It’s been another big week at Studio Fiesta…
SpanishPod Community Updates:
Thanks, everyone, for all your encouragement, your support, and for getting the word out about SpanishPod. Today, SpanishPod was #2 among educational podcasts according to iTunes USA, and #45 in overall podcasts. Even more impressive are the great reviews we’re getting on our iTunes site. If you enjoy SpanishPod, please write us a review!
Adri is back in Colombia, and Esti is back in Spain for the Christmas Holiday, but they’re both still holding court in the Conversations section! People really seem to be responding to Nino from Del taco al tango: Meet the Parents, and his experiences with dating a latina. Another very interesting conversation is going on about how we go about studying vocab (go to the conversations page and find “How do you study vocab?”); people are sharing their own styles, strategies, and techniques.
SpanishPod Product Updates:
- Free and Basic users will notice that there are now some sections of the site “grayed out.” This is part of an effort to make clearer which features are part of Basic/Premium services.
- Lessons now have a pop-out player (look for the link right under the Flash player on the lesson page). This lets you click around on various parts of the site while listening to a lesson, uninterrupted.
- SpanishPod academic emails are working again! Thanks, tech team!
SPOD is in a much better position to explore “other” media than is CPOD and should perhaps exploit that arena.
Consider … plenty of people studying Mandarin put off Hanzi. For whatever reason, they are quite content to focus solely on spoken Mandarin — at least in the crucial initial stages. Most expect to tackle written Chinese to some degree at a later date, but many have recognized that it is probably a better strategy to get a grasp of spoken fundamentals first; relying on pinyin for their notes and flashcards and such.
But Spanish doesn’t have that handicap. Indeed, it’s more faithful and consistent to its basic orthography than English. Master the pronunciation and you master the spelling, for all practical purposes.
At some pint, I’m hoping the SPOD crew will start integrating written Spanish into their curriculum. Maybe short (one paragraph) topical blurbs from actual newspaper stories. Signs you might see in a grocery store. Restaurant menus. Weather reports, song lyrics, comic strips, etc., etc. You get the idea.