Once you’ve had the chance to try a few of the lessons, we would very, very much like to hear what you think of the course.
Like it, love it, loathe it – anyone who takes the time to give us feedback is an absolute star as far as we’re concerned!
Access your free lessons
If you've already filled in this form but didn't bookmark the download page, just fill in the form again - it will recognise that you're already on the list, and take you straight to the download page.
Hi Neil – sorry about this – are you getting an error page, or just the normal log-in page not working properly? It’s all behaving at the moment this end, so tricky to know exactly what is going wrong. Yup, good call on the contact stuff – I’ll be looking to get that done in the near future – thanks very much for the comment…:-)
Sorry, I’m not sure where you mean when you say the ‘community page’ – could you link to it? If it’s part of site.saysomethingin.com, we’ve got other materials in other courses available there for free (so far) rather than for fixed fees – but yes, everything is pretty much in development at the moment! We just like to share as soon as stuff is available…:-)
I don’t seem to be downloading Lesson 20. What do I need to do to get Lesson 20? And then , what can I do to continue after Lesson 20.
Hi Mary – sorry, we don’t have Lesson 20 available yet, although we hope to be able to publish it in the not-too-distant future…:-) Then we’ll be moving on with our new framework for Course 1, which we hope you’ll find interesting and useful.
I have to say that I find this way of learning very rewarding. I’ll keep practising until Lesson 20 becomes available. Muchas gracias .
Well, having just got home from choir tonight, I decided to have a go at lesson 16, whilst sipping a glass of rioja. What a pleasant way to wind down.
My mother was Welsh but the only word I remember was cariad……..maybe after this great Spanish course I should start the Welsh!!
I really enjoy this course, although at my age I can’t always remember the long English phrases I am expected to translate into Spanish but usually manage to cope with the verb tense that is being practiced if I cannot remember the end of the sentence.
I do hope you make some money out of this project, because it really is a great asset to anybody who wants to learn a language and worth paying a small fee for.
‘Large numbers of tiny amounts can add up to a small fortune’
Good luck
Delighted that you’re still enjoying it! And we’d definitely welcome you warmly onto the Welsh course, where we also have a very enthusiastic community of fellow learners…:-)
We’re trying to work out the best way forward to get more courses up and running – unfortunately, at the moment giving the Spanish course away for free hasn’t lead to the same word-of-mouth as we got with the Welsh course – too crowded a marketplace, I suppose. It looks as though we’re going to have to work harder than we thought to break through the ‘free=probably-not-very-good’ mindset, and that probably means starting to charge for it (so that we can afford advertising), and then looking for different ways to make sure people who can’t afford it can still get access – maybe some kind of a scholarship programme, something like that.
Well, I have finished lesson 19 tonight because the snow is falling lightly outside and I needed to imagine sunnier places. I expect your snow in Wales is far worse than mine, in the SE corner of England!
I have been thinking since your last reply, could you perhaps put some of this great course onto CD and sell it on Amazon or Ebay to get some finance in to help with developing it more. I am well past retirement but use my kindle to download simple Spanish books etc and am always looking to find ways to improve my language skills, so maybe this could be a way to find new students. However I really don’t understand all this modern technology very well, like using facebook etc. so I am probably talking rubbish but just feel very strongly that this is a very good way to learn and that more people should know about it.
By the way, in the dim and distant past, I used to be a teacher of English!
As lesson twenty is not yet available, I shall keep revising the other lessons and my my tourist parachute until it is. Thanks again for the course.
Thank you so much for your kind words, Madeleine – and well done, you’re rattling on at a great pace!
