Texas Spanish Proficiency Exercises

No, not lessons to speak Spanish like a Texan, but another great free page coming out of the University of Texas at Austin. This site contains 85 modules, each containing 6 videos of native speakers discussing various topics. While the Quicktime video is playing, you can choose to view a transcipt in Spanish or English. Each module includes a breakdown of key vocabulary, phrases, and grammar.

One of the hard parts of learning a language is making that jump from the rudiments definitions and conjugations. This site can help you make the jump to actually understanding speakers. I've tried the Rosetta Stone and, while I highly recommend it, the program is incredibly expensive - $49.00 per month for a basic online subscriptions (they also make it difficult to unsubscribe). Rosetta Stone works primarily by pairing-up, then selectively focusing on, written text and audio. These modules from UT at Austin work in the same way. I also like that each video identifies the nationality of the native speaker.

If you are looking for more Spanish help, there are plenty of pages out there. Merlot is a good place to start (249 search results for "spanish"). I like these grammar exercises to polish up specific grammar topics that give me trouble and Ultralingua for translations and conjugations. The BBC also has a great program for Spanish, as well as French, German and Italian. Two great spanish blogs for casual reading are Pixel y Dixel and La Petite Claudine. Both blogs have tons of great links to other high quality sites in Spanish.