Spanish by Choice

“Learning a language requires time, hard work, and dedication on the part of the learner”

View of Palenque, a Maya ruin in Chiapas, Mexico

View of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain

SPANISHPOD LESSONS
Lessons based on SpanishPod newbie lessons for beginners without knowledge of Spanish; teaching language is English; no prerequisites.

SHORT STORIES BY ALARCÓN
Spanish short stories from the book “Novelas Cortas” by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón read by Karen Savage. For intermediate learners.

Introduction

What is this wikibook?

This wikibook is quite different from a normal Spanish course. In fact, it is more like a collection of booklets, which accompany audio courses and audio books. As it is an electronic wikibook, it combines audio files with transcripts, vocabulary lists, interactive exercises, images, forums, etc.

How to read this wikibook

As suggested by its title, the structure of this wikibook emphasizes choice; thus, there really isn't a single way of reading it but you can choose how to explore the material offered in this wikibook. Here are some common user types:

Hoppers jump from one lesson to another using the tables of contents, the index of dialogue lines, links between related lessons, or just random browsing. If they encounter a lesson they already know, they often listen to it again to see what they remember.
Old-school learners listen to the lessons in the order they are indexed in the tables of contents. They also have a system to listen to the lessons again after certain time intervals (typically after some days, after some weeks, and after some months).
Commuters download audio lessons to their audio players or burn them on CDs to listen to them multiple times on their daily commute. In the evening they read through the corresponding pages of this wikibook and choose the next lessons.
Fans of particular podcasts don't really care about the order in which they enjoy their favourite shows. They also tend to listen to particular lessons over and over again just for the fun of it.

How to use this wikibook

A few additional technical warnings and tips:

The built-in audio player of Firefox is not recommended for playing the audio files because it tends to skip the last second of each file. The VLC media player is also not recommended because it tends to skip the first second of each file.
For printing use the links to printable versions and PDF versions on the top, right. Printing with the links on the left ("Create a book", "Download as PDF", and "Printable version") generates inferior results.
Note that all printable pages include a copy of the complete GNU free documentation license.
To organize your personal sets of lessons, use the "Create a book" link on the left.
The SpanishPod newbie lessons are also available as a podcast: see the RSS file and the iTunes page.

How to contribute to this wikibook

Please correct any typos and errors that you find. If you want to include a link or image: be bold and just do it! Apart from the SpanishPod newbie lessons licensed under a creative commons license and the LibriVox recording of Novelas Cortas, further suitable podcasts and audio material should be included in this wikibook. Unfortunately, most podcasts are not published under a suitable license for Wikimedia Commons and/or make (fair) use of copyrighted material, which is not acceptable for Wikimedia Commons. On the other hand, the public domain Spanish audiobooks at librivox.org and the articles in the Spanish version of spoken Wikipedia should be suitable. Please discuss any suggestions or ideas on the discussion page or contact Martin.

References

^ Gary P. Ferraro, "The Cultural Dimension of International Business," ISBN 0131927671, 9780131927674, Prentice Hall, 2005, page 73.