Skyrocket your Spanish listening skills with this easy exercise – Episode 87

Skyrocket your Spanish listening skills with this easy exercise

Podcast episode 87 – SEE ALL EPISODES

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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Today I’m going to show you how you can take your Spanish to the next level in no time.

See also: Maria’s step-by-step Spanish courses.

In this episode I bring you an exercise that I used to do regularly when I was learning English. It brings great results, really fast.

And what is it? A dictation.

You wouldn’t think that writing down what you hear is a big deal, but it is. In fact, it’s more like a little miracle. Dictations can help you with at least three aspects of the language:

1. They help you develop your listening skills really quickly.
2. They help you become familiar with vocabulary faster than if you only read your lessons and listen to them.
3. They help you build complex sentences.

Good dictation exercises have 3 steps:

1. First, you hear to the whole text you’re going to write down.
2. Then you get each line, a few words at a time. Each set of words is said twice.
3. And then you get the whole text again, so you can check what you’ve written down.

In my opinion, when you’ve just started learning the language, it’s best to do dictations with texts you’re familiar with. It’s a conversation from Lesson 4 of my ‘Learn Spanish At Your Own Pace’ course.

After we finish this exercise, you can read the Spanish text on the screen of your mobile device. Check whether you’ve made any mistakes, and let me know how you get on.

Let’s start the dictation exercise. I’m going to read out the whole conversation. You don’t need to write down anything just now.

Have a look at
Maria’s step-by-step Spanish courses

¿Qué van a tomar?

De primero, sopa de pescado y una ensalada mixta, y de segundo un filete de vaca con patatas fritas y pollo asado.

¿Y de beber?

Una botella de vino tinto de la casa y agua mineral con gas.

¿Algo más?

No, eso es todo, gracias. ¿Me puede decir dónde están los servicios?

Al fondo, a la derecha.

And now I’m going to read a few words from each line at a time. Write down what you hear. I’ll say each set of words twice:

¿Qué van a tomar?

De primero, sopa de pescado y una ensalada mixta, y de segundo un filete de vaca con patatas fritas y pollo asado.

¿Y de beber?

Una botella de vino tinto de la casa y agua mineral con gas.

¿Algo más?

No, eso es todo, gracias. ¿Me puede decir dónde están los servicios?

Al fondo, a la derecha.

To finish, I’m going to read out the whole conversation again. Go through your dictation, and see whether anything needs changing.

¿Qué van a tomar?

De primero, sopa de pescado y una ensalada mixta, y de segundo
un filete de vaca con patatas fritas y pollo asado.

¿Y de beber?

Una botella de vino tinto de la casa y agua mineral con gas.

¿Algo más?

No, eso es todo, gracias. ¿Me puede decir dónde están los servicios?

Al fondo, a la derecha.

Have a look at
Maria’s step-by-step Spanish courses

That’s it. Have a look at the text on the screen of your mobile device. How did it go?

Dictation exercises are great for developing your listening skills, learning new vocabulary, and building complex sentences.

Find out more about my Spanish courses.