al MUNDO HISPANO

Video clips of native speaker Spanish

Native speakers of Spanish share childhood memories in 30 second video clips

All of the speech samples in EL PORTAL are "authentic," meaning that they are the spontaneous narrations of native speakers who did not use scripts. Their only instructions were that they should speak in a normal manner, as if they were speaking to another Spanish speaker, and to talk about their childhoods.

New to the site? Get RealPlayer to play the video clips.

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Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
Understanding linguistic variation
Comprehension strategies

Beginner

NOHEMI de GUATEMALA

In these clips, native speakers use:

deliberate speech: natural but somewhat slower and more distinct, as when we introduce ourselves.
verbs in present tense
limited number of grammatical forms.

Intermediate

SUSANA de EL SALVADOR

ABUELO COTUC de GUATEMALA

In these clips, native speakers use:

conversational style: natural, somewhat faster with less exaggerated pronunciation, as when we are talking calmly to friends.
verbs in present, preterite, and inperfect tenses
grammatical forms including comparisons, negatives, and object pronouns

Even if you are a fairly advanced student, you will find the Beginner and Intermediate clips interesting as examples of regional speech and for their unique content.

Advanced

ROBERTO de CUBA

In this clip, the native speaker uses:

unguarded style: natural, faster with relaxed enunciation , as when we are talking in an animated fashion to friends.
verbs in all tenses
a wide variety of grammatical forms
Spanish which reflects regional pronunciations

Even if you are an advanced student, you will find the Beginner and Intermediate clips interesting as examples of regional speech and for their unique content.

Understanding linguistic variation

Comprehension strategies

There is no predetermined set of activities. Proceed using your best personal learning style.

Hints: it is usually not the vocabulary which makes listening comprehension challenging. You have studied almost all of the words used, and their is a short vocabulary list with each.

Don't fixate on any one section. Not every sentence or thought is going to be complete in normal oral speech (if you don't believe it, listen to yourself and your friends in casual conversation).

Watch the video once without pausing. (It is only 30 seconds long.)
Make a guess as to what the person is talking about.
Listen a couple of times more to familiarize yourself with the person's speech patterns.
Do what you do in English when noise drowns out what someone says, or when your mind wanders. Fill in the ________ based on what would make sense.
Jot down your ideas and listen again. You can run the movie "slide " back to listen to single words.
Still stuck? Read the vocabulary. Do any of the words fit in your "blanks? "
Listen again.
Read the Comprehension tips. Look at the biografical, linguistic, and cultural information. There are clues in each.
When you have done all you can, read the Spanish script if you need to. You'll notice that you can't read it and listen at the same time. This helps you focus on hearing and remembering.
Read the translation as a last resort, (before doing something dreadful to the equipment, for example). Notice that the translation is not word for word. Some ideas require more words in English than in Spanish, and some take more words in Spanish. Can you think of another way to translate what the person said to make it sound more natural in English?

erase from here down rename index.html file to "main.html" and "side.html" to sidemaya.html change this file from index2 to "index" ***make a file named "side.html" in which I put the links I want the links in the side.html must include code rename current side.html as target command a href= "*link*"target="main" If I get lost, go the the side.html and check the working for the target commands