SIELE, the new Spanish International Exam

According to El Universal, next week the Spanish king, Felipe VI, will be a witness in Mexico to the presentation of the SIELE exam, a new international test of Spanish by the Instituto Cervantes to certificate the level of competency in this language.

If you are one of the 21 million people studying Spanish as a foreign language, then this exam is for you. It will be similar to the American TOEFL exam (Test Of English as a Foreign Language) and will be connected to the 6 levels of the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), which assigns one of 6 levels to the student, depending on their achievement. It will not be a pass-or-fail exam, but a placement text. There will be a scale of scores from 0 to 1000 and students taking the exam will be awarded an A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 or C2 certificate, depending on your mastery of the language.

The test will integrate all the varieties of Spanish spoken in  the different countries and will be divided into four parts. The student is free to take all four parts or only some of them, although you must take the whole test in order to get the official certificate from the Instituto Cervantes.

The tests will be taken and evaluated online, except for the writing sections that will be corrected by teachers. You will be able to take this test in the premises of the Instituto Cervantes, in Universities and in test centers all over the world.

The results of the SIELE test will be available within two to four weeks after the exam, much faster that the DELE exam, which takes about six months to be corrected.

The full four part exam will cost about 100 €, although this may vary from country to country.

The first SIELE exams are expected in september 2015, so, if you want to be one of the first to take it... start speaking Spanish now!

Podcast #002: Los toros

Photo by Peter Morgan

Bullfighting is one of the most relevant cultural events to take place in Spain and in other countries. This podcast will give you some clues to understand what bullfighting is about.

Listen to the podcast and answer the questions below.

Music: Toros y coplas, by Óscar Silva, CC by NC
Texto: Carlos Guerrero Herrero, CC by NC ND

See Trasnscript







Now listen again and answer these questions:

El día E (día del español)

Today is June 20th, and the so called 'el día e'. El día del español, or the day of the Spanish language is celebrated all over the world with thousands of musical and cultural events, many of them organized by the Instituto Cervantes, the official institution which works hard to spread the Spanish language and culture throughout the world. 

So it's a good date to talk about this beautiful language, and I'd like to share with you some important numeric data:

• Spanish is spoken by over 500 million people around the world. It is the 2nd world language after Mandarin Chinese.
• According to the Instituto Cervantes, 21 million people study Spanish as a foreign language today, which is 1.5 million more people than last year. So, welcome to this huge club.
• The USA, Brasil and France are the top three countries in number of students of Spanish.
• By 2015, the USA will the first Spanish speaking country in the world in terms of number of speakers.
• Spanish is the second language on the Wikipedia.
• Spanish is the second language on the main social networks, facebook and twitter.
• Spanish is the third most used language on the Internet, with 8% of Internet communicating in Spanish.

If you are reading this post it is because you are also a potential Spanish speaker, so let me encourage you to go on with your learning experience, and welcome you to the big family of Spanish speakers in the world! 

Survival Spanish: at the restaurant

Yes, I know what you're thinking! Bars and restaurants are not bad places for survivors. That's why I decided to produce a series of videos with some basic Spanish words and phrases you need to know if you want to eat out in a Spanish speaking country. Here is the first one.





Have a look at the video and do the activity below to practise the vocabulary presented:

Podcast # 001 El flamenco

Photo by  Leo Bar PIX IN MOTION

Our first podcast in the blog is about flamenco, maybe the most important contribution of Spanish music to the world's musical and cultural heritage. Learn about flamenco's origins in this short podcast.

Listen to the audio and do the true/false comprehension activity below.

Music: Que te quiero yo, by El niño del parking, CC by NC

Text: Adapted from: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamenco

See Transcript

Guess how I learnt Spanish!

Hola, me llamo Carlos y soy español

Yes I am a native speaker of Spanish, I must confess! And maybe you're thinking 'well, then your experience in learning your mother tongue is not relevant to me, because I want to learn or I'm learning Spanish as a foreign language, a second language, not a mother tongue.'

However, I'm convinced that the more we try to learn a foreign language in a natural way, as if we were native speakers, the easier and quicker it will be for us to build our competence in that language.

The question is 'how do we reproduce the conditions, the environment in which a native speaker learns to speak?' Fortunately, the answer to this question is much easier today than it used to be only a few years ago, before the boom of the Internet. Yes, because the Internet can help you learn Spanish almost as if you were exposed to the language in a real, native environment. With today's technologies, you can immerse yourself easily in a Spanish scenario as often as you like.

Let me show you some tips on how to learn Spanish like a native speaker taking advantage of all these tools that the web provides today. After watching the video, have a look at the description below, where I'll share with you lots of links to very useful resources which will help you learn my language just as I learnt it when I was a baby.

Tip #1: Be ready to make mistakes

Yes, let's be frank, nobody learns a language without making mistakes. All babies make mistakes when they start speaking, and keep making them until they are corrected by someone or until they find a correct model to follow.

Mistakes are a normal consequence of any learning process and language learning is no exception. Mistakes are good, because we also learn from them. I still remember myself as a child mispronouncing words or using the wrong word in a particular context. But eventually we all end up learning from our own mistakes. On the other hand, many mistakes don't interfere with communication; on many occasions, we understand others even though they make some mistakes. So, just don't worry to make mistakes.

