SSL // Spanish as a Second Language

Posted on November 12, 2008
Filed Under Spanish Lessons |

I joke with my wife and many at my church that they offer ESL (English Second Language) classes, but that I need to go to a SSL (Spanish Second Language) class.

I’ve had 2 years of Spanish in High School, grew up in Southern California, and yet I still am not anywhere close to speaking the language beyond introductory conversations.

Why? Laziness? Yes!
Lack of practice? A big Si (how’s that for some practice).

Well, I have tried a few different programs, but I have come across something here recently that I am really enjoying. The “something” is called SpanishDict.

Highlights: Watch Free instructional videos, practice with flash card/writing/speaking quizzes, chat with native speakers online, ask questions in the forum, tons of translation/grammar/media resources, cool widgets and embedding capabilities, and did I mention that it was free!

If you decide to take Spanish lessons (Learning section), then it will keep track of your scores in each section and you can’t move on to the next lesson until you achieve a certain number of points (but you can go back and review and retake each quiz).

Spanish 1 has 15 lessons and I just finished lesson 1.1. Here is a taste of the flash card section:
Go ahead and push the start buttons and interact with the application!

Learn Spanish Vocabulary for Learn Spanish 1.1 - Greetings and Introductions
View Scoreboard | Learn Spanish | Get Help with Spanish Translation

Pretty cool. The writing section was tough at first because you have to get the accents right as well or else you lose points (but thankfully you can go back and try again).

Also, I couldn’t get my microphone on my computer to sync with the program, so I got zero points on that section and had to make up for it on other sections to pass the 1.1 section.

C.Harv

Comments

Leave a Reply




google.load("language", "1"); var curstate = 0; var hasloaded = 0; function bnc_show_translated() { if (hasloaded == 0) { bnc_lang_callback(); hasloaded = 1; } for (i = 0; i < 0; i++) { var elem = $("bnc_original_" + i); if (elem) { if (curstate) { elem.show(); } else { elem.hide(); } } } for (i = 0; i < 0; i++) { var elem = $("bnc_trans_" + i); if (elem) { if (curstate) { elem.hide(); } else { elem.show(); } } } if (curstate) { $("bnc_trans_state1").show(); $("bnc_trans_state2").hide(); curstate = 0; } else { $("bnc_trans_state1").hide(); $("bnc_trans_state2").show(); curstate = 1; } } function bnc_detect_div(div_id) { var text = document.getElementById(div_id); if (text) { text = text.innerHTML; if (text.length > 0) { google.language.detect(text, function(result) { if (!result.error) { if (result.language != "en") { if (result.confidence > 0.25) { $("bnc_translating").show(); bnc_xlate_div(result.language, div_id, "en"); } } } } ); } } } function bnc_xlate_div(src_lang,div_id,o_lang) { var text = document.getElementById(div_id); if (text) { text = text.innerHTML; google.language.translate(text, src_lang, o_lang, function(result) { var translated = document.getElementById(div_id); if (result.translation) { translated.innerHTML = result.translation; } }); } } function bnc_lang_callback() { } function bnc_startup() { bnc_xlate_div("en", "bnc_translate_info", "en"); bnc_xlate_div("en", "bnc_translate_info2", "en"); } google.setOnLoadCallback(bnc_startup);