Here’s a free Spanish language learning quiz from my Spanish course. It’s the first of the two review quizzes that you get in Lesson 1. Press Start to play it:

You can find many more language learning quizzes in my Spanish course. Those quizzes help you review what you learn in the online lessons, downloadable mp3s and videos.

All my quizzes come with listening comprehension questions, grammar drills, vocabulary and number exercises, spelling practice, and much more. Hope you like them!

This is what the Spanish language learning videos in my course look like on your iPod and iPhone:

On my Spanish Bookworld website you can download a free video sample from my Spanish course and put it on your iPod and iPhone, and you can also watch a free video sample online.

You can download the videos and mp3s in my Spanish course when you subscribe. Subscriptions cost $19.99 per month and come with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

My Spanish course contains 45 lessons with 5 videos and 5 mp3s each, plus online lessons, kids’ lessons, articles, an ebook and a members-only forum where you can post me all your Spanish language questions.

Knowing the six forms of the irregular Spanish verb estar in the present tense will allow you to build and understand essential sentences, questions and answers. You can listen to the six forms, together with all the Spanish examples in this post, and play the interactive drill, in the Lesson 4 – Grammar of my free Spanish course.

1. Estar in the present tense

Here’s what the Spanish verb estar looks like in the present tense and how you translate it:

2. Examples with estar

Here are some examples with the six forms we’ve just learned, in both Spanish and English:

3. When to use the verb estar

Estar is one of two Spanish verbs that translates as ‘to be’. The other verbs is ser, which we’ll learn in a future post.

The verb estar is used to indicate:

• Where people or things are
• Moods and feelings
• Physical conditions
• Physical appearance at some point in time
• Temporary rather than permanent conditions

To illustrate these five points, here are five examples with their English translation:

4. Speaking drill

Can you say these ten sentences in Spanish? You can see the solutions in Spanish and hear them said by native speakers in the Lesson 4 – Grammar of my free Spanish course.

1. How are they?
2. They’re angry
3. Which hotel are you (vosotros) in?
4. We’re in the Arizona hotel
5. Where are you (tú)?
6. Is he at the hotel?
7. Is she on the beach?
8. You’re (tú) looking very elegant
9. I’m on vacation
10. Are they on vacation?

To get this and other grammar lessons:

In my experience as a Spanish language teacher, here are three mistakes that can make you waste precious time, ruin your confidence and eventually give up. As you will see, they are easy to avoid:

1. Rushing through your first Spanish lessons

Having a sound knowledge of the basics will determine how fast, and how well, you can learn Spanish.

If you’re a complete beginner, concentrate on each and every lesson of your course, from the beginning, for as long as you need. Do not rush yourself. If a lesson takes you three hours, so be it, but never allow yourself to skip any material.

Basically, the more time you put into the first lessons, the faster you’ll be able to learn later on.

If you’re past the beginners’ level but have some gaps in your knowledge, stop learning new material and go back to the beginning. This may sound drastic, boring, defeating or simply mad, but it will work wonders and no doubt boost your confidence in no time.

To succeed, follow this routine: review all the words you have learned so far. Make sure you understand all the grammar you have covered. Do not allow yourself to make more than one mistake per exercise or drill. Listen to the dialogs until you can say them out loud along with the recordings.

Remember: small gaps at the beginning become enormous holes by lesson twelve. By lesson twenty, giving up will feel like the only way out.

2. Not focusing on the Spanish pronunciation

Working on your pronunciation might not be the obvious thing to do as a beginner, but it has many great advantages:

• The better your pronunciation is, the better you’ll be able to understand native speakers.
• Having a good accent is hugely rewarding and motivating.
• Having a good accent from the start also allows you to avoid bad pronunciation habits that aren’t always easy to get rid of.

The best way to improve your pronunciation is to concentrate on one letter of the alphabet at a time, and then on words you’re having difficulty with. To get a good Spanish accent, make sure you learn only from native Spanish speakers.

Acquiring a very good accent requires patience and perseverance, no doubt, but once you start working on it you’ll notice some improvement almost from the start. Guaranteed!

3. Learning Spanish nouns without ‘el’ or ‘la’

Whenever you learn a Spanish noun with its article, you’re avoiding endless future mistakes. In other words, you’re saving yourself a lot of time and unnecessary, repetitive work.

As you may know, the Spanish gender rules can help you ‘guess’ the gender of many words, especially those ending in ‘a’ and ‘o’, but there are many nouns that will let you down if you try to guess their gender. That’s why it’s safer, and faster, to learn them all with their article when you first come across them.

The good news is that any good Spanish course gives you every new noun with its article.

Warning: Unfortunately, there are many Spanish courses that still teach nouns without their article. To avoid wasting your time, make sure the Spanish course you get gives you the new vocabulary with ‘el’ and ‘la’. The simplest way to do it is by checking the free lessons before buying the full product. If there are no sample lessons, get a different course!

Useful Spanish learning material

Free Spanish course
Spanish pronunciation lessons

All the kids’ lessons in my free Spanish course are interactive: they include multimedia flashcards you can see and hear, speaking exercises and listening drills.

