I just love this so much, it’s so much fun and to me that is by far the most important factor when learning a language: it must be fun!  If it’s not fun then you, regardless of how determined you initially were, eventually get bored, lose focus, and give up.  And what could be more fun than some goofy comics like Garfield (my favorite) or Calvin and Hobbes or something like that, right?  Hmmm, can you find Spanish versions of these comics? You can.  Online? Yes. It…costs money, doesn’t it? …..Nope! That’s the best part: online and free, so you’re just all out of excuses now aren’t you?  Ok, here’s where to find them:

My favorite site, by far, is GoComics.com.  They have 33 major comic strips in Spanish, including some serious heavy hitters such as: Garfield (my favorite!), Calvin and Hobbes (very close second place to Garfield), FoxTrot, Cathy, Heathcliff, Ziggy, and many more.

Additionally, there’s this very cool online comic series that I particularly like because it’s designed for language-learners and clicking the speech bubble gives you the English translation, very nifty.

How to use it

Simple, just read along, look up what you don’t know, note it (on flashcards or in a SRS such as Anki), then reread from start to finish making sure you can understand it all.  I also recommend you speak what you’re reading out loud–if you have any questions about how to pronounce something, just go to Forvo where you can hear a native speaker (usually multiple native speakers) pronounce a word for you.  I recommend you have SpanishDict and Google Translate pulled up along with Anki, or have your flashcards and a Spanish/English dictionary at hand as you’re reading.

If you run into anything that you still can’t make sense of using those two tools, try just Googling the term itself (as in, “what does [phrase/word] mean?”), check with Urban Dictionary for any slang, or post a question on the WordReference forums if all else fails. Again: speak. Seriously, once you’ve deciphered the whole sentence and can understand it, read it out loud. I also like to go back and do this with each comic once I’ve deciphered the whole thing and can understand it (whether you want to be this fastidious or not is up to you, but definitely do at least read aloud each sentence).

That’s it.  I really hope you have fun and learn a ton of Spanish with this, and please let me know what you think in the comments, if you have any questions, or if there’s anything I can help you with, also…  If you thought the above was at all useful and you want to learn (or are learning) Spanish, please give me a chance and read what I have to say about my book below!  Thank you so much for checking out my blog and I hope you’ve enjoyed my writing.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It’s available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It’s currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

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

Cheers,
Andrew

I’ve got a short guest post here from someone whose site I’ve recommended before (I put it under my recommended links section in the sidebar), I’ll let him explain what they do:

At eLanguageSchool.net we are teaching people how to learn Spanish with
Comics. You can read the comic in Spanish, then click the speech
bubbles to reveal the English translation. So far we have gotten very
positive feedback that it is a useful tool to practice reading
Spanish.

The entire project is a Creative Commons project, and we are looking
for volunteers to help translate and make the comics interactive. Here
are the steps involved to make what you see.

Step 1: Someone translates the comics from English, into Spanish (and
other languages). The translators simply write the translation on a
text document with one line per speech bubble, and a line between
pages.

Step 2: Someone opens up the comic book pages in an image editor, and
cuts out the speech bubbles and whites out the text. That way they are
just blank speech bubbles.

Step 3: Someone takes the translation, and fits them into the speech
bubbles, again in a text editor.

Step 4: Someone takes the translated speech bubbles, and overlays them
with the the original comic book page. This involves finding the exact
horizontal and vertical position to perfectly overlap the speech
bubbles.

You can see the finished result on the website. So far, we have
translated the first chapter of the comic into Spanish and French. If you would
like to volunteer in any of those steps, please email me, James, at
JDDunn9 – at – gmail.com.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

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

Cheers,
Andrew