Book Review - La Casa: Short and Easy Spanish Novels

This book caught me by surprise. It is not your regular bland story for beginners. LA Casa: Short & Easy Spanish Novel for Beginners is about a family that finds the perfect house or so they think. The story picks up quickly and I found myself asking the characters (out loud) why they chose to do certain things. I found myself concentrating on the story and not the level of the material. I have to admit that the book was nothing like I expected.

The bi-lingual book is written for people at the A2 level (Advanced beginner) and it has an interesting design. Twenty-one chapters - Ten sentences each chapter - No more than 12 words per line. That was the format.

It was a quick and easy read and I finished it in about 30 to 45 minutes.

Joe Arenas, the author, has written a jewel of a short story here and I think it would a good tool in the quest to retain or increase your level of Spanish.

Me gustó mucho este libro y se lo recomendaría a los principiantes y los lectores intermedios.
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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!

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!

Inspiring Spanish Learners - No. 1

While learning Spanish, many have inspired me to continue when I have felt my worst. When I need motivation, I often look for videos of people who have succeeded or that teach in a way that makes me want to believe my goals are possible. This will be one of a series of posts that highlight these individuals as they deserve much attention for their work.

1. Nathan Heightz

Nathan is a passionate learner of languages and when he focuses on a language it has nowhere to hide but in his brain. Watching this guy's growth in languages was amazing and he offers many good tips on how to process languages. Here are a few of his other videos that are inspiring or helpful to language learners.

My Spanish speaking progress: 6 months
How To Learn Spanish Fast (In 6 months or Less!)
My Spanish speaking progress: 7 months
My Spanish speaking progress: 8 months
Me speaking after 1 year of intense study

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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!

Pato muy hambrienta - A very hungry duck - Kindle Unlimited

Okay, I read this book by using the Kindle Unlimited program (KU) through Amazon. For $9.99 a month I can read as many books as I want on my Kindle and devices that have Kindle apps. You can check out ten books at a time and can exchange them as often or as much as you would like. Also, Amazon has a general fund that they use to pay the authors or publishers so all parties profit.

For now, I only spend money on children's books in Spanish if they are classic fairy tales, such as Peter Pan or Jack and the Beanstalk. However, with the Kindle Unlimited program I can read as many books in Spanish that I can stand.

Pato Muy Hambrienta is a simple book that introduces or reinforces many simple words for pieces of furniture, fruit and animals. The easy sentences and structure will help to build sentence making ability and to learn easy phrases. The repetitive nature of the book will ensure that the reader will take away valuable skills for the future.

It is a cute book for beginning Spanish learners and can be shared with a child learning the language. It is not a bilingual book, but you can easily look up anything you don't know and will not be slowed down too much, as it is a short book. It is a good book for learning and will give beginners a sense of accomplishment for reading a book.

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Agradezco que la lectura de mi blog. Hasta la próxima vez.



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!

Easy to learn Spanish Nursery Rhymes - Book: Tortillitas para Mama

This is a really cool book! Many bilingual books for kids go off the rails with the translations, but the Spanish closely mirrors the English. I bought this book to read to my daughter as well as to satisfy my constant quest to find new material.

The rhymes in this book capture the essence of life and the relationships shared between parents and children. Plus, there are also some general rhymes that could easily be applied to regular life. There will not be any Humpty Dumpty type nursery rhymes here. "Not that there is anything wrong with that!" - Seinfeld

In all, there are a total of 16 nursery rhymes and they are really sweet. I read this book in 20 minutes. Depending upon your level, it will probably not take you that long. However, I tried to memorize some of the nursery rhymes, which slowed me down a bit.

It is a good thing I read it as soon as I bought it, because when my daughter saw it she wanted me to read it right away. (I always read books first before reading to her because I do not want to have to stumble over the Spanish or skip over words I do not know.)

Also, the illustrations (by Barbara Cooney) are very well done and convey a sense of culture. I would recommend this book for any level of learner.

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Este libro es un excelente manera para practicar su español. También se proporcionará rimas fáciles de aprender.


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!

I Need to Talk! - ¡Yo Necessito Hablar!

Estoy muy frustrado. Necesito hablar con alguien. Estoy aprendiendo español, pero gran parte del lenguaje está en mi cabeza. Tuve un tutor en el año pasado y hablamos dos veces por semana. Sin embargo, no más. No es suficiente para hablar con el aire. Tal vez voy a encontrar un tutor de nuevo.

Excuse my Spanish.

I had to get that out. Spanish is swimming around in every direction in my brain. Input, input and more input. However, I am not doing enough in terms of output. I found that the online classes were great at first, however, there is too much sitting around and waiting to be chosen. I have quickly lost the urge to attend an hour session and get a chance to say something 3 to 5 times during that time.

In the meet ups that I attend (two different groups), the first 40 minutes is spent by the leaders trying to decide what to do. As a college professor, I have to resist the urge to take charge and get things started. I resist because I am a novice at Spanish and because I don't have the dedication they have to maintaining and running a group.

The last tutor I tried to get missed three appointments in a row and I just continued to study on my own after that. I should have looked for someone else, immediately, but I didn't.

Yeah, I am going to find another tutor.

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Gracias, por leer!
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Bakari Akil is a Professor of Communication, blogs for Psychology Today and has authored many books on Communication and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. This is his experience learning Spanish.