spanish@owen's

Useful link for KS4 and KS5 students

The holidays are an ideal time to work on your listening skills and extend your vocabulary. The "El Mensual" section of the BBC Spanish section has great reading and listening resources which are perfect for taking your knowledge of Spanish beyond the textbook. Have a browse, and try to listen to some of the audio files.

Interlex - a useful vocabulary learning tool for all levels

Thanks to Alex in Year 13 for telling me about this. Interlex is a FREE piece of software, for PCs only, that allows you to input vocabulary you want to learn and then tests you on it. This is what they say about it on their website:

Interlex provides a highly focused, interactive learning environment that allows you to improve your language skills rapidly. Creating your own Interlex files is an excellent way to explore a language and become familiar with new vocabulary. You can then commit this knowledge to long-term memory by testing yourself in a variety of ways. Words and phrases are carefully selected with reference to previous input, encouraging you to concentrate on those you find difficult. Feedback is immediate and informative, without any distracting special effects. The overall result is a tangible sense of progress that makes vocabulary learning a pleasure instead of a chore.

Basically, my opinion is that any way of learning vocabulary is better than doing nothing, but I think this is excellent, and recommend you take a look at it at http://www.vocab.co.uk/.