¿Hablas español?

My most recent Spanish course ended in May of 2009, so when I applied to the NALCA program 8 months ago, I knew that I had some catching up to do. As the year continued, I found several practical ways to improve my Spanish:

1. Spanish music- Listening to this is a fun, simple change to make. My drives are now about 90% en español, unless I have others in the car with me.
   
   
2. Spanish podcasts- My favorite series is called Nómadas in which the host spends 55 min. talking about a city somewhere in the world & interviews several people with connections to that place throughout the show. This is great b/c it exposes me to various accents & I love learning about the different destinations.
   
   
   
3. conjuguemos.com- I do not think I appreciated how helpful this site was for brushing up on verb forms when my high school Spanish teacher made us use it for hw assignments. I had forgotten so much, especially with irregular verbs, but this is a quick & easy way to bring that info back. ...verb conjugations (or lack thereof) were the main thing to slow me down at the beginning of my study abroad semester, so I'm NOT trying to have the same problem twice!
   
   
4. CanalExtremadura offers many media forms including radio, TV, and newspaper articles. My favorite part is watching the daily news segment (about 45 min.) from Extremadura. It is especially helpful b/c it covers a wide range of vocab, includes a variety of newscasters & exposes me to the local pronunciation/accent, although news anchors tend to enunciate better than the people you run into on a daily basis. During meals when I studied abroad, my Spanish host family usually had the news on (or the occasional telenovela or fútbol match), so this seems like a practical way to learn the language.
   
    
5. Reading children's novels in Spanish- I am currently on La Casa en Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros about a girl whose parents immigrated to the U.S. The most beneficial method I have found is to read for the general idea, while underlining unfamiliar vocab. At the end of the chapter, I will look up the words & write them in the margin. Later I can flip through past chapters & quiz myself on the vocab by covering up the margin. ...others I have read are La telearaña de Carlota (Charlotte's Web) & Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal. Reading books you have previously finished in English can be a good way to start. And again, I try to cover a variety of topics to better increase my vocab.
   
   
6. Reading out loud- This aids pronunciation & helps me to pick up new words more quickly.
   
   
7. quizlet.com- This is a site of electronic flashcards. What's neat is that you can make your own flashcard sets (I made one for piso searching terms) or use 1 of the 1,000s of sets made by other users (there's one of 250 Spanish verbs I really like- 501 is just too many at one time!) They also offer a couple vocab games in addition to straight-up flashcard review.
   
   
8.  livemocha.com- Essentially this is a Spanish textbook in Internet form, including video dialogs, vocab & grammar exercises, and quizzes, PLUS it lets you submit writing prompts & audio recordings to native speakers of Spanish for critiquing. (In return students learning English submit similar assignments to you for feedback.) Unfortunately this one isn't free, but I was able to get an extremely discounted 1 year subscription using a Groupon :) ...and a 1 week trial happens to be free!
   
   
9. Using old Spanish textbooks to review.
   
   
10. Speaking with the Ecuadorian exchange students at work. This is probably my favorite form of practice, though I sometimes don't take advantage of it since they all know/are studying English...but I have been making more of an effort here in the past few weeks!

All-in-all I have TONS of resources at my fingertips & I have actually made fairly good use of them, despite my lack of regular Internet access this summer. Now that lots of auxiliares are finding each other's blogs I thought it would be a good time to share my resources!