Learn Spanish Travel Spanish Blog

I suppose because the last entry was about Coffee Break Spanish, I’ve started thinking about our favorite online Spanish lessons - the free ones (or at least partially free ones) .  Of course, Coffee Break Spanish (http://www.radiolinguamedia.com/cbs/www/index.html)  is up there at the top, but there are a few others that are just really good.

Take for example Study Spanish (http://www.studyspanish.com/).  It’s hard to beat a site like this.  The few quarrels I have with the site are really minor.  This is a terrific website.  Right on their homepage you’ll see that they have all of these free tutorials:  the basics - Pronunciation, Grammar, Vocabulary, Verbs, and other useful things as well, such as Idioms, Cultural Notes, a Daily Word.

Click on Grammar and in the left hand column you’ll see nine lessons, dealing with many aspects of grammar.  Under each lesson is a list of the things covered in that lesson.  Lesson One covers the gender and plural of nouns, as well as pronouns and a few verbs. And each item on the list has its own page and is dealt with in some depth.  How many times have to gone to a site with “lessons” and it would have maybe one small paragraph about verbs in among all the advertisements?  These are really lessons. The pronunciation section actually has quality audio so that you can hear and repeat the correct pronunciation.

The site is well laid out, it’s attractive and the lessons progress logically.  It’s a really good jumping off page for the beginner and a good refresher for the person who has a little Spanish but hasn’t studied in a while.

My complaints?   Well, really I guess it has more to do with me being a cheapskate than with the quality of their website.  I would like more free lessons.  Who wouldn’t, right?  But they’ve got a quality product, and we all have to make a living.  I would also like to see more sentences, both written and spoken, but that too has to do with the limited amount of free lessons.  (OK, OK, I confess that there is an adequate number of free lessons).  The advanced lessons, which of course you have to pay for, come in their package of 15 audio cds and  12 months of premium access to the website.  Fair enough.

So… since my complaints aren’t really fair….. I guess I don’t really have a complaint.  This is a darn good website for the beginning Spanish student.  Give it a try at http://www.studyspanish.com/

Tags:   Coffee Break Spanish · Learn Spanish · speak Spanish · Study Spanish · StudySpanish.comNo Comments