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.

Knowing some common Spanish sentences well can greatly boost your motivation to continue learning, and it will give you precious confidence.

The dialogs in my Spanish for beginners course include a wide variety of everyday questions and answers that you’ll often hear when communicating with native Spanish speakers.

Here are five questions from the dialogs in my course that you’ll often hear in conversation, together with their English translation. Click on them to hear them said by native speakers:

¿qué hora es? – what time is it?

¿qué vais a tomar? – what are you going to have?

¿qué más le pongo? – what else can I give you?

¿alguna otra cosa? – anything else?

¿me puede decir cuánto es todo? – can you tell me how much everything is?

In this post I’m going to guide you through how to master these five questions. Let’s listen to the first one once more:

¿qué hora es? – what time is it?

Notice how the intonation rises at the end of the question.

All Spanish questions must rise at the end to be understood properly. Because of the way Spanish verbs and word order work, if your question doesn’t rise at the end, you’ll often sound like you’re making a statement rather than asking something.

As for the pronunciation, in the question ‘¿qué hora es?’ remember that the ‘u’ in ‘qué’ and the ‘h’ in ‘hora’ are silent. If you need to go through the pronunciation rules of any of the letters of the alphabet, you can find them all in the pronunciation lessons in my Spanish for beginners course.

Let’s listen to the first question once more. Once you’re familiar with it, repeat it out loud, along with the Spanish speaker, trying to keep up with the speed. To sound like a native, make sure you imitate her intonation too:

¿qué hora es? – what time is it?

Let’s now move on to the second question. Click on it several times to hear it and, like before, then repeat it after the speaker:

¿qué vais a tomar? – what are you going to have?

Remember that the Spanish ‘v’ sounds like a ‘b’, and notice how the words ‘vais a’ are joined together. You should join them too!

In the third question ‘¿qué más le pongo?’ you need to watch out for the vowels. Before we practice saying the whole question, let’s review these three vowels:

a

e

o

In particular, make sure the ‘e’ in ‘le’ doesn’t sound like the ‘e’ in the English word ‘me’, and that the final ‘o’ in ‘pongo’ doesn’t sound like the ‘o’ in the English word ‘go’. You can practice these two vowels in Lessons 2 and 4 of my Spanish for beginners course.

Like with the previous two sentences, listen to it several times and then repeat it along with the speaker:

¿qué más le pongo? – what else can I give you?

In the forth sentence ‘¿alguna otra cosa?’ make sure again that you’re saying the vowels correctly:

a

o

u

You can practice these three vowels in Lessons 1, 4 and 5 of my Spanish for beginners course.

Also, don’t forget that the question must rise at the end. Practice this sentence like the ones before:

¿alguna otra cosa? – anything else?

The fifth and final question is ‘¿me puede decir cuánto es todo?’ (can you tell me how much everything is?). Here, make sure you’re saying the words ‘me’, ‘puede’ and ‘cuánto’ correctly:

me – me, to me

puede – you can

cuánto – how much

Remember not to drop the final ‘e’ in ‘puede’, and to say both the ‘u’ and the ‘a’ clearly in ‘cuánto’.

This last sentence is longer than the previous ones, so you might find it more difficult to master it. Listen to it as many times as you need to get familiar with its sound, and then repeat it out loud along with the speaker:

¿me puede decir cuánto es todo? – can you tell me how much everything is?

Speaking drill

To review the Spanish questions in this post, we’re going to do a speaking drill. Here are the five questions in English. Can you say them in Spanish? Press play to hear the right answer:

what are you going to have?

can you tell me how much everything is?

what time is it?

what else can I give you?

anything else?

Repeat this drill until you can get all five questions right. You may want to come back to it several times over the next few days to really master them.

If you liked this post, you can find many more interactive multimedia articles like this one on my other site, Spanish Bookworld.

This is the Lesson 1 dialog videocast from my Spanish for Beginners course.

In this short dialog you can hear two native Spanish speakers greeting each other. Lesson 1 also includes a flashcard videocast where you can hear and practice all the new words that come up in the dialog, as well as a pronunciation and a numbers videocast. I’ve also created a podcast version of the four videocasts, and interactive multimedia movies.

In previous posts you can see and hear the Lesson 1 dialog movie and the Lesson 1 dialog podcast.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

 

You can download all the podcasts and videocasts in my Spanish for Beginners course when you subscribe.

Here’s the Lesson 1 dialog podcast from my Spanish for Beginners course.

I’m the author and host of this 4-minute podcast. All the Spanish in this podcast has been recorded by native speakers, including myself.

You can see the transcript of the dialog and its translation in this other post and at Spanish Bookworld. There you can also download all my other podcasts in this series.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

 

This is the Lesson 1 dialog from my Spanish for Beginners course.

It’s an interactive multimedia movie where you can hear two Spanish native speakers greeting each other.

If you need help, click on Instructions on the movie. If you need more help, contact me!

You can find dozens more Spanish lessons at Spanish Bookworld

 

 

Can’t see a lesson? Try this: Place your cursor over the words Share / Save below this line for a couple of seconds, without clicking on them. Move the cursor to a side and the lesson will appear. No luck? Refresh and try again!