Quote:
Originally Posted by FrannyCakes
Hola,
How do you develop the skills needed to comprehend speech?
Gracias.  |
We can argue about intuitive understanding of language usage vs. studying grammar and vocabulary all day long. (We have previously, haven't we?) I know that Chileno doesn't agree with me on this point, but I believe that we all learn differently, and some of us need to take one angle on language learning, and others of us need a different angle.
Having said that, I think that what I'm hearing in the question from FrannyCakes is also about understanding Spanish, spoken as it is spoken by a native speaker at a native speaker's pace. One cannot do that unless you actually practice LISTENING.
Some of us don't have access to regular listening to spoken Spanish. Immersion is obviously the best option, but might not be practical for some of us who are home owners with jobs and who can't just take off for a long period of time to live in a foreign country.
Given that, I will repeat something here that I have posted on several other threads in this forum. Someone (here) pointed me out to these videos, posted by the University of Texas.
The link is:
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/index.html
Each video is quite short, and each comes with a transcript of the spoken Spanish. There are MANY videos, and they are grouped by topic, and from the very most basic and progressing through much more difficult material. Within each group of videos (I think the groups are 5-6 videos), they have Spanish speakers from different countries with different accents speaking on the same given topic.
So, for example, they may have a group on giving directions. Within that group of videos, they may have speakers from Mexico, Peru, Spain, and Chile. The speakers are NOT reading from prepared texts. They are asked to speak on a certain topic, and then they just talk. The transcripts of their monologues are made later.
I have found it EXTREMELY helpful to listen to these videos several times each: first without the transcript, to try to see how much I understand ... second (and sometimes third and/or fourth....) WITH the transcript to check myself to see if I really did understand everything correctly.
I HIGHLY recommend these videos!!