Book Review - Citas en el Restaurante

Citas en el restaurante is a quick and easy read if you are at least an advanced beginner to intermediate reader. The e-book follows the foibles of a guy who enters the dating scene after 6 years of being in a relationship. His method of finding love is through e-dating. As you can guess, he is a mess when it comes to dating and his best foot forward is often his worst.

The chapters are short and easy to digest. The author keeps it interesting by changing the scenes in every chapter. I think this is a great book to help the reader maintain their level of Spanish while also picking up some interesting words and phrases. I enjoyed reading it and it took me only 2 days to finish it by periodically reading a chapter when I had a bit of free time. 

The book is one of a series of e-books created by Jorge from thatspanish.com. I could not find a last name for the author and I think he meant it to be that way. Anyway, it is free if you are with Kindle Unlimited ($9.99 for unlimited number of books each month that are registered with Amazon's KU program). Or, it costs $1.69, if not enrolled in the KU program.

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Bakari Akil II, Ph.D. is a Professor of Communication and also writes for his blog at Psychology Today. He is also the author of Spanish Conversations: Realistic Conversations to Improve your Spanish and Conversaciones en Inglés: ¡Conversaciones realistas para mejorar tu inglés!

FluentU - Powering up my Listening Skills (and my ability to read, write...)

               

¿Que estoy haciendo ahora?/What am I doing now?

Even though I am always all over the map in my Spanish adventure, there is always one thing I am focusing on for an extended period of time. For now, that is using FluentU for listening comprehension.

FluentU is probably one of the best services that can be used to learn Spanish. Sometimes, I wonder how long the service will last because it is so valuable. It covers listening, reading and writing. If you desire, you can add a an aspect of speaking by reading aloud. In short, they offer the learner short video clips of all types and they provide:

Advanced bi-lateral subtitles
Dialogue (line by line)
Definitions for words (that you place the arrow over)
Interactive questions for reinforcement
PDF transcripts

You see, hear, read and experience the learning process in a totally different way than you are used to. They also offer videos ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. Pick your medicine.

They offer different tracts for the beginner, intermediate and advanced learners. It also predicts how much you will know of the vocabulary that is new in the video. It keeps track of what you learn so it can forecast what you will know as you advance and it allows you to master videos. Or if you just want to watch videos in another language then you can choose between ¨Learn¨ or ¨Watch¨

When I have free time I just go through the list of videos (Upper Intermediate for now). I watch it first and see how much I know. Then I go through the dialogue page. Next, I watch the video again and maybe once more. After that I go to the next video. When I want to be more thorough I will choose ¨Learn¨ and spend a few minutes going in depth.

There is no better feeling than watching a video after reviewing the dialogue and the person speaking Spanish seems like they are using English.

I pay $18 a month for there Premium version and I am grandfathered in (until they change the policy of course). They do have a free version which will provide many features that allows it to still be very useful. I like watching videos so it is a painless way of learning and no drudgery is involved.

¡Paz!
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Si tienes tiempo, visita el sitio. Me lo puedes agradecer después.


Bakari Akil II, Ph.D. is a Professor of Communication and also writes for his blog at Psychology Today. He is also the author of Spanish Conversations: Realistic Conversations to Improve your Spanish and Conversaciones en Inglés: ¡Conversaciones realistas para mejorar tu inglés!