A useful spanish resource

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davejkane
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A useful spanish resource

Postby davejkane » Wed Jun 21, 2017 8:36 am

You may be aware of Spain's national broadcaster RTVE.es. There is a weekly hour-long reportage program called "Commando Actualidad" - http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/comando-actualidad/. The great thing about this show is that it comes with Spanish subtitles.

Now here's my tip: When you open one of the shows, a complete transcription of the subtitles appears to the right (won't work on mobile, only on PC). If you click on one of the subtitles and hit Ctrl-A to select everything, then hit Ctrl-C to copy everything you can paste it into a document, after a little bit of cleanup you'll end up with a complete transciption of the show.

My personal learning style is to read through the transcription in chunks, looking up all words and phrases I don't know. I then watch the show without subtitles. Becuase I've familiarised myself with the words and phrases and have a complete understanding, my ear finds it much easier to understand the audio. The best kind of listening practice for me.

I hope some of you find the tip useful. There is a possibility that RTVE is only available in the EU (I'm in Denmark, works fine). Let others know in the comments. Cheers.
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Brun Ugle
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Re: A useful spanish resource

Postby Brun Ugle » Wed Jun 21, 2017 10:07 am

Lots of their shows have subtitles and transcripts and are available without restrictions. I've watched both in Norway and in the US without problems. I love that they've chosen to do that. It makes it so much easier to learn Spanish.
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micksmi
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Re: A useful spanish resource

Postby micksmi » Tue Jun 27, 2017 11:22 am

I wanted to use subtitles to improve my Spanish in a similar fashion to this. I found a great dataset of movie subtitles linked in 62 languages so I used it to make a flash card language learning site - http://sublearning.com For prompts in Spanish and answers in English http://sublearning.com/pick/spanish/english For prompts in English and answers in Spanish http://sublearning.com/pick/english/spanish
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tommus
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Re: A useful spanish resource

Postby tommus » Tue Jun 27, 2017 12:21 pm

davejkane wrote:There is a possibility that RTVE is only available in the EU (I'm in Denmark, works fine). Let others know in the comments. Cheers.

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, when I try to play the videos, I get an animated video in Spanish and then in English, saying that the program is not available in your country. (Canada). The short announcement has subtitles! I can understand that such sites have the right to decide who can watch them. But for sites like this, I don't understand the reasons that they find it necessary to block the material. Other videos on the website are not blocked, but they don't have subtitles.
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