We definitely need to look at Amazon and eBay – probably as digital downloads rather than CDs, because we can’t afford the bulk buy we’d need to get low prices for CDs – we’re going to be trying lots of things over the next few months, as well as carrying on developing new lessons, so fingers crossed we’ll find something that works so that we can then just focus entirely on lesson development…:-)
Hi, I have a mixture of comments, both positive and negative. Generally I like the course and the way in which words and phrases are introduced and the language is building. However some of the recordings sound as if they were made in a bathroom – very amateurish. They are also very fast for a beginner and it would be good to have the phases spoken more slowly first, just to be sure of what I am saying, then at normal speed. I can’t imagine that if only using this course, I would have stuck with it, because of the speed of the speakers. I would have felt out of my depth. As it is, it is a very effective back up and provides great additional practice and I have really valued it for that. It is also good having two different voices speaking the phrases for clarity.
Despite my comment about the speed, I think the fact that the speakers “take no prisoners” and speak normally, has helped to move my very basic Spanish up a notch with the effort to follow them. It has been really good for me. I use the course alongside another course which works on similar principals and for me, the courses compliment each other nicely. The other course is slow though, whereas this course is more challenging, again good for me.
The learning tips have been very useful, particularly about listening to a Spanish radio station. I find that helps me to pick out phrases and words I know, become familiar with them and their use and how to pronounce them.
I haven’t got into the practice sessions yet, so I can’t comment on them.
Thanks for the course. I am enjoying it.
Thank you very much indeed for your comments, Lenise – we really appreciate you taking the time to share them – the good ones are a boost and the negative ones are an opportunity to learn and improve…:-)
Say Something In Welsh saved my life … well, it saved my language! Not much chance to speak Welsh in Australia, except to the cat & bemused friends. I still can’t read How Green Was My Valley without tears welling up & dripping on the page. The sequel starts off in the Welsh Colony in Patagonia & I want to visit there. Meanwhile my partner and I have become involved in a local country market that has a lot of South American stallholders; one who has become an especial friend and comes from Argentina has been to the big annual Eisteddfod in Chubut. Apparently it’s huge & people go there from all over Argentina. Now I’m going to learn some Spanish so I can speak to her & my other new South American friends, and be ready for my trip to Patagonia. It was a bit of a shock when I first started lesson one as I expected it to be as easy as the Welsh course!!! Now I understand some of those comments from people on the Welsh forums who were having problems getting into the swing of it. It’s still great way, no, it’s the best way to learn a language & I can practice it every weekend. Blessings on you all back there. You deserve a medal. Keep up the good work.
Delighted to hear that the Welsh has been such a pleasure for you – thank you very much indeed for your very kind comments – we’d also love to make it out to Chubut one of these days (also why I originally started learning Spanish!). Good luck with the Spanish course – get the first few sessions cracked and you’ll soon be in the swing of it…:-)
I’m having problems accessing the new 10 session mini course. I have logged in to the new site OK. But for this course when I enter the same user name I get message – user name not recognised. I paid through paypal and it has been debited from my bank account. (Also on the new site there is no space visible to me to ask questions)
PS The current courseI’m using is fantastic, I recommend it to lots of people, so thank you!
Hi Marian – sounds as though there’s an issue with setting up your account (the sites run separately, so they need separate accounts) – I’ll email you to make sure we get this sorted out…:-)
Me and my son are learning Spanish and really enjoying it. Its nice to feel we are making such fast progress. We also appreciate the heartfelt ‘well done’ and encouragement at the end and feel we have deserved it. My only concern is that although we are making progress in speaking, understanding is very hard. It was great to have the 5 minute clip for listening, and more of the same would be very useful. Another thing that would help keep us engaged is the odd funny thing to say – any jokes in Spanish that only require the selected words?
Hi Denise – great to hear that you’re doing so well! And yes, you certainly do deserve the praise…:-) Understanding is a more time-consuming skill to master – on our Welsh course, we have daily listening practice sessions available for subscribers – we’re hoping to do the same thing eventually with Spanish, but we’re currently finding that we’ve got to charge a lot more to be able to compete with advertising.
