Did you know that by listening to podcasts or music in a foreign language, you can drastically improve your aural comprehension?
Here you can find several podcasts recommended for learners of Spanish.
- A–Zero To A–Hero
This Spanish podcast comes from Babbel itself, A–Zero to A–Hero. This podcast is designed for beginners, making it a great place to start. The hosts are Héctor, a native Spanish speaker, and Catriona, who is attempting to learn the language. You can follow along on Catriona’s journey, with each episode focusing on a different aspect of the language, such as pronouns, verb conjugations and anything else you’ll need on your path to speaking Spanish with confidence
- News In Slow Spanish
It may not sound riveting, but News in Slow Spanish is a great starting point if you’re a beginner. It has two versions: one using Spanish as it’s spoken in Spain and the other focusing on Latin American Spanish. The aptly-named podcast features discussions of current news stories in Spanish, but spoken slowly and clearly so it’s easy for non-native speakers to understand. Once you learn some basic Spanish, listen to this podcast to reinforce your knowledge and help you get a sense of how the language sounds. The hosts also mix in notes on grammar and pronunciation as they come up in context, making the entire experience very useful for Spanish learners.
- Españolistos
If you’re an intermediate Spanish speaker, a good podcast option is Españolistos, hosted by a Colombian Spanish Teacher and her American fiancé. The pair discusses a variety of topics, ranging from online dating to Venezuela’s economic crisis, in an effort to increase your vocabulary and improve your listening comprehension. The hosts also keep their conversations fun and lively, so you’re unlikely to get bored and zone out.
- Palabras Bravas
Babbel’s own language experts have produced a podcast just for Spanish learners. There are two seasons, each with different angles on language learning. In season 1, El Misterio de la Calle de Cervantes, we follow the story of three roommates living in Madrid after they hear strange noise coming from the flat upstairs — and from that moment on, chaos and craziness ensue! Then, in season 2, Errores Fosilizados, our hosts look at common Spanish mistakes that can trip you up as you’re learning the language. This in-house production offers intermediate to advanced learners with a little something for everyone: It mixes storytelling with expert explanations, linguistic insights, entertaining twists and challenging quizzes.
- Radio Ambulante
Once you’re a little more advanced in your Spanish proficiency, we highly recommend Radio Ambulante. Distributed by NPR, this Spanish-language podcast features compelling, well-produced stories from across Latin America. Like most NPR shows, Radio Ambulante is storytelling at its finest. In fact, it was awarded the prestigious Gabriel García Márquez Prize for Innovation in Journalism in 2014. Bonus: The show’s website provides a Spanish transcript of every episode, so you can follow along on paper, as well as an English translation in case you really get stuck
- Nómadas
This is one of several great Spanish podcasts from Radio Nacional de España — Spain’s public radio station. Nómadas is a travel show that takes you to a different corner of the world every week and brings you voices, sounds and stories from that destination. As with Radio Ambulante, you need to have a more advanced knowledge of Spanish to be able to follow along with this podcast, but if you can understand it, you’ll learn a lot while cementing your language skills.
- Un Día En Español
This is another show produced by Babbel — Un día en español. Each episode is a short story (usually about 7 to 15 minutes) following a native Spanish speaker on a single day, with the narration using a mix of both English and Spanish. The stories range from someone preparing for a date where they’ll need to salsa dance to a mother travelling to Puerto Rico to visit some of her favourite places for the last time. Each episode also comes with a transcript and a vocabulary guide for beginners who want to follow along. For more advanced learners, we also include the monolingual version of each episode, where everything is said in Spanish. That way, you can really test how good your comprehension is.
- StoryLearning Spanish Podcast
This is a daily immersion podcast for intermediate learners, where you can improve your Spanish naturally with the StoryLearning method. It’s produced by the guy behind the “Short Stories in Spanish” books you can find on Amazon. This podcast series is actually one, long story, with a new episode (chapter), released every day. Written transcripts come free with each episode, along with word lists for difficult words, making it ideal to learn to understand fast, spoken Spanish. All you have to do is follow along with the story each day, and you’ll quickly improve your Spanish in a fun, natural way