Like all my other Spanish lessons, mp3s and videos, they have been recorded by native speakers.

The kids’ lessons in my courses include topics such as: the family, numbers, animals, colors, names, greetings, professions, the time, asking questions; useful words like ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘some’, ‘and’, ‘I’, etc.; the alphabet, the days of the week, food, clothes, and more.

If you want to see the full list of topics, here is the lesson plan.

To show you what the interactive multimedia lessons for kids in my free Spanish course look like, here are five snapshots:

 

Sign up for free!

At www.spanish-bookworld.com I’ve set up a free Spanish language course with online lessons, downloadable mp3s and videos, kids’ lessons and language learning articles.

The online lessons have five sections: dialog, flashcards, grammar, pronunciation and numbers.

The online lessons, mp3s and videos all include learning material, speaking exercises and listening drills. They’ve all been recorded by native Spanish speakers.

This free Spanish course is available to you right now. Hope you like it! Below are some snapshots from the course.

The Spanish greeting ‘buenas tardes‘ translates both as ‘good afternoon‘ and ‘good evening‘; and the greeting ‘buenas noches‘ means both ‘good evening‘ and ‘good night‘.

So, when do you use ‘buenas tardes’ and ‘buenas noches’?

Unlike in English, these two Spanish greetings have more to do with meals and the sunset than with the actual time of day.

Therefore, ‘buenas tardes’ is usually said after lunch, which is often from 2.00 pm. ‘Buenas noches’, especially in the summer, is usually said after 9.00 pm. In winter, many people say ‘buenas tardes’ at least until 8.00 pm, even if it’s dark; and many only use ‘buenas noches’ after dinner, which tends to be from 9.00 pm.

When using ‘buenas noches’, remember that it’s not only a farewell, but also a greeting. You can use it both when you meet someone and when you leave.

As you can see, there is no golden rule as to when to use these Spanish greetings. The important point is that they’re vague and flexible. Best of all, there’s an easy way out if you’re unsure as to which one to use: you can simply say ‘buenas’.

If you want to practice saying these and other Spanish greetings, you can hear them said by native speakers in the Lessons 2, 3 and 4 of my Spanish course. Here are two samples:

Lesson 2 dialog and flashcards

In this free Spanish lesson we’re going to learn what’s your name in Spanish and how to introduce yourself.

If you want to hear all the examples in this lesson, you can find them in the free Lesson 2 of my Spanish for beginners course.

1. How to ask people their names, and how to answer the question

This is how you ask someone his or her name in Spanish:

and this is how you answer when people ask you your name:

2. Examples

Here are six examples where you can practice asking people their names and introducing yourself:

3. The literal meaning of ‘¿cómo te llamas?’ and ‘me llamo …’

Here’s what ¿cómo te llamas? and me llamo … mean word for word:

* The word cómo usually means how.
* Te llamas literally means you call yourself.
* When you ask ¿cómo te llamas? what you’re saying is how do you call yourself?
* Likewise, me llamo literally means I call myself.
* When you say me llamo …, what you are saying, literally, is I call myself …

4. How to pronounce ‘¿cómo te llamas?’ and ‘me llamo …’

In the free Lesson 2 of my Spanish for beginners course you can hear all the sentences in this article said by native Spanish speakers, including myself.

When you listen to them, notice how the intonation rises at the end of the question, but not at the end of the answer.

5. Exercise

In the free Lesson 2 of my Spanish for beginners course you can do the interactive multimedia drill to practice what you’ve learned here.

If you want to listen to my Lesson 8 podcast mp3s, at Spanish Bookworld you can find the dialog, flashcard, grammar, pronunciation and number podcasts in this lesson.

There you can download the free samples, or listen to them online, and you can also download the videocast samples.

All my podcasts have been recorded by me and other native Spanish speakers, with clear explanations and prompts in English.

To show you what my podcasts sound like, here’s the Lesson 8 dialog podcast sample:

Spanish Bookworld is giving away a free Spanish for beginners cd-rom to all of you who subscribe to our Spanish course by September 30, 2009.

This is what our Spanish for beginners cd-rom looks like:

 

 

 

 

This cd-rom contains 99 student-friendly lessons and 225 speaking, listening, reading and writing drills. All the lessons and drills are interactive, and have been recorded by native Spanish speakers.

In addition to that, the cd-rom also includes an interactive multimedia Spanish pronunciation guide and a talking dictionary with over 800 headwords.

To help you keep track of your progress, you can tick each lesson after you complete it, and your score is saved when you finish a drill. Also, you can make a note of your questions and difficulties on the integrated notepad, and post your queries to me on the members-only forum.

At Spanish Bookworld you can find all the details of our subscription course, including free samples from the online lessons, podcasts, videocasts, kids’ lessons, interactive articles, ebook and exclusive forum.

At Spanish Bookworld you can also see free samples from our cd-rom, together with the cd-rom features, table of contents, system requirements, testimonial and more.