anstruther: The levels A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 are actually defined by an organisation of the European Union. I think they match rather well with the levels specified by SpanishPod in the sense that when you have worked through the podcasts on the newbie level, then you should have reached level A1, etc. However, the (well-known) problem is that most SpanishPod users don't practice talking in Spanish (there are exceptions), thus, their ability to communicate in Spanish will always be rather limited, regardless of which levels of podcasts they are listening to. In that sense I would agree that the levels don't match well. :)

That's one explanation. The other explanation is that JP and Lili refer to the gender of the characters and Esti is speaking the male(!) character and Leo the female(!) character. :)

donperigo: Good point! I should add that I'm particular thankful to Praxis Language and the SpanishPod team who allowed me to implement this project.

both: Thanks for your kind words, I hope we keep in touch!

In other news: I'll probably have to learn Danish for professional reasons; thus, it doesn't make much sense for me to continue my subscription to SpanishPod right now. But I might return once I'm fluent in Danish! :)

SpanishPod has helped me a lot in many ways, and probably even more than I am aware of. Thanks a lot to the SpanishPod team: Lili, Leo, JP, Esti, ... and everyone else at Praxis Language who was involved in making SpanishPod. And, of course, to all the users who form the SpanishPod community! Thanks a lot!

holo me llamas safia

If I may correct two typos: Hola, me llamo Safia. (literally: Hello, myself I call Safia.)

(Whomever it may concern: I think that correcting user postings is one of the most efficient ways of encouraging user postings. :)

Liliana: You are right, the technical aspect of how users could record audio and submit is one thing (here are some tools, which I actually haven't used yet but which might be useful here in the comments section: http://vocaroo.com and http://www.voki.com ), but the more important point is probably the learners' motivation to submit written and spoken texts.

I think it works well at Livemocha for two reasons: 1) there are exercises of various degrees: as a beginner you don't have to submit an intelligent comment or question on the lesson but you are first asked to write very simple sentences, e.g. you are asked to describe some objects and the reply should be something like: "El libro está en la mesa." etc. Later there are more challenging exercises, e.g. "Describe what you are wearing". For the spoken exercises you start by simply reading texts before you actually answer questions.

2) Submissions are corrected by native speakers (who learn other languages on the same web site but correct submissions in their native language). If it works well, users get very detailled corrections, i.e. even typos are corrected.

Of course, the SpanishPod team is too small to correct (or even discuss) all errors and typos in user submissions. Thus, I think the only way is to bring native Spanish speakers to SpanishPod (e.g. from EnglishPod etc. as suggested earlier by donperigo) and offer them some incentive to comment and correct other users' submission. I'm not aware of any other suitable solution.

I disagree that "there's absolutely nothing to stop people linking to their own video blogs or sound recordings to the site" (or skype messaging). You mention the thing that stops users to do this: the neccessary time commitment. It's the job of Praxis Language (not of the SpanishPod team) to reduce the necessary time commitment. (Again: it is helpful to read the review of Livemocha.)

donperigo&russ: I don't think that users are shy, at Livemocha there is about one submission of a spoken Spanish exercise per minute (and, yes, they have more users).

As enjoyable as this course is, its major downfall is that fact that SpanishPod offers no way for the learner to have him or herself be heard. There is plenty of opportunity to communicate in Spanish in the forum. However, as much Spanish as the learner may understand, they may not necessarily be understood after having finished the SpanishPod course.

Sadly, as much as students can get out of subscribing to SpanishPod, until something is added that will enable students to be heard by native speakers or to at least record themselves, learners using SpanishPod cannot better their pronunciation. We can only hope that this capability is added soon.

I wholeheartedly agree with these paragraphs. (To really understand the meaning of these paragraphs you'll have to read the review of Livemocha.)

- learn in the direction English to Spanish, i.e., look at the English word or phrase and try to translate it into Spanish. (It's a good idea to start with the direction Spanish to English because it's easier, but that's not enough! If you don't learn from English to Spanish, you are wasting your time.)

- review your flash cards as often as possible; the first review is just as important as the 10th or 20th or 50th review. Review difficult cards more often than easy ones. (If you don't review the cards until you "own" the words or phrases, you are wasting your time.)

- find a comfortable way to learn with flash cards. (In the long run, it's all about motivation. If you don't like doing it, you will stop doing it. And then again: if you don't review the cards sufficiently often, you have wasted your time. My favourite way of learning flash cards is at home in an arm chair with a hot cup of tea using the "iFlash touch" app on my iPod while listening to music. :)

- use different cards at different levels of your learning process: in particular as a beginner you should learn phrases. Once you know several phrases and/or how to build new sentences, you might want to learn more words that you can use as building blocks. (If you just learn single words without a clue how to form sentences, you are wasting your time.)

- And, of course, vary the process and try other learning techniques in order to find out what works best for your. 

I guess I agree with JP that it is really easy to waste your time with flash cards; and maybe a lot of users of flash cards are actually wasting their time. However, I'm also convinced that it is possible to use them efficiently.

Bueno, la traducción española de la palabra "people" en el significado "todas las personas de un país" es "pueblo" pero la traducción de la misma palabra "people" en el significado "unas personas" es "lgente".

russhuntley escribí:

cosas graciosas que puebles digan

No sé, quiza me equivoco, pero creo que lo que Russ quiso decir fue "cosas graciosas que la gente dice", ¿no?

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I think that what Russ wanted to say was: "funny things that people say".

¡Qué entusiasmo! ¡Espero que lo mantegas! :)

BTW I'm actually not completely sure whether it is a direct object or an indirect object but there seem to be more Google hits for "las tengo hartas" and "los tengo hartos" than for "les tengo hartas/hartos" indicating that the phrase requires a direct object. (I'm assuming that "harto" is an adjective here that agrees in gender and number with the object, the one how is being fed up. There are actually quite many google hits where this is not the case. :-/ )

No, no puedo tener una cita con Alicia porque ella tiene a alguien. ("why?" is "¿por qué?" but "because" is "porque" (one word); "haber" is almost exclusively used as a auxiliary verb to form the composite tenses; if the object is a person you need the preposition "a").

Yo tendría una cita con Niccola Ciccone porque me gustaría que Niccola cantaría con la guitarra y a mí me gustaría cantar con él.

Donperigo, gracias por enseñarme / por la información / por la instrucción

Yo sé que a ti también te gusta cantar las canciones en español. (You need the indirect object "te" even though you have the "a ti".)

gramática (simple rule: there are no spanish words with a double "m")

Yo olvidé a la persona que quiere tener una página web donde podemos cantar con las palabras. (you need this "a" if the object is a person; the verb after "quiere" is always in the infinitive; but I'm actually not quite sure what you are trying to say :)