subject: Improving Your Spanish By Watching Movies [print this page] Many Spanish students experience a progression of learning that starts out with pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Aural skills usually come later. If you have got to the point in your studies where you are looking for ways to improve your aural skills, one good method is to watch movies in Spanish.
I find that movies that are originally in Spanish are more challenging. Movies that are in English originally are better to start with because they are easier.
The first thing to do is watch the movie in English and familiarize yourself with the plot. If you pick a movie that you already are familiar with, select the Spanish audio and the English subtitles. Don't even bother with the Spanish subtitles. They NEVER match the audio for some reason. It's as if the producers hired two completely different translators, one for the audio and one for the subtitles.
Once you have seen the movie a few times with the English subtitles, try watching it without them. I have found that after each time I watch a movie, I hear more of the Spanish.
Be sure to pick movies that you won't mind seeing repeatedly. I like the Harry Potter movies, as well as Idiocracy, The Princess Bride, Along Came Polly and Blazing Saddles.
This is definitely a good way to develop aural skills. But recently I discovered an even better way. There is a compilation of short videos called 500 Spanish Videos that are interviews with real people. Most of the videos are 30 seconds to a minute long. I started working with these videos in a systematic way and I discovered that my aural skills improved enormously very quickly. Then I went back to watch the movies and was excited that I could understand the Spanish better than ever!
I don't know why this method is so much more effective than watching movies, but I have a theory. It has to do with the short nature of the videos and the method that I developed. I listen to each video 3 times in a row. And I do that on 5 different days. So I end up hearing each video 15 times. I think there is something about focusing on a short excerpt many times that trains the ear better than watching a full-length movie, where you only hear everything once.
500 Spanish Videos is available as a digital download on the website www.TeachingYourselfSpanish.com The videos contain over 6 hours of material and the transcripts for each. Also, the speakers come from 16 different countries so you can sample some regional dialects as you improve your Spanish aural skills.
