Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners

Listen for Pleasure at Your Level, Expand Your Vocabulary and Learn Spanish the Fun Way!

By: Olly Richards

Narrated by: Javier Marzan

Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's Summary

Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, a feeling of progress and, most importantly, enjoyment! Mapped to A2-B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference, these eight captivating stories are designed to give you a sense of achievement and a feeling of progress when listening. 

What does this book give you?

• Eight stories in a variety of exciting genres, from science fiction and crime to history and thriller - making the process fun while you learn a wide range of new vocabulary.
• Controlled language at your level, including the 1,000 most frequent words, to help you progress confidently.
• Authentic spoken dialogues, to help you learn conversational expressions and improve your speaking ability.
• Pleasure! It's much easier to learn a new language when you're having fun, and research shows that if you're enjoying listening in a foreign language, you won't experience the usual feelings of frustration - 'it's too hard!' 'I don't understand!'
• Accessible grammar so you learn new structures naturally, in a stress-free way.

Carefully curated to make learning a new language easy, these stories include key features that will support and consolidate your progress, including:

• A bilingual word list.
• Comprehension questions to aid your understanding.
• Full plot summary.

As a result, you will be able to focus on enjoying the stories, delighting in your improved range of vocabulary and grasp of the language, without ever feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. From science fiction to fantasy, to crime and thrillers, Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners will make learning Spanish easy and enjoyable.

©2018 Olly Richards (P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critic Reviews

"Olly's top-notch language-learning insights are right in line with the best of what we know from neuroscience and cognitive psychology about how to learn effectively. I love his work - and you will too!" (Barbara Oakley, PhD, author of New York Times best seller A Mind for Numbers)

Great for Intermediate Students

I've studied Spanish off and on for years and although I can speak fairly well, my difficulty is comprehension when someone speaks quickly. The narrator in these stories speaks at a quick enough pace that it doesn't seem unnatural, but clearly and slowly enough for me to understand 95% of what is being said. The included PDF of vocabulary is also extremely helpful. It will be too slow for advanced or native speakers, but for intermediates it is excellent listening practice.

Great book for Spanish learners

Loved the narration because it's helpful for audio input. I enjoyed the stories. I read the book while listening to the audio.

good for A2 above. Listened multiple times.

listened to it multiple times. Very useful for new Spanish learners. when I listened to it as A1 it was confusing. I read the pdf and then listened to the audio, then I understood the context. Less pressure when there's no expectations to learn every new words. I went one context at a time.

fourth out of six books tried

Short stories for beginners
I was frustrated by all the paid for 5 star reviews for these books so decided to do my own comparison. Here are the results:

6 audio books compared and ranked by ease of understanding for a beginner with only a few words of Spanish

1. Claudia Orea 4 stars
The best of the six I tried. Has verbal translations although oddly these are presented from track 14 onwards after you have listened to the whole thing in just Spanish. Would be better to have the translation next to each story.

2. Alicia Garcia 3 stars
written Translation via pdf, no verbal translation. More interesting stories than learning revolution though

3. Learning Revolution - 2/3 stars
Has some vocabulary verbally translated although the Spanish accented English is hard to follow. Stories pretty boring (e.g. working as an accountant). Hard to follow for a beginner

4. Olly Richards 2 stars
No translation, slightly more interesting stories than learning revolution though
Lingo Mastery. Hard to follow for a beginner.

5. Touri Language Learning 1 star
Lots of sales pitches for their courses. No translation. Hard to follow.

6. Francisco Ruiz 1 star

All of these books were initially published as physical books. They are designed to be read, rather than listened to as audio books. To convert them into audio a Spanish speaker reads the text and a pdf has been added. This doesn’t really work for learning via audio. As a beginner you need more side by translation of the audio, at least initially until a few key phrases have been properly learnt.

Really enjoyable stories

This is the best audiobook of short stories I have come across so far. The stories are actually really interesting and fun and had me gripped (except one that I had trouble understanding, but I was listening whilst doing things and I really should have looked up a word that kept cropping up! I probably wasn't concentrating enough anyway tbh). There is a wide selection of subjects to the stories - historial, sci-fi, supernatural etc - but they each kept my interest up throughout. I was actually disappointed when I got to the end! The narration was very clear so all words could be made out and the language used was just right for my standard (not beginner). I doubt these would work for complete beginners, but I have been learning for 5 months quite intensively and these were perfect. I have bought one of Olly Richards' intermediate books and will be looking for anything he does now. Audible is such a minefield of fake reviews that it is hard to find decent material so I hope this review will be helpful.

Recommended

This is a collection of quite interesting stories that ring true and introduce a good deal of vocabulary. They are not that easy though. I found it necessary to study the corresponding text in printed form for some time before listening to the audio. And this required much use of a dictionary as the dictionary included in the back of the book is far from adequate. But that gripe apart these are good stories for a student to work on as long as you understand that as a beginner you have no chanceof understanding these stories at an initial hearing.

Errors

I have the book and audiobook. There are differences, however, the first audiobook story has errors...Daniel takes a bus and falls asleep and awakes in Barcelona, and the rest of the story then doesn't make sense as the book version he awakes Valencia, which makes far more sense of saying that he is far away from Barcelona.

Excellent way to learn and improve

Very good. Enjoyed it a lot, although I suggest speading it up to about x 1.45 to better train your ear.

Enjoyed and learnt

really enjoyed, listened a couple of times to some for greater understanding and acquired new words and phrases.