Saturday, September 5, 2015

No se aceptan devoluciones / Instructions not included

I just heard that this movie is now available on YouTube.  Enjoy!  This is the one we'll be watching in class at OLLI in October.

Al cine en español

There's a new class coming up at OLLI at Southern Oregon University this October.  It's called Al cine en español.  We'll be using a movie, and maybe a video or two, to help decipher spoken Spanish.  We'll watch a bit, stop, think, go back, repeat...with vocab and grammar help as appropriate.

Other opportunities are available on the FluentU.com site.  Great videos from many lands, at all levels from "newbie" to "native/bilingual".  There are subtitles as well as word-by-word explication.  Check it out.

Using video/film to learn language gives you lots of advantages - time, repeats, colloquial language. and no embarrassment about not getting it all the first time! 
  • Take it slowly. Give yourself time to think, try listening without subtitles a few times first.
  • Don't tackle an entire film.  Choose one or two scenes at a time.
  • Choose one variety of Spanish, for example, Mexican, peninsular Spanish, Argentinian, etc.  
  • Choose videos you enjoy!  
  • Listen most carefully to monologues or simple, two-person dialog sections.  Busy street scenes or group conversations are more difficult to manage.  
  • Try putting yourself in the place of one of the characters and see if you can say his lines yourself.  
And, if you can get a few laughs, even better!
¡Que te diviertas!