This is a website to help you to get input in Spanish and explore some online resources that are either partially free or free. Most of this websites provide free access to materials without having to open an account, if you are a teacher you will find tons of videos to use in your class to practice comprehensive input about different topics (history, science). If you are a student, you will find different ways to practice your Spanish reading interesting materials. Please skip to the table of contents to see what resources can you find
Types of resources: Free podcasts, reading, grammar and vocabulary, reference resources
Levels: It is useful for all levels: the podcast section include all levels -beginners, intermediate, and advanced. And for reading you can read Revista Literal, with Spanish 1 students, Newslea, for more advanced readers and National Geographic for heritage speakers.
Audience: This website was design, mainly, for Middle and High School students in Compass Community Collaborative School in the context of the transition to online learning. However any teacher that use Comprehensive Input methodology might find valuable resources here.
Just explore the websites and try to interact with the texts -listening materials or reading materials- using your reading skills:
Use the podcasts: The podcast are conversations about different subject matters and levels, also you can find grammar lessons to learn a new content or to review.
For the interpretative skills:
Use cognates: words that are written similar in Spanish and English and has the same meaning.
Use previews knowledge: Some news and short videos are related with current affairs, use your knowledge to make sense of what you see in the short clip or in the title and subtitles of the articles.
Use the grammar and vocabulary part to read about grammar topics and to do fill in the blank exercises.
Use the reference section: Teach your students how to use the dictionaries or learn how to use a dictionary and benefit of some of the services they offer such as the word of the day
Try it out!
Contact information:
Mi name is Camilo Jiménez, I teach Spanish 1, 2, 3 in Compass Community Collaborative School, in For Collins Colorado. My school is a Project Based School,and specifically is implementing Human Center Design.
If you would like to suggest new content or have ideas of how to improve it, please, send mi an email to camilo@compassfortcollins.org
Date of creation: 4/20/21
This websites offer audios about different subjects (vacations, family). All of them have different levels (beginner, intermediate and advanced) and some of them offer different features such as blogs.
Of course, if you want the activities you will need to buy the subscription. But there is a lot you can listen for free to practice without creating an account.
Be aware: Some of the sites will require you to open an account to have access to more materials for free, you won't need to create or pay for, we will use just the ones they offer for free. If you are going to open an account or buy something, please discuss with your parent/ guardian first.
This website is focused in news, they offer the audio and the transcripts. It includes grammar lessons, and a catalog of Spanish expressions.
Created by Radio Lingua, if you explore the site you will find a video library and it is possible to find some of the videos in YouTube
This are podcast about different topics. I like it because the accent you will hear is from Spain
The Spanish you will hear in this podcast is from Colombia and a person with accent from England. It is nice that you can hear how an English native speaker sounds when he/she speaks Spanish
In this websites you can practice your reading skills: You can watch videos and read texts using cognates and previous knowledge. There is just one site where you will need to open an account to access the content Newsela, please, if you want to open an account talk with your parents first. What is cool of Newsela is that this site have news in Spanish adjusted for different levels. You can read the same news with different levels of difficulty, for example, the same article has 6oo words or with 1,200, you choose
This website provides hundreds of articles. The cool thing about this website is that you can pick the same article with different levels of difficulty.
You will need to create an account and it requests: name, username and date of birth. Please talk with your parents first
This website is for advanced readers. But you can try to read titles and subtitles and explore the pictures
This is this is a magazine about science. It is for advanced readers, but you can explore titles and subtitles, and watch short videos about different topics.
This is the website of History Chanel but in Spanish. Explore the website, watch videos, read titles and subtitles.
This is the website of the BBC in Spanish. You can find written news and videos that you might be able to understand using cognates. If you Speak Spanish at home check the section ¿Hablas español?
This is one of the main news channels in Mexico. Check the Radio tab, it suggests Radio Stations too, podcast such as Ted en español
A magazine in Spanish written by Spanish students. This is an interesting example of what you could do after 2 years of Spanish or before if you are an avid Spanish reader
This is the website of the New York times in Spanish. The content is translations from English to Spanish. You can read the article in English and then see the one in Spanish
This is the Spanish website of ESPN. Here you can find information about Sports in general in USA
This is one of the most popular soccer magazines in Argentina. Also it is one of the oldest in Latin America, the first issue of El gráfico was published in 1919
This is a website that covers news about sports and culture mainly in Colombia.
This is the popular magazine Rolling Stone, but is the issue they publish in Mexico...in case you are interested in music
This is the biggest digital library in Latin America. It includes several audio books, art and music...here you can find translations of classics
Here you can find popular stories. You will find the story in Spanish, the translation to English and an audio telling the story in Spanish.
In this websites you can practice your grammar and also you will find some websites to review basic vocabulary playing different games.
Free grammar explanations with exercises, also has vocabulary and conjugation exercises
Interactive games
This are website that allow you to explore the meanings of the words, basically are online dictionaries. Word reference is a dictionary. Merriam Webster has some flashcards and the world of the day in Spanish. The dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language is the "official" Spanish dictionary. It is cool because you can start to build nets of words in Spanish