Saturday, August 29, 2009

20 Free Online Resources for Spanish Language Learners

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer.

Learning Spanish is a great way to open doors to opportunities in travel, professional areas, and even education. The Internet plays host to many different resources that would be useful to anyone who wants to learn Spanish. Here is a list of 20 free resources for Spanish language learners to explore:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT offers over 1,900 free courses for online learners, including several free Spanish courses. Course offerings include Spanish I-IV, oral communication, and advanced Spanish communication.

123TeachMe - This free service offers basic and conversational courses that cover vocabulary, grammar, and conversational Spanish. 123TeachMe also has resources strictly for kids, including games and quizzes.

Discover Spanish - Discover Spanish has fun, free podcast Spanish lessons. Podcast episodes last 15 minutes and cover greetings, numbers, age, and much more.

Insta Spanish - This online learning site features free Spanish podcast lessons for all levels of learners. Throughout this site, you can also find Spanish speaking pen pals, an e-learning newsletter, and a forum.

Learn Spanish Online - Learn Spanish Online offers 903 free pages of Spanish grammar with audio files to guide all examples. Language learners can find everything they need--from accents to verbs.

BBC - The BBC offers a large collection of resources for learning Spanish. Learners can find online courses, speaking resources, and quick fixes.

Radio Lingua Network - The Radio Lingua Network provides two free learning podcasts for learners to build their Spanish speaking confidence.

Study Spanish - This teaching site offers free tutorials for anyone interested in learning Spanish. The tutorials consist of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, verbs, idioms, and a travel helper.

Vocabulix - Vocabulix offers over 90 vocabulary lessons for improving your Spanish skills. Users of this site will also find verb drills and verb conjugation tables.

Babbel - This online language platform offers fun, multimedia courses for learning Spanish, English, German, Italian, and French. This is a great place for Spanish learners to find grammar builders, multimedia courses, and grammatical exercises.

Rolling R's - Rolling R's has a series of free videos lessons for building your Spanish speaking and writing skills. The site offers over 75 video lessons, most of which are available for free download or viewing.

don Quijote - This language site offers free Spanish lessons from Spanish teachers. Simply register for a free membership to gain access to this online language resource.

Edufone - Edufone has 40 free podcast lessons for all levels of Spanish speakers. The podcasts cover grammar, verbs, pronunciations, and conversations.

SpanishUnlimited - SpanishUnlimited features free services for learning and practicing Spanish. This site offers users lessons, vocabulary words, tests, and vocabulary games.

Spanicity - This Spanish learning site features grammar and vocabulary lessons complete with audio. Spanicity also comes complete with a Spanish dictionary and quiz.

LearnerSpanish.com - The LearnerSpanish.com site provides online tutorials on vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. This site utilizes both text and audio to help you learn.

Spanish Romance - Spanish Romance offers free online Spanish courses created by Spanish teachers. This site features resources for learning vocabulary, numbers, and phrases.

Palabea - This online social network offers video lectures, virtual classrooms, documents, podcasts, and language partners for Spanish language learners.

iTalki - iTalki is an online social community for learning a wide variety of different languages including Spanish. Users of this site will find 43 different courses, language partners, groups, and a knowledgebase.

Livemocha - Livemocha is a free way for Spanish learners to find self-paced lessons, practice, and native speakers who want to share their skills. All you have to do is sign up for a free account to immerse yourself into the Spanish language.

Karen Schweitzer is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes for OnlineCollege.org, an online college resource.
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