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Saturday, October 15, 2011

iPad apps for the intermediate or advanced Spanish learner


Intermediate learners are at the "sentence" level of using language, and advanced learners are at the "paragraph/discourse" level of using language. These iPad apps will help you develop your language skills at those levels, but may not be terribly useful for novice language learners.

Busuu Spanish is a well-designed app which complements their website, but you don't have to use one to appreciate the other. After an in-app purchase of $3.99 to get the right level for you (according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), you'll find a series of listening and matching exercises on a variety of topics. I recommend you also go to their website to try writing and communication (with live native speakers) exercises too.

BrainPOP: Película del Dia is great, with a free daily video clip (usually between 2-4 minutes) about an academic topic, targeted at a K-12 audience. Recent topics have included Simón Bolívar, el Internet, and Fundamentos de la Construcción. A great way to expand your academic vocabulary while also picking up some conversational language in the exchanges between Tim and his robot friend Moby.

teleSUR is a Latin American news app with lots of short videos. 

Univision is the app for the US-based Spanish-language network. It includes lots of articles to read and quite a few video clips.

Verbos Spanish Verb Trainer lets you select which verbs and which tenses to review. It's a fairly straightforward flashcard system but having the verbs preloaded is nice.

Image courtesy of liewcf via flickr.

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