Ok, so I’ve been here two weeks now, I’ve done nearly ten face-to-face language exchanges so far (all with native speakers), I’ve interacted with other natives quite a bit (buying groceries, ordering food, etc.), and I’ve got some insight I want to share in the form of two major problems I’ve noticed:

1. Speed.  This refers to the speed at which people normally talk but it’s not quite so simple as “gosh people sure are talking fast here”.

I know I briefly mentioned this a couple posts ago but I want to expand on it a bit here.

To be able to communicate with people you have to be able to understand them first, and in this context (non-native speaker attempting to communicate with native speaker) I think your ability to understand is actually quite a bit more important than your ability to speak.  Why?  Because they can muddle through and figure out your stumbling, awkward attempts at speaking their language, they can figure out what you’re trying to say, but if you can’t understand them then you’re screwed, that’s it, it’s over, communication has failed.

Now, natives talk at what seems to non-natives a very high rate of speed.  This is where the problem of speed comes in, specifically speed of thought: how fast can you understand spoken Spanish (or whatever the language in question is)?  You may know all the words they’re using, understand the meaning of all the various idioms and phrases and slang involved, but if it takes you longer to do so – to interpret what was just said – than it does for them to move onto the next thing they’re going to say then, again, you’re screwed.  Why?  Because here’s what will happen…

They’ll start to say something (for the sake of example, let’s say it’s a statement that’s ten sentences long) and by the time you’ve figured out Sentence #1, they’ve already said Sentence #2 and #3 which you’ve completely missed – didn’t register at all in your head – because you were entirely occupied figuring out Sentence #1, so now they’re moved onto Sentence #4 – you’ve missed #2 and #3 – where you pick up again, likely somewhere in the middle and not at the beginning unless you were lucky which means you probably won’t get the whole meaning of this sentence either (#4), so now you catch the last half of Sentence #4 and while you’re trying to figure that out they say the next sentence – which you miss completely – and now you hear Sentence #6 which takes you a few seconds to understand in your head and by the time you’ve done that they’re in the middle of Sentence #9 which you catch the last part of before they end with Sentence #10 which you probably won’t get either because you spent at least the first half of it or so figuring out the last part of Sentence #9 that you just heard.

This is the problem.

I shall borrow a very apt illustration from Jeremy Clarkson who was explaining the same problem as it applied to driving a regular car versus the new Ferrari F12 that he felt just overwhelmed you with too much to do:

It’s just like that.  Reading your target language at your own pace, or having a native speak slowly and clearly enough such that you’ve got all the time you need, is like simply hitting one single tennis ball back and forth across the court, whereas (for a non-native speaker still trying to get up to speed in the language) having a native speaker talking to you at full tilt is like being bombarded with dozens of balls all fired at once and being expected to be able to return every single one.

2. Phrasing. Yet again, simply put but not so simple.

What I mean is that each language – and sometimes certain countries or even regions – has its own particular way of putting words together to form information that people want to convey.  They each have their own way of doing this and if you don’t know it, you can’t communicate (or will at least have a very hard time doing so), even if you know and understand every single word that makes up these phrases.

I’ve got so many examples I’ve recently learned here in Spain it’s impossible for me to remember and list them all, but here are just a few:

“¿Me puedes poner [whatever it is you want to order]?”

This is by far the most common way of ordering something at a bar or restaurant, it’s their equivalent of “Could I have…? / I would like… / Can I get…/ etc.”.  It’s a very simple phrase using very common, basic words that any Spanish student with at least a couple of weeks under their belt is likely to know…but…

Almost none of them know that this is how you convey that particular request in that particular context nor would most of them understand what it meant without the context to reference it against.  I didn’t.  I started out saying “Quisiera” or “Me gustaría” and getting weird looks from the natives.  I understand – and have understood for years – what all the components (words, grammar, etc.) that make up that phrase mean, but I didn’t know the phrase itself until I saw it being used by someone else.  It immediately made sense to me (“Me puedes poner” = “Can you put for me”, that is “Can you put this [the product] here in front of me”) but I never in a million years would’ve come up with that on my own if you asked me to tell you how to properly request a beer or coffee at a bar in Spain.

How about another?

“¿Cuando quieres quedar?”

