Spanish, the type of normal everyday Spanish that native speakers use every day, aka “conversational Spanish”…

Don’t you think that Spanish-language TV shows, movies, music, and books might be a good source to learn from…if only you knew how?

Not only that, but it would be fun, wouldn’t it? Far better than learning the language from some boring, dry textbook or workbook that, even worse, is teaching outdated, formal, “non-conversational” Spanish (look at the dialogue in one sometime: do people actually talk like that? NO!).

But why the hell should you listen to me?

Well, besides what you can glean from reading what I’ve written on my blog, how about if I told you I wrote a book specifically on how to do this and that it’s been a bestseller in multiple categories (namely “Language Instruction: Spanish” and “Linguistics”) on Amazon.com for over two years now, and that it currently has a 4.6 out of 5 stars rating with 34 reviews on it? Screenshot below (from the 1st edition, the 2nd edition is now available, that’s why the covers look different) and I’ll link to it further down so you can verify for yourself:

So how does this help you? In The Telenovela Method:

• • I will show you how to completely prevent (so you don’t have to experience it at all) the #1 cause of failure for language-learners, which is: boredom and frustration. If you’ve ever tried to learn a language before you know what I’m talking about: you make it a few weeks or months, get bored, get frustrated that you’re not making the progress you expected, and quit. I’ll show you how to avoid this massive pitfall ALTOGETHER.

 

• I will show you, in simple and easy-to-understand written instruction accompanied by over 7 hours of video demonstration, precisely how to learn to speak, understand, read, and write real, modern, native-level Spanish such that you will have the same competency as a native does: you will be able to understand them and their media (movies, newspapers, songs, books, etc.), write just like them, and, most importantly…you will be able to speak just like a native – meaning that you can hold a conversation with them on any topic you choose and talk to them just like you do with right now with people in your native language.

• • I’ll show you my own personal secret technique that combines a specific way of learning (initially) and then reviewing Spanish that means you will never forget ANY of the Spanish you have learned…EVER. You will have it, all of it (all the Spanish you’ve ever learned), available to call on for immediate use whenever you’re talking to somebody in Spanish and need it. Oh, and did I mention this requires less than 15 minutes per day in “review” work? This means you get fluent in Spanish far faster than if you didn’t have this tool and the knowledge to use it effectively – don’t waste time with ineffective methods, don’t spend 2 years doing something that could be done in 6 months!

 

• By learning Spanish from popular media like TV shows and movies you also learn common slang and curse words. Yeeeess, the dirty words, the naughty stuff. Hey, even if it’s something you would never use, wouldn’t you want to know them anyway so you can understand it when somebody else uses them when speaking to or about YOU? If somebody used a curse word when talking to you, or in reference to you when talking to someone else, wouldn’t you want to know what they said? You need to know these words, like it or not (and they’re not all dirty, many slang terms are not, they’re just slang).

• • In relation to the previous point: this gives you something to talk about with native speakers. When you do get around to talking to them, either in person or via an online language exchange through Skype, you’ll actually have something to talk to them about so that you’re not awkward and tongue-tied, something they are interested in and know about (recent movies, TV shows, and books in their own language that they’ve seen or read). You will speak Spanish like a native to them and be interesting while you’re at it!
    

 

• You’ll know exactly what to do, in what order, how, and when (and I’ll explain everything so you understand why). You get extremely specific instruction on what to do and how, complete with examples galore and hours of video demonstration by me, the author. I promise you will not end up confused and having to resort to either guessing or googling something in order to figure it out on your own. I’ll hold your hand the whole way and show you just what to do.

• • I’ll provide you with a long, up-to-date, list of websites where you can watch not only Spanish-language videos (TV shows, movies, etc.) online for free but also a separate list of websites where you can watch videos in Spanish with Spanish subtitles online for free. No, you don’t have to pay for anything if you don’t want to (in terms of Spanish language media and the resources needed to learn Spanish from it).