Having said that, I’m sure we’ll be able to find some way to keep things either free or very low cost for our existing learners…:-)
Jokes, though, are probably the highest order of language skill – so it’s probably best if we try and get you to speaking and understanding well enough to get in and out of conversations, and then let you try and pick up jokes from other people and/or radio!
Hi everybody! My mother tongue is italian but I was enjoying very much learning Spanish trough English. I have to thank an irish friend wo some time ago sent me the link of ‘Say it in Spanish’. I’ve have reached lesson 18 and I would like to ask wether the next lessons are ready in order to carry on with learning. I am really enthusiastic about how the lessons are done and at the speed I’m learning!
Thank you very much in advance, greetings,
Anneli Berndt from Liguria (Italy)
Hi! Hier I am again… I’ve found lesson 19 and I am trough it. Thank you very much. I think I’ve read, that you may not have lesson 20 ready yet.. Or I’ve understood wrong?
)
Greetings
Great, glad you found the new site – no, sorry, Lesson 20 isn’t ready yet – all a bit busy here, but maybe soon…:-)
Hello, I’m enjoying the course and have got up to lesson 8. Luckily I’ve been able to devote quite a bit of time to the lessons each day. A one-hour drive to and from work each day means I can get through a lesson 2-4 times in what would otherwise be wasted time for me.
I retire in 4 yrs, 5 mnths and am planning to travel to South America when I do, so I thought it was about time I started to learn Spanish. I searched the internet for courses and was pleased to find this one for free. I noticed your comment that free can cause people to think ‘not-very-good’, and maybe that is a common perception, but I’ve found quite a few free resources on the internet that are as good or better than equivalent products you’d pay quite a bit for, so I wasn’t put off at all.
The one thing confusing me at the moment is the reversal (or not) of the usual word order when, as explained in lesson 3, you ask a question of you. From lesson 8:
- no puedo entender por que quiere usted hacerlo (as explained in L3)… but:
- entiendo lo que usted quiere decir
- entiendo por que usted piense llamarme muy pronto
- entiendo por que usted no quiere saber lo que hago
- no se lo que usted tiene que hacer manana (all with the usted before the verb)… then:
- no se que va a comprar el hombre
- no se lo que el hombre va a hacer hoy
The last 2 are almost exactly the same – ‘I don’t know what the man is going to buy/do’ yet the word order is different. Is that a clue that you can say it any of those ways?? ie … por que el hombre quiere hacerlo / … por que quiere el hombre hacerlo / … por que quiere hacerlo el hombre.
Anyway, enjoying the course, but finding it frustrating to get these wrong seemingly at random.
Hola
Espero que leccion 20 era listo pronto. Aunque me gusta eso metodo de estudiar y el repaso, quisiera mucho leccion 20.
The Spanish might not be good but it shows that I am keen! Any developments as far as lesson 20 is concerned or further courses, in the near future? Have I missed anything by not being very computer savvy?
Hasta pronto.
M
Oh dear!
What has happened to my favourite course? Can’t log on to the site and no response from Admin since March 9th. Am I doing something wrong?
Hi Martin,
Glad to hear you’re doing so well…:-)
You’ve got some different things happening in there – the ‘lo hacer’ vs ‘hacerlo’ shift is indeed a movable feast, and you can do it any which way you want…:-)
With the others – in my experience, it doesn’t matter all that much, and first language Spanish speakers will not pay all that much attention to the order you use. In general terms, it’s about using ‘question’ words – so, for example, your example above ‘entiendo lo que usted quiere decir’ doesn’t have any questioning words – ‘lo que’ here isn’t the same as a ‘que?’ question – it’s ‘I understand what you want to say’, not ‘I understand – what do you want to say?’…:) See also what you say about the last two – the change is from ‘no sé que’ to ‘no sé lo que’ – which are translated by the same English word ‘what’, but the second (the ‘lo que’) has no element of question to it in Spanish at all.
When you ask a straight question, it’s nice and easy – the order changes – so ‘el hombre va a comprar algo’ -> ‘que va a comprar el hombre?’.
