Read & Listen: Capítulo 1 - La biblioteca
Your First Steps In Spanish
In this lesson, you'll listen to and read the first chapter of our story in Spanish.
This may seem intimidating at first. In fact, the first time you read the story, you may not understand very much.
Don't worry!
As you work through this lesson, and the lessons that follow, everything will soon start to make sense.
Please read carefully through the recommended procedure for studying Module 1:
- Start by listening to the audiobook recording of the chapter: It's a good idea to do this before you read the text or the translation. Focus on listening and see how much you can pick up. (You can also download this audio file at the bottom the lesson in case you want to listen again offline).
- Read the text in Spanish: After listening to the chapter, read through the text in Spanish. It's a good idea to do this a couple of times and listen along to the audio as you do so. Try and see how much you can figure out from the Spanish before looking at the English translation.
- Download the English translation: Finally, download and read through the English translation. See how much you understood and notice any words or phrases that are similar in Spanish and English.
- Complete the other lessons for this chapter: Work through the video lessons for this chapter.
Ready to begin? Click play below to start listening to Chapter 1!
Activity 1 - Listening
Listen to the audio of the chapter. Focus on the sounds of Spanish, and don't worry if you don't understand. Listen as many times as you like and try to get used to the intonation and flow of the language.
Note: Below you'll find two audio files. The first file is a recording of the chapter in Iberian Spanish as spoken in Spain. The second audio file is a recording of the chapter in Latin American Spanish. Feel free to practice with whichever one is more relevant to your Spanish goals.
Iberian Spanish
Latin American Spanish
Activity 2 - Reading
Now read the text of the chapter you've just been listening to. Again, don't worry if you don't understand much, that's ok! Read through the chapter a few times while listening along and start making associations between the sounds of Spanish and the words on the page.
Note: You'll see the English translation of this chapter in the next lesson... but don't jump ahead! You'll get the most out of my story method by spending time with Spanish, even if it's a struggle at first. So work through this lesson and don't worry... we'll look at a translation all in good time.
Iberian Spanish
Latin American Spanish
Activity 3 - Recognising Cognates
Now, as you learnt in the introduction, one of the things we focus on most in this course is exploiting your existing knowledge of English to learn Spanish.
You'll be pleasantly surprised just how many words in Spanish you'll already know! Yes, the spelling and the pronunciation of those words might be unfamiliar at first, but you'll soon get accustomed to the differences.
In this activity, you're going to dive right in at the deep end and explore the story. You will look for words you can identify from their English equivalents, which are known as cognates.
- Download the story, and print it out if you can.
- Grab a pen, and go through the text of the story slowly. You can listen along to the audio at the same time if you wish!
- Every time you see a word that makes you think, "That looks familiar!", stop, underline it, and scribble down the English word it reminds you of.
- Continue through the story until you've completed it. It's not long!
Remember, there are no "rights and wrongs" here! You've got free rein to explore the Spanish in the story and see where your mind takes you.
You might find lots of cognates. Or you might find few. Either way, it's ok!
What's important is that you're spending some focused time with the text by yourself. In the upcoming lectures, I'm going to walk you through everything you need to know. But for now, it's over to you to explore! So, enjoy!
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