That’s how you ask someone when they’d like to meet (been using it a lot for setting up in-person language exchanges aka intercambios).  Not with “conocer” or maybe “reunir“, like I thought before.  “Quedar” literally means “to stay” or “to remain”, but it’s just how they convey that particular concept.  Why?  I have absolutely no idea.  It may be possible to track down the origins of this but I doubt it.  It’s just the way they say it.

Oh, and an informal meeting is “una quedada” – that’s not even listed in the dictionary when you look up “meeting” but it’s what you’ll use in Spanish the majority of the time you need to say the equivalent to “meeting” in English.  I’ve been told it’s exclusive to Spain.

“No se me dan bien los caballos.”

That’s how you say “I’m not good with horses”.  Let that sink in a moment.  “dan” means “they give” (referring to the horses), so what you’re literally saying is “The horses don’t give me well” (or, if you want it word-for-word, “Not themselves me give well the horses”).  That’s the way you would say that you’re not good with a particular type of people or animal or that you don’t get along well with them.  An English speaker would naturally be inclined to say something like “No estoy bien/bueno con los caballos.”…and that would be completely wrong and either not make any sense at all to a native Spanish speaker or it would convey a meaning that you didn’t want to convey.

The Solution

Is obvious.  It’s simply to teach these things in whatever book or course you’re creating if you’re the teacher.  If you’re the student it’s to make sure you know them before you get in-country.

Actually executing those solutions is a whole other problem altogether.

Lesson learned.  I could prattle on for hours with native speakers via Skype before coming here but I didn’t know how to say these simple things because the context requiring them was never there.  Same thing with what I mentioned before about how I didn’t know how to say “dish-washing detergent” – it never came up in conversation and the popular media (movies, books, TV shows, etc.) I used to learn Spanish sure never mentioned them because they’re not sexy, they’re not entertaining (and that stuff is…entertainment, of course).

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

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

First: The problem isn’t “speaking Spanish” (or not), it’s speaking their Spanish, and fast enough.  I found that I could pick up a Spanish paper (I prefer Heraldo because it’s local) and easily and quickly read through any article and understand 98% of it immediately, no problem.  However, when talking to someone it was maybe 2/3rds intelligible and 1/3rd gibberish – the last 1/3rd isn’t things I don’t know, I know them, I just don’t catch them because they’re too quickly spoken.  I know all (or almost all) the words, grammar, and syntax that they’re using when speaking – if I can get them to slow down and be patient I can understand them – but the thing is that I’m not used to speaking Spanish (all day long, to everyone, every day), I’m used to speaking English.  Consequently, my brain just can’t keep up right now (I suspect I’ll adapt within a couple of weeks), they’re two sentences ahead by the time I’ve figured out what they just said…which means I’ve missed those two sentences because I was too busy figuring out the one before them.

Second: Their Spanish.  What I mean is that there are all these little local terms for various things that you simply would never have reason or occasion to learn unless you were living here.  I discuss this in a video I’m going to put up later but the summary is this: fabric softener, sponges, and toilet paper are not entertaining or interesting subject matter so they’re rarely or never discussed in popular media like TV shows, movies, and music videos (I doubt Shakira’s going to be singing about fabric softener anytime soon unless Downy cuts her a really big check), which means if you’re using those to learn a language (as I recommend, and absolutely yes I still contend they’re an excellent, though not perfect, means of doing so) then you’re probably not going to learn those terms.

Not only is there the issue of mundane daily locution but also the fact that it’s frequently dialectal, that is the specific terminology is specific to that region, e.g. the term for dishwashing detergent might very well be different from Spain to Mexico to Argentina.  When you go to the grocery store and you’re looking for a particular item or trying to determine what exactly a particular item is by what’s written on the label, if you don’t know the necessary terminology you’re going to be in at least a little bit of trouble (though probably not much, granted).  I went to the grocery store here and had no damned clue what half the labels and signs said.

Dishwashing detergent?

I was pretty sure this was what I wanted – dishwashing detergent, like Dawn – given its location in the store and appearance (looks like Dawn) but I wasn’t absolutely certain since it didn’t really say on the label.  It very much appears (and functions) to be precisely that, so I think I guessed right here, but I just wanted to give you an example of what I’m talking about and this is a particularly good one since even knowing the term for “dishwashing detergent” wouldn’t have helped you here since it doesn’t actually say that on the label.  You would actually have to know this specific local brand and what it was, kind of like a bottle of Dawn dishwashing detergent in the U.S. simply being labeled “Dawn” with no other descriptor of what the bottle contained: you’d have to be familiar with that specific brand and understand what it meant in that specific context.

Third: If there’s municipal WiFi available, sign up for it.  It’s by far the cheapest way to have high-speed wireless access on your phone and other devices throughout most of the city (in Zaragoza, for example, coverage isn’t perfect but it’s pretty good, certainly good enough to warrant the 15 euros that got me 1 month’s worth of access).

Fourth: Jetlag sucks, it sucks and it’s worth taking care of and getting out of the way as soon as possible, meaning that you may very well end up having to stay up for 18 or 20 hours straight to get yourself back on schedule because you woke up at 12 or 2 or 3 AM in the morning after having gotten in at 4 PM the previous day and crashed at around 5 PM because you were dead tired and now you need to keep yourself up until 9 or 10 or 12 PM or whatever hour you want to regularly go to sleep at.

Also, an announcement…

I’ve created an Instagram account (andrewhasacamera) to which I’ve already added several photos and videos from Spain and which I’ll be posting new things to regularly, I’ve opened up my Facebook account to the public so you should (let me know of any problems) be able to see everything I post without even needing an account, and I’ll be crossposting most of this stuff to my Twitter account.

I’ve never been big on social media (kinda hated Facebook for privacy reasons) but now I’m really seeing its value when you’re doing things like what I am right now and know that a lot of you will really appreciate having small, regular (daily) bits of information and goodies like pics/videos as opposed to waiting for however long it takes me to write a blog post.  I hope you enjoy it and please let me know if you have any suggestions (e.g. other social media sites you think I should be on).

That’s all I can think of for now, many more posts are inbound (I just have to write them, hah).

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

Today I’m going to give you a list of my favorite websites that you can use to help you learn Spanish via watching television in Spanish (news, shows, telenovelas, whatever), almost all of which are entirely free.  I’ve divided it up alphabetically by country.  This list is mainly intended for people learning Spanish, which I think is wonderful since it’s how I learned Spanish and what I recommend others do as well.  Here we go…oh, and if any of these links are dead or you know of a site that I left off please leave a comment and let me know, I’ll fix it, I promise – which reminds me, I just want you to know that I actually checked each one of the sites below to make sure that they were working and actually had streaming video available, unlike every other list of Spanish language TV/radio station sites I’ve managed to find online (all of them had links to broken sites, all of them).  Additionally, if you have a particular Spanish TV show you’d like to recommend, definitely tell us!

The best website for Spanish-learners who want to use Spanish TV shows, movies, and cartoons to learn Spanish from:

If this is you, check out Yabla for Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles and so much more.  This is a fantastic website and my top recommendation if you’re looking for Spanish videos to learn Spanish with.  I emphasize the last part because that’s specifically and solely what this site is designed for, and it’s the only one on this list that is solely intended for that purpose.  What they do is take Spanish-language media that was originally produced in Spanish-speaking countries and intended for native speakers (TV shows, movies, news casts, cartoons, documentaries, etc.) and then integrate them into a whole Spanish-learning interface they have that allows you to see word-for-word Spanish subtitles and their English translation at the same time  (you can turn either or both off while watching the video), plus you can click on any word in the subtitles and it will automatically pull up the definition in the dictionary next to the video player as well as add that word to your flashcards for later review.  They also include a vocabulary learning game, quizzes, and a flashcard system that’s very easy to use and all on the same page as the video you’re watching.

Also, I did a whole extensive review of Yabla here that I recommend you check out if this sounds like something that might interest you, plus you can just go on over to their site and try out the free demo videos.  Oh, and they do provide volume discounts for educators and organizations.

Spanish TV Channels Sorted by Alphabetically by Country

Ok, let’s get started.  I’ve sorted the list of Spanish TV channels below by country and included short bits of pertinent information where appropriate.

Argentina:

ATC Canal 7 – TV Publica

Canal 4 San Juan

Canal 5 Tucuman (a little disorganized but there are tons of videos on there you can watch)

Canal 6 TV (good one, lots of videos of recent news events)

El Trece

Canal 26 (scroll down to “videos destacados”)

CMTV (Music videos, TONS of stuff on here)

Zona 31

TN 24 Horas

Aruba

Teleruba (click on “Teleruba Live!” in the menu bar at the top)

Bolivia

Costas (look under “videos noticias” in the middle of the page there)

Chile

Canal 54 LivTV (click “Ver Señal Online” and it should load up a streaming video player)

Iquique Canal 10

Television Nacional de Chile

UCV Television

TV Senado

Colombia

Canal CNC

Caracol TV

Señal Colombia

Costa Rica

Canal 13

Extra Canal 42

Teletica 50

Cuba

Telesur

TV Marti (based out of Miami but it’s entirely targeted at a Cuban audience hence its inclusion under the “Cuba” section instead of the “United States” section)

Cubasi

Dominican Republic

Bonao TV Canal 12 (requires VLC player to view, which I highly recommend you get anyway, it’s the best video player out there)

Yuna Vision Canal 10 (same story, requires VLC)

El Caribe (scroll down and look on the right where it says “Transmisión en vivo”)

CDN (really nice, simple setup, video player works great)

Colorvision

TRA 45

Vega TV

El Salvador

Agape TV Canal 8

Canal 21 Megavision

Guatemala

Canal Antigua

Honduras

Canal 6

Mexico

Televisión Educativa de Mexico

Canal 44

Canal 5 XEJTV

Canal de Congreso

Groupo FM Television

Canal 53 UANL

Sistema de Radio y Televisión Mexiquense

RTV de Vercruz (click on “Televisión en Línea”)

Grupo Fórmula (scroll down to “Noticias en Video”)

SinTesis TV (click on “TV en vivo acqui”)

Once TV

Multimedios TV (scroll down to “Videos más recientes”)

TV Acapulco

TeVe de Mente

Nicaragua

Canal 2 TV

Canal 15

Peru

Bethel Television (look to the right where it says “Señal en vivo” and choose either low or high quality)

JN19 (I hope you like Jesus…)

Pacifico Television 41 UHF

RBC TV

Puerto Rico

CDM Internacional

Senado TV

SBN

Wapa TV (not available in the U.S.)

TelemundoPR (scroll down to where it says “videos”)

Spain

RTVE (tons of videos, the news includes a transcript that usually shows up about 24 hours after it’s published on the site).  I use this site more than any other to watch television in Spanish, personally: please see my post about RTVE here for more information and show recommendations.

CRTVG – Galicia TV

Cervantes TV

Cetelemon TV

KISS TV

LDTV

M95 TV

Popular TV (to get the live feed click “Emisión en Directo” in the menu bar at the top)

Solidaria TV

Sintonía Televisión Rioja

Telemagik

Telemadrid (nice clean setup, fast load, recommended)

Ferrol Canal 31

Congress TV (live feed of Congress, Parliament, and archives – menu is on the left)

Informativos Telecinco (videos are all down the right-hand column of the page)

RTPA (live feed is on the right)

United Kingdom

BBC’s Spanish Language TV Section – Just awesome, includes Spanish programs from the BBC with downloadable transcripts (!!) as well as Spanish language news and TV shows, absolutely worth checking out.

United States

Univision

Telemundo

Almavision

DominicanYork (hover over “Videos” in the top toolbar and select a section)

V-me

Estrella TV

Azteca America (scroll down to the “Video” section)

LATV (tons of videos on here)

MTV Tr3s (Music videos – MTV owns them)

Mexicanal

HITN TV (educational programming)

Drama Fever (this was submitted by a commenter, if you’ve got one not on the list please let me know–thanks, Carlos!)

Uruguay

Teledoce

Venezuela

ANTV Live Feed

ANTV Video Archive

Globovision (click “Señal en vivo” in the menubar at the top)

Promar TV

VTV (click either “Señal en vivo” or “Videos” in the menubar at the top – by the way, this is the official government TV station)

RCTV

TeleSUR TV

Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime (tons of Spanish TV shows now)

I mention these on my other list, which is of sites where you can watch Spanish videos but which also have Spanish subtitles (great if you’re learning Spanish), and I’m putting this here as well because some of the shows/movies from these providers have subtitles in Spanish, some of them do not, it just varies.  So…

Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu.  I’m grouping them all together because…well, they’re pretty much all the same thing (type of service), aren’t they?  Anymore, for me, Netflix, YouTube, and RTVE are where I’m getting all my Spanish-language content (and a bit on Instagram, too).

I’m not familiar with Hulu at all so I can’t comment (those who are, please do comment, below, in the comments), but I have both Netflix and Amazon Prime and…Netflix wins handily.  It’s no-contest.  Amazon’s offerings in general are not as good as Netflix (I really only watch The Grand Tour there), nowhere near as good in fact, and this is doubly so in their foreign-language selection: go with Netflix.

Now, that said…what Netflix movies and series can I recommend here and now?  Several!

• Narcos (and now, Narcos Mexico) – it’s about the drug war, obviously.  The original series was set in Colombia during the 1980s and 1990s and dealt with Pablo Escobar, the Medellin Cartel, and then the Cali Cartel.  The new one about Mexico I couldn’t tell you about because I haven’t seen it.  Subtitles are available in both Spanish and English.  Spanish is mainly spoken but you get a repreive every now and then when the DEA agents are on-screen and they speak English.  The Spanish is, obviously, almost entirely Colombian, mostly Paisa dialect since it’s largely based in and around Medellin.  Wikipedia (Narcos) | Rotten Tomatoes (Narcos) | IMDB (Narcos) | MetaCritic (Narcos).
  Wikipedia (Narcos Mexico) | Rotten Tomatoes (Narcos Mexico) | IMDB (Narcos Mexico) | MetaCritic (Narcos Mexico).
• La Casa de Papel – This is about a robbery of the Spanish mint.  I’ve only seen the first episode but it does look really good and is very highly recommended elsewhere.  The Spanish is Iberian (Spanish from Spain).  Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDB | MetaCritic doesn’t have an entry for it.
• El Club de Cuervos.  A Mexican comedy-drama web TV series. The story centers on the football club Cuervos FC, based in the fictional city of Nuevo Toledo, Mexico, and the power struggle that follows the death of its long-time owner and patriarch. Wikipedia | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes.
• El Tiempo Entre Costuras.  The story of a woman who became a spy against the Nazis and their allies in WWII.  Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDB.  It should be noted this series is based on a highly acclaimed book by the same title.
• El Gran Hotel. Mystery Drama in a nice, old hotel.  Per Google: “Set in Spain in the early 20th century, Julio arrives at a luxury hotel to meet his sister, head chambermaid Cristina only to discover she has disappeared. Julio makes it his mission to find her and infiltrates the hotel under the guise of a footman.”  Wikipedia | IMDB.

We really must move on.  I’ve many more but I think what I’ll do is make a separate post out of that list and then link it here later.  Stay tuned (subscribe, please!).

YouTube!

First of all, I have a whole category dedicated to this called Learn Spanish on YouTube: Recommended Channels, How to Do It, Lessons Based on YouTube Videos.  Additionally, and within that category, I maintain two separate lists of YouTube channels I recommend for learning Spanish, one of channels that are explicitly intended to teach Spanish and another of channels in Spanish but which are intended for native speakers (and therefore really only for intermediate and advance students).  Here they are:

1. Spanish-speaking YouTubers who are excellent for intermediate Spanish practice (not lessons, intended for native speakers, great for improving listening comprehension).
2. YouTube Channels that Teach Spanish.

Each of these lists includes a sample video from each channel that I believe illustrates what they’re about as well as a short description of the channel, this way you can decide whether or not you’re interested without having to click a link to each channel (as you would if I just had a list of links here, which is what this used to be).

Music Videos

I can’t possibly list every single Spanish-language music video that includes the lyrics, but I will give you some examples and then show you how you can obtain the lyrics for nearly any other one that you want even if the video doesn’t include them.

Of course I have to throw in some Shakira videos…

Here’s La Tortura with lyrics

And Inevitable

Ciega, Sordomuda

Antes de las Seis

Suerte

Te Aviso, Te Anuncio

Ojos Así

And for the Juanes fans there are a ton, including…

A Dios Le Pido

Y Es por Ti

Fotografía

…and many more, just search YouTube for “Juanes letras” (“letras” is Spanish for “lyrics”, and you want to search in Spanish because of course you want the Spanish lyrics not an English translation which is what will frequently come up if you say “lyrics” instead of “letras”).

Also, there’s at least one YouTube channel devoted to publishing Spanish-language videos with their lyrics contained therein expressly for people learning Spanish, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more (tell us in the comments if you know of others).

Where to find lyrics for nearly any song

There are several popular lyrics look-up sites that have lyrics for nearly every song that’s ever been even somewhat popular (English, Spanish, French, etc., doesn’t matter).  Check out…

https://www.lyrics.com/

https://www.azlyrics.com/

http://www.songlyrics.com/

https://genius.com/

http://www.metrolyrics.com/

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/

Radio

This list was already really long with just sites that had streaming TV (a lot of them also have streaming radio, by the way), I didn’t want to make it any longer or prolong publishing it any more by trying to put together an inevitably equally long list of Spanish-language radio stations’ sites, so I’ve cheated a bit and just put links to other people’s lists of such sites where you can listen to Spanish-language radio below.  Again, I can’t vouch for how many of the links on the below listed sites actually work, but most of them should be good-to-go at the very least.

Multilingualbooks.com’s list of Spanish-language radio stations with live feeds online

E-Spanyol’s list of 600 Spanish-language radio station sites categorized by country (see why I didn’t want to try to do a list here?)

About.com’s got a short list…

Live-TV-Radio.com’s got a good-sized list organized by country

Other Languages

Unlike the above list, I can’t vouch for whether or not all the TV stations’ sites listed on the sites below work or not.  If you’re looking for TV stations you can watch online in languages besides Spanish, check out:

Beeline TV

Multilingualbooks.com’s Foreign Internet Television page

wwiTV.com – Biggest compilation I’ve seen yet, truly impressive.

If you’re here because you’re learning Spanish…

…and you haven’t already checked out my list of sites where you can watch Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles or transcripts, I highly recommend you do so because having the Spanish that’s spoken on-screen written down for you (either in the form of subtitles or an attached transcript) will help you enormously when it comes to learning that Spanish.  Why?  Because how else are you going to be able to look up what you don’t know?  When you hear a word or a phrase you don’t understand, unless you’re a fairly advanced student you’re not going to be able to write it out and if you can’t do that then you can’t look it up.  Having an English translation is just having a clue as to what was actually said, it doesn’t explicitly tell you and therefore is nowhere near as good.

I keep these lists separate for that exact reason: because having Spanish subtitles is so important.  Obviously, if you don’t have them that’s still far better than nothing (or maybe you’re advanced enough that you don’t need them), but I just wanted you all to be aware of this.  This is the list of video sources that generally don’t offer Spanish subtitles (Yabla is an exception).

Related Resources

An excellent course that would probably interest you if you’re just getting started in Spanish and want to focus on learning how to speak it with perfect pronunciation, that relies on immitating native speakers in the sort of media that’s on this list, is called The Mimic Method, specifically their “39 Elemental Sounds of Spanish”.  Check it out, try it, let me know if you like it.

Lastly, it just so happens that I wrote a book about precisely how to learn Spanish, on your own, from the kind of popular media above!  It’s called The Telenovela Method and is available on Amazon, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, and Goodreads (also, your local bookstore should be able to order a copy if you like).  The e-book version is about $7.99 and the paperback is about $14.99 (varies a bit by retailer).  It’s about how to use popular media of your choice (movies, TV shows, music, books, news, etc.) to learn Spanish on your own.  It’s centered almost entirely around online resources, the overwhelming majority of which are free (those that aren’t are very inexpensive and not necessary).  I called it The Telenovela Method because the popular media I initially used to learn most of my Spanish about nine years ago was telenovelas (that’s what soap operas are called in Spanish) because they were just about the only thing I could find that, occasionally at least, included subtitles in Spanish.  You don’t need to use telenovelas, no, pick what appeals to you.

Conclusion

Like I said in the introduction, if you’ve got any additional sites that I missed or any of the above links stop working, please let me know in the comments as this page will be continuously updated to keep it current, 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.

Cheers,

Andrew

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