Tip #2: Listen listen, listen

The first and most important thing I did as a child to learn Spanish was, obviously, listen to Spanish speakers. The Internet provides many opportunities to do this, even if you're far away from any Spanish-speaking community:

• Listen to songs in Spanish and learn to sing your favourite ones. Music is fun and it is a good source for phonetic drilling, vocabulary, etc.
• Watch videos (from You Tube, etc). Alternate videos with adapted language level and videos with authentic situations where Spanish is used. Watch the news on Spanish-speaking TV channels.
• Listen to podcasts in Spanish. Some of them have self-evaluations exercises to check your understanding.

Tip #3: Interact with native speakers

Listening is good, but it is to some extent a passive activity and learning a language requires action. You need to find opportunities to start using

• Engage in real chats/conversations on the web (via Skype or Google Hangouts on air, for example). Find language exchange groups.
• Search the main social media for groups of Spanish learners like you and share with them sites, blogs or other free resources for learning Spanish. Learning in group is more fun than learning alone. Make new friends.

Tip #4: Read, read, read

Despite all the technological advances that the internet has brought, something as simple as reading remains one of the most effective ways to learn a foreign language. 

• Find texts in Spanish that match your interests. Try to combine both authentic and adapted texts. Do your best to understand what you read, but don't depend too much on dictionaries or online translators. 
• Combine reading with listening. Read transcripts of audio material of all kinds (podcasts, songs, films, etc).

Tip #5: Play with grammar

Yes, 'play' is the word, because play is much better than study. There are many internet resources where you can actually play with grammar, presented in a fun way and spiced up with some interesting exercises that will give you immediate feedback. But beware, don't make grammar the centre of your universe our you'll get bored soon. Remember that grammar is a means, not an end. By the time native speakers start studying grammar at school, they are already fluent users of the language. That's why you should also focus on language use, not on language knowledge on the first stages; after all, you want to be a Spanish speaker, not a linguist.

A fun way to learn grammar is by watching You Tube videos -like the ones you'll find on this channel, about particular grammar topics and then doing some practice self-correcting exercises. This will give you immediate feedback on your progress.

Back-chaining, a good trick to cope with difficult words or phrases

Sometimes we are confronted to particularly long or complex words or phrases that we feel ourselves unable to utter. Sometimes because of a weird combination of sounds, sometimes due to the length of the word or phrase. And this happens almost in any language we try to learn as a foreign language. Of course, Spanish in no exception.

But don't panic. For those cases we have a useful, reliable, technique that will help you sort out the problem -the so called back-chaining technique. It takes advantage of a feature of human auditory memory, which tends to retain the last few sounds we hear for a short period of time. When we hear a group of words together in a sentence, the last few words/sounds we hear linger on in our memory for a period of time, as if it was an echo. This makes it easy for us to repeat these last few sounds without much effort.

Thousands of language teachers around the world have been using this technique in their lessons for ages. When their students are unable to repeat a difficult word or phrase, they turn to the backchaining technique. So if it's so helpful for them, why don't we trust them and apply it to ourselves.

Let's see how it works with some examples, both at word and phrase/sentence level:

1. Word level

Example #1: Agradabilísimo

Imagine you are having problems with the pronunciation of a long word, like "agradabilísimo" (very agreeable, extremely nice). Follow these steps:

1. Divide the word into smaller units (usually syllables, although not necesarilly): a-gra-da-bi-lí-si-mo.
2. Pronounce the last chunk: mo; then the last two chunks together: si-mo, then the last three chunks: lí-si-mo; then  four:  bi-lí-si-mo; and do on, until you have the full word. 
3. If necessary, repeat each step more than once, until you pronounce it at ease.

Now, play the recording, listen and repeat:

Now, the next time you find this word I bet you won't get it wrong and it will come out at once at once. There are many difficult words in Spanish that can be mastered with this method, including words with the feared double 'r'  sound, like: ferrocarril, prórroga, ornitorrinco, parterre, irrumpir, etc.; or long words like otorrinolaringólogo or esternocleidomastoideo.

2. Phrase level

Example #2: ¡Jaime, baja la jaula!

Let's try to follow the same procedure with a long or difficult phrase or sentence, like ¡Jaime, baja la jaula! (difficult combinations of strong  "j" sounds").

This time we divide the phrase into words or parts of words, if necessary, and follow the same procedure. For example:

• jaula
• la jaula
• baja la jaula
• ¡Jaime, baja la jaula!

Now, play the recording, listen and repeat:

Example #3: Qué rápido corren los carros, cargados de arroz, del ferrocarril

• carril
• ferrocarril
• del ferrocarril
• arroz del ferrocarril
• cargados de arroz del ferrocarril
• los carros cargados de arroz del ferrocarril
• corren los carros cargados de arroz del ferrocarril
• Qué rápido corren los carros cargados de arroz del ferrocarril

Now, play the recording, listen and repeat:

Although it is a rather mechanical repetition exercise, there's no doubt that it helps you improve your communicative fluency, since it provides good practice for the voice organs to get used to those tricky combinations of sounds in the foreign language that do not exist in our mother tongue.

Once our voice organs get enough practice, you'll see how your fluency in Spanish will improve dramatically.