It gets trickier (and I suspect less immediately obvious for first language speakers as well, judging by our translators!) when you have an introductory phrase, like ‘no sé’. I think the examples you’ve given here with ‘entiendo por que’ are slip ups – but if so, they’re slip ups from first language speakers, which is part of why I think this doesn’t matter in terms of communication…:)
This is actually a great example of the kind of distinction we try to encourage all our learners to settle for getting a general grasp of, and then fine tune by using your new language – you’ll get used to using what you hear other people using, because that’s how real language learning works – all ‘classroom’ stuff, including our materials, are just about getting you to that point as fast as possible…:)
Hi Madeleine! You’ll see more recent responses if you look on the FAQ page – the only question of yours that’s gone unanswered was on the 29th of March – because I’ve been away on holidays this last week – sorry, but it does happen from time to time…;-)
The log-in was probably a temporary hiccup – it looks as though our server had a brief attack of the vapours last night – but nothing serious…:)
Nope, I don’t think you’ve missed anything – 20 should be ready before too long, and then we’ll be starting out brand new framework…:)
Hi Aran,
Thanks for the response. Got through lesson 11 quite smoothly yesterday and been through 12 a couple times driving to/from work today… that one will take longer to get to grips with! But enjoying it and really glad I avoided the temptation to spend money on buying some other Spanish course. I think the comments you make on learning languages make a lot of sense – I’ve got Spanish radio on as I write
Regarding the …porque usted quiere… / …porque quiere usted… situations that aren’t actual questions, I’m glad to hear it doesn’t matter too much in most cases – I thought that might be the case, but wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing something! Like English, I guess word order can be flexible at times – you’ll be understood even if you might sound a bit archaic or odd (or Yoda-like – ‘To learn Spanish, work hard you must’
)
Muy bien, thanks again for the course. It’s changed the drive to/from work from an hour of wasted heart-beats into one of the most productive hours of the day!
I’m always particularly glad to hear when someone turns a commute into really valuable time – I’ve always tended to believe that the amount of people commuting should mean we have one of the most multi-lingual societies around…;)
Great to hear you’re doing so well – and congratulations on taking exactly the right attitude towards ‘mistakes’. Grammar purists would tell you that there is a ‘correct’ way of structuring those kind of sentences, and that you should ‘learn’ it – but the more you throw yourself into conversations without worrying about it, the faster your brain will fine tune…:)
Oh very relieved! I didn’t mean to sound critical , just concerned as I really didn’t want to lose the opportunity of continuing with this terrific course.
I also hope you had a good holiday and that it was somewhere warm and sunny.
Hello Aran,
I know you like to read stories of success, here’s mine: I finished lesson 19, and was looking for a chance to practise. In the next town there’s a monthly meeting of Spanish learners and Spanish speekers. Yesterday I went there for the first time. All the learners were learning for years or had spent some times in Spain or Latin America. But I was able to understand most of what was said, at least by the Germans.( Some people from Mexico and Argentina spoke too fast for me to understand).
But when I tried to explain, why and how I’m learning, they didn’t understand. (And obviously they didn’t know the word ” Galés”, which is Welsh, according to Google). They couldn’t believe, that it’s possible to learn a language without books, conjugation lists, grammar explanations etc.
But towards the end of the meeting, I spoke to young lady, who is learning for years, now with a private teacher. I explained to her how I learn and that I can only use the perfect for the past and “I’m going to” for the future. She complimented me not only on my speaking skills, but also for going to a meeting like this at this stage of learning. She said, most learners of traditional courses wouldn’t dare to try the language outside the classroom, and always say ” I can’t speak if I don’t know …. (past tense, future conditional if-clauses….) We spoke for about 15 min about everything and though I used my hands very much and said too often “algo” or “hacer”, we managed to get along.
I came home yesterday very late, but very happy.