 

• I’ll also provide a long list of websites where you can read both Spanish and English versions of books and stories that are no longer under copyright (such as stories and fairy tales by The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen). Not only that but some of these sites even include audio of the stories being read out loud (in Spanish)! Do you realize how useful that would be for working on listening comprehension and speaking?! And it’s all free! You learn Spanish quickly and easily, have fun doing it, and don’t have to pay a dime.

You can even try this for free by stealing it and ripping me off if you want…but please don’t!

Because this is available as not only a paperback but also an an e-book, and it’s only being sold via highly reputable vendors (Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, etc.) who force me to accept any refund request immediately and without question by automatically taking the money out of my account and giving it to the buyer, you could very easily buy this product, download it, and then immediately get a refund for it from Amazon and, obviously, since it’s a digital product you’ve already downloaded there’s nothing to “send back” so you get to keep it (and no, it doesn’t have DRM for those of you who know what that is, I hate DRM). You could do this to me if you wanted to and I’m actually telling you about it because I’m so sure you’ll be satisfied with the product that I don’t care if you know this, I don’t think you will!

It also gives me the opportunity to point out the absolute, iron-clad, no-questions-asked, 100% money-back-instantly GUARANTEE that Amazon, B&N, and all my other retailers provide with this product by virtue of allowing me to sell it through them. They’re the ones who make the guarantee, not me, which is nice because I know that almost everyone trusts them to refund their money on any purchase for any reason – you know you can get your money back since you bought it through Amazon or Barnes & Noble or whoever, I don’t have to convince you that I will give it back to you since it’s not up to me.

What you get:

The brand-new, recently updated (published March, 2017), 2nd edition of The Telenovela Method as either a 298 page paperback or the e-book equivalent.  Check out my blog post here if you’d like to know what improvements were made for the 2nd edition (new chapter on lessons learned during 3 months in Spain and 2 new appendices, among others).  The book also includes access to over 7 hours of video instruction by me personally (they’re hosted on both YouTube and, as a backup, iPlayerHD and linked to within the book). You can download the videos from the hosting site I use if you want, also. Oh, and since the videos are hosted on both iPlayerHD and YouTube (privately hosted, you have to have the link) with each one serving as a back-up for the other, if you’re in a country that blocks YouTube or a large portion of it (e.g. Germany, China, or Iran), yes you can still view the videos.

Oh…and did I mention that you get all of this for $9.99 (or $16.99 for the paperback)? Yup, and here’s why it’s so cheap:

I decided that I had to sell this book on Amazon because I wanted it to have the credibility and legitimacy that goes with that – you’re not making it onto anyone’s “Best Seller” list by selling your book just directly through your own site as a PDF or via an affiliate network like Clickbank or something like that. I wanted this thing to have a shot at making various Best Seller lists and book club lists and what not so I knew I had to sell it on Amazon, but Amazon only pays their full 70% royalty if your e-book is priced at $9.99 or less, if you go above that it drops immediately to 30%. They did this in an effort to standardize e-book prices at $9.99, and it worked. As a result of this, very, very few other Kindle e-books on Amazon are priced above $9.99 – so that’s what people are used to, that’s what they expect – therefore I knew that if I priced mine above that not only would I receive less money (unless I priced it really high) but also it would be perceived as overpriced by customers since they’d be comparing it to the other e-books on Amazon.

What to do now:

Well, if you want the e-book, just select the retailer you’d prefer, purchase (it’s on sale on B&N right now, by the way), download immediately, and start reading.  For the paperback, since it’s currently on pre-order status with most retailers, your best bet of receiving it as soon as possible is to just place a pre-order with them right now.  When they get it in stock (Amazon is saying March 23rd, others will probably be similar) they’ll send it to you.  If you’re outside the U.S. my publisher tells me you’ll be able to pre-order it within the next couple weeks, so apologies if this is you, it’ll only be just a bit longer (the e-book, of course, should be available to you right now).  You can currently get the e-book (I cover the print version below) from:

• Amazon.com
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

You can get the print version online from: