spanish verb tenses

i could't find a video with a timeline and, for whatever reason, online spanish tutors seem to like a lot of verbiage (sic) with their expanations! this lad keeps it seem when he's conjugating ayudar. if you're at the stage of wanting to do a timeline like the previous french one, you've likely got all the components you need. if not, a little caution but it's still handy, if only to show you some gaps. bit of paper and a marker and you're off! 

instagram practice

 i've kept my duolingo going but now, after nearly five years, i'm finding it, other than making sure i do it every day, counterproductive in terms of actually learning. what i am getting a lot out of is spanish language instagram. it gives me the instant hit of duolingo but, and especially if it has spanish subtitles (english subtitles not helpful), i have to read and listen at a native speakers pace at the same time. my current favourites are - 

jimena gonik - a disc a day for 366 days is just a joy. and while she does the english language classics there are cantantes in here i've never heard of. brilliant!

victor del valle - i had a lot to do with hairdressers back in the day so this is well within my comfort zone. what i like is the repetitive nature of the interaction, the speed of the chat and watching victor's skills. he gets some stick in the comments for limited technique but what he's doing he's doing well so i'm not bothered.

erik dominguez - cooking! and in an accent i can actually understand!

ingemar albertsson - okay not spanish but ingemar is such a dude i can't leave him out. plus, far more than french or spanish, or even dutch, i've always struggled with comprehension in swedish. moreso now i have no chance to speak it but i don't want to let it die. there's some really specific vocabulary and the swedishness is dialled! lol

eduardo girardin - my italian is now where near not needing english subtitles but, in addition to not liking italian duo much, this reminds me of why i love italian so much

cheikh niang - more food! as with erik dominguez lots of great kitchen language. plus, west african french is where i started french as a kid, so i can't not love it

obvs i listen to more spanish than anything else but i listen to all of these more or less regularly. native speakers speaking to native speakers is great and all of them have big easy to read subtitles in the target language (except eduardo). in spanish, it's also helping me get to grips with different accents and modes of expression. i find these short clips less demanding than listening to the radio or watching something on tv (netflix spanish viewing a whole other thing!)

that said, i do like me some french radio.  i haven't found spanish speech radio i like yet but i'll do a music station. alternatively theres always the cycling in dutch, which i'm not sure if i really understand, or if i'm cheating because i know what they're talking about! whatever, it fills the house with a vibe that's not english!

easy spanish

 easy spanish is a great way of just listening to spanish people (with a wide variety of accents) actually speaking. there's spanish and english subtitles should you need them plus it's a good way of stepping away from that constant tense learning and looking at the way people actually speak! i tend to listen more to the podcast these days than watch the youtube channel but both are equally handy in their own ways 

more on notebooks

clearly i love a notebook. i love a notebook in direct inverse proportion to finding myself living in an anglophone country full of monolingual anglophones. but all is not lost. i'm not a massive fan of social media (despite this blog!) but i do like the proliferation of non anglophone material all over the internet. happy days then to be able to listen to not-english any time i choose. unfortunately, due to the parlous state of my languages, it's not always easy hence back to the notebook. 

it's nice to tune your ear and, in the beginning, listen along with english subtitles. but it's not really helpful. better to listen while you have your target language subtitles on. but don't skip over that vocabulary you don't recognise. jot it down in your notebook and come back to it later.

and don't make it hard for yourself. for me it's the televisual equivalent of teletubbies in the likes of dutch or italian but i get to combine watching cycling content with language learning with the likes of gcn - in spanish, french or german if i so choose. super handy 

language listening

in my very brief english teaching life one of the things i was fortunate enough to be able to do was change my accent so that learners could compare and contrast the same sentences. not quite the same but most of the way there appears you.glish. i got in initially as an english teaching aid but it does all manner of other languages. useful. check it out.