That’s brilliant – thank you so much for sharing! And well done for jumping in – always the best way…:-)
Oh, and Lesson 20 is up now, and we hope to start producing v2.0 of the course in the near future…:-)
Your free lessons are fantastic. I am now on Lesson 18 and would like to progress to a higher level. I understand that I can pay a monthly fee to continue with the lessons. My query is, what content is on offer once I subscribe, i.e. have you course 2 ready as I have quite a good knowledge of spanish, a lot of time on my hands and I consequently seem to be progressing quite quickly. Many thanks.
Hi Margaret!
Thank you very much indeed for your extremely kind words…:-)
I’d recommend that you hold off for a short while – we’ve just agreed terms to put some more time into developing the Spanish course, so there’ll be a fair bit of new stuff in the next few weeks, including a new and improved Course 1 – but if you open a free Twitter account you’ll be able to access them all without paying, until we get to Course 2.
All the best,
Aran
I’m really enjoying the course and like others was assuming it would be poor (or short) if free. Perhaps a few words explaining the idea behind the course would help. I’m up to lesson 8 and would like to make a few constructive suggestions
1) Longer pauses please
2) Slower Spanish speaker responses
3) Practice at understanding Spanish
On this last point I sometimes turn on my MP3 player when the answer is being given and find that I can’t understand it – even though I might have successfully given the correct translation myself the previous day!
Many thanks
Thanks very much for your kind words, Ed, much appreciated…:-) Yup, the free=NotGood expectation has been a real problem for us – our Welsh course grows about four times faster than our Spanish course through word of mouth. The final result is that we’re probably going to have to cut down how much free stuff we offer dramatically, which is very much not what we wanted to do.
Thank you very much for your suggestions – we’ve always really benefited from user suggestions. The pauses is tricky – because what’s a good long pause when you do the lesson the first time is a major irritant by the third or fourth – so since you *can* use the pause button, whereas there is not ‘speed it up’ button, we’ve opted to make them challenging rather than too easy. It’s also a good guideline – if you can get them out in time on a shorter pause, you’ve much more chance of moving into conversation more successfully.
Slower speakers – we’ve tested this to destruction and beyond – and the only consistent difference we’ve been able to find is that people who hear faster speakers from the beginning are slightly better at understanding the spoken language. Our version 2 of the Spanish course might have a slightly slower beginning, though!
Understanding practice – this is a major part of our more complete Welsh course, for exactly the reasons you identify. We’ll be providing regular listening practices for Spanish in the next couple of months…:-)
Thanks again for your input, and good luck with the rest of the course!
I have today deposited £2 in Paypal for a micro course in Spanish and have fogotten my password and my user name, therefore I am unable to download it. Im very sorry for any inconvenience caused. Can you please instruct me what to do next!!! Again I would like to thank you for compiling a tremendous course and really look forward to improving my spanish.
Hi
Have loved the course so far – have gone through all 20 lessons twice over. Very impressed with it but now hungry for more!
Appreciate it takes time for you to produce the lessons so was wondering if there were any other rescourses/courses you recommend for me to crack on with in the meantime. I’ve been using memrise and quite like that as a resourse but it is limited and the less said about the bbc course the better!
I live in Cardiff and don’t know of any Spanish speakers I could lock in a dark room and force to practice with me. I was wondering if it would be an idea over on the ssiw forum to look for a skype partner, I speak Welsh so if they were any Spanish speakers learning we could do one half Welsh one half Spanish so we’d both get to practice.
Any suggestions would be must appreciated.
Cheers
Dai
Hi Dai! Well done on getting so much done – and I promise you there will be more material coming out before too much longer…:-)
In the meantime, though, yes, I think it would be a great idea to ask around for possible Skype partners on the SSiW forum – there are quite a few Spanish speakers and learners on there, some of whom might well be up for an intercambio – and the good news is that we’ll be adding a proper social layer to the Spanish section of the new site in the not-too-distant future…:-)