Listening: following the gist
Mostly technique rather than vocabulary. The goal is the gist of a clip, not every word — and being comfortable with that is the actual skill.
Colours live this week
10 of 10 in playA thing, a person or a place.
An action or a state — what is happening.
Describes a noun.
Modifies a verb or an adjective.
the / a / some — and possessives like mon, ma.
Stands in for a noun — I, you, he, it.
Links words together — to, in, of, for.
Joins two parts of a sentence.
Opens a question — where, when, how, why.
Learn it whole. Do not take it apart.
Only a handful of new phrases this week. Your review load should feel light, which is intentional — the time goes into listening instead.
Phrases for when you are lost
Learn all five properly. Being able to ask someone to slow down is worth more than another twenty nouns.
- [no entiendo]I don't understand
- [más despacio, por favor]more slowly, please
- [¿puede repetir?]can you repeat?
- ¿Qué significa…?What does … mean?
- ¿Cómo se dice…?How do you say…?
Point at the thing and say this. It works every time.
The three-step method
A practice transcript
Read this slowly first. Then find a real clip and try to catch the green verbs and orange nouns the same way.
Ayer fui al parque.
Vi a mi amigo y comimos en un café.
[En mi opinión,] estuvo muy bien.
Before you read the translation
- 1Who is speaking?
- 2Where did they go?
- 3What did they do there?
Yesterday I went to the park. I saw my friend and we ate in a café. In my opinion, it was very good.
Where to listen this week
Dreaming Spanish for graded input you can genuinely follow. Coffee Break Spanish for structured lessons, which suit the second pass. Easy Spanish for real street interviews with subtitles, which is the best material for third-pass shadowing. Use one source for all three passes rather than hopping between them.
Daily mini-tasks
A new card type this week
Add audio-to-meaning cards: a short spoken sentence on the front, the English on the back. Every other card you have trains the eye. This one trains the ear, which is the sense you will actually be using in Spain.
Listening this week
Dreaming Spanish, Coffee Break Spanish, or Easy Spanish
YouTube and podcast apps
Pick one clip of one to two minutes and use it all week for the three passes. Familiarity is the point — you are training the technique, not